_Through the Ages Beloved_ (HUTCHINSON) might be fairly described as an unusual story. I am bound to say that I both admired and enjoyed it; but at the same time a more tangled tale it was never my task to unravel. For the benefit of future explorers I will say that the motive of the plot--whose scene is laid in Japan--is reincarnation. Consequently, though the hero, _Kanaya_, begins as a modern student who has fought through the Russo-Japanese war, you must be prepared to find him and yourself switched suddenly without any warning into the remote past. I am not quite sure that Mr. H. GRAHAME RICHARDS has been playing the game here. So unheralded is the transference that even the close and careful reader will experience some bewilderment; as, for example, when the heroine, whose own name remains the same in both ages, re-enters with different parents. As for the skipper, his doom will be confusion unmitigated. However, once you have found your bearings again, there is much to admire in the treatment of a time and a place so eminently picturesque. Mr. RICHARDS' pen-pictures of Japanese scenery have all the delicate beauty of paintings upon ivory. The clear, clean air, the colour of sunrise flushing some exquisite landscape, a flight of birds crossing a garden of azaleas--all these are realized with obvious knowledge and enthusiasm, and more than compensate for the intricacy of the plot. But this is certainly there. Once only was I myself near vanquished. This was when the _Kanaya_ of the past, himself the result of the modern _Kanaya_ hitting his head on a stone, began to hint of uneasy visions pointing to a remote Port-Arthurian future. Here I confess that (like _Alice_ and _The Red King_) I longed for some authoritative pronouncement as to who was the genuine dreamer, and who would "go out." Still, an original story, and one to be read, even if with knitting of brows. * * * [Illustration: THE PASSPORT WITH ACCOMPANYING PHOTOGRAPH SOMETIMES AROUSES SUSPICION. ONE SELDOM LOOKS LIKE ONESELF IMMEDIATELY AFTER A ROUGH CHANNEL CROSSING.] * * *