_Arundel_ (FISHER UNWIN) is one of those stories that begins with a Prologue; and as this was only mildly interesting I began to wonder whether I was going to be as richly entertained as one has by now a right to expect from Mr. E. F. BENSON. But it appeared that, like a cunning dramatist, he was only waiting till the audience had settled into their seats; when this was done, up went the curtain upon the play proper, and we were introduced to Arundel itself, an abode of such unmixed and giddy joy that I have been chortling over the memory of it ever since. Arundel was the house at Heathmoor where lived _Mrs. Hancock_ and her daughter _Edith_; and _Mrs. Hancock_ herself, and her house and her neighbourhood and her car and her servants and her friends--all, in fact, that is hers, epitomize the Higher Suburbia with a delicate and merciless satire that is beyond praise. I shall hurry over the actual story, because that, though well and absorbingly told, is of less value than the setting. Next door to the _Hancocks_ lived a blameless young man called _Edward_, whom for many reasons, not least because their croquet-lawns, so to speak, "marched," _Mrs. Hancock_ had chosen as her daughter's husband. So blamelessly, almost without emotion, these were betrothed, walking among the asparagus beds on a suitable May afternoon "ventilated by a breath of south-west wind and warmed by a summer sun," and the course of their placid affection would have run smooth enough but for the sudden arrival, out of the Prologue, of _Elizabeth_, fiercely alive and compelling, the ideal of poor _Edward's_ dreams. Naturally, therefore, there is the devil to pay. But, good as all this is, it is _Mrs. Hancock_ who makes the book, first, last and all the time. She is a gem of purest ray serene, and my words that would praise her are impotent things. Only unlimited quotation could do justice to her sleek self-deception and little comfortable meannesses. In short, as a contemporary portrait, the mistress of Arundel seems to be the best thing that Mr. BENSON has yet given us; worth--if he will allow me to say so--a whole race of _Dodos_. For comparison one turns instinctively to JANE AUSTEN; and I can sound no higher praise.