_A Great Success_ (SMITH, ELDER) is about a new-risen literary star, _Arthur Meadows_, his loving, unbrilliant wife, and a coruscating society lion-huntress, _Lady Dunstable_. Having heard this much, you will hardly need to be told that _Lady D._ takes up the author violently, that he is dazzled by the glitter of her conversational snares, and that the story resolves itself into a duel between her ladyship and (I quote the publishers) "the wife whom she despises and tries to set down." Nor are you likely to be in any uncertainty about the final victory. This is brought about, with the assistance of the long arm of coincidence, by _Doris_, the neglected wife, finding herself in a position to prevent her rival's unsatisfactory son from contracting matrimony with a very undesirable alien. _Doris_ indeed, and another female victim of _Lady Dunstable_ (also deposited on the scene by the same obliging arm), get busy unearthing so various a past for the undesirable one that she retires baffled, epigrammatic brilliance bites the dust, and domesticity is left triumphant. It is a jolly little story, very short, refreshingly simple, and constructed throughout on the most approved library lines. If the writer's name were not Mrs. HUMPHRY WARD, I should say that she ought to be encouraged to persevere, and even recommended to try her hand next time at something a little more substantial. * * * * * Let me recommend Mr. ROTHAY REYNOLDS' _My Slav Friends_ (MILLS AND BOON) as a corrective to Mr. STEPHEN GRAHAM's _Holy Russia_, which I prescribed some while ago with faint reservations. Both writers set out to interpret our mysterious ally to us. Mr. GRAHAM always looks through a rosy-tinted monocle. Mr. REYNOLDS takes the road of balanced appreciations, candour and kindly humour--unquestionably more effective in the matter of making sincere proselytes. He has produced a fascinating book, discreetly discursive--a book that seems to let you into the real secrets of a people's soul. He believes in the sincerity of Russian promises to Poland, and claims that the Poles share his belief, but he does not pretend that this most unfortunate of nations has no grievances against its suzerain. I wonder whether our perverse Intelligences are capable of making the deduction that, if the progressives in Russia can forget their quarrel with reaction for sake of our great common cause, they themselves might mitigate some of the severity of their anti-tsarism. Mr. REYNOLDS has much that is to the point to say about the good old British legends of darkest Russia now chiefly kept going by third-rate novelists and unscrupulous journalists. He makes it clear that, though there is much to change, changes are coming as fast as they can be assimilated, indeed even a little faster. Finally I wish that those who control the destinies of our theatre might read what is written here of the traditions of the stage in a country