Mrs. HUMPHRY WARD, chief of novelists-with-a-purpose, vehemently eschews the detachment of the Art-for-Art's-Saker, while a long and honourable practice has enabled her to make her stories bear the burden of her theses much more comfortably than would seem theoretically possible. _Delia Blanchflower_ (WARD, LOCK) is a suffrage novel, dedicated with wholesome intent to the younger generation, and if one compares the talented author's previous record of uncompromising, and indeed rather truculent, anti-suffrage utterances one may note (with approval or dismay) a considerable broadening of view on the vexed question. For her attack here is delivered exclusively on the militant position. Quite a number of decent folk in her pages are suffragistically inclined, and there is a general admission that the eager feet that throng the hill of the Vote are not by any means uniformly shod in elastic-sided boots, if one may speak a parable. It is a very notable admission and does the writer honour; for such revisions are rare with veteran and committed campaigners. The story is laid in the far-away era of the burnings of cricket pavilions and the lesser country houses. _Delia_ is a beautiful goddess-heiress of twenty-two, with eyes of flame and a will of steel, a very agreeable and winning heroine. Her tutor, _Gertrude Marvell_, the desperate villain of the piece, a brilliant fanatic (crossed in love in early youth), wins the younger girl's affections and inspires and accepts her dedication of self and fortune to the grim purposes of the "Daughters of Revolt." _Mark Winnington_, her guardian, appointed by her father to counteract the tutor's baleful influence, finds both women a tough proposition. For _Gertrude_ has brains to back her fanaticism, and _Delia_ is a spirited handful of a ward. Loyalty to her consecration and to her friend outlast her belief in the methods of the revolting ones. Her defences are finally ruined by Cupid, for _Mark_ is a handsome athletic man of forty or so, a paragon of knightly courtesy and persuasive speech and silences, and compares very favourably with the policemen in Parliament Square. Poor _Gertrude_ makes a tragic end in a fire of her own kindling, so that the moral for the younger generation cannot be said to be set forth in ambiguous terms. * * * * *