I see that on the title-page of his latest story Mr. W. E. NORRIS is credited with having already written two others (specified by name), etc. Much virtue in that "etc." I cannot therefore regard _The Triumphs of Sara_ (HUTCHINSON) precisely as the work of a beginner, though it has a freshness and sense of enjoyment about it that might well belong to a first book rather than to--I doubt whether even Mr. NORRIS himself could say offhand what its number is. _Sara_ and her circle are eminently characteristic of their creator. You have here the same well-bred well-to-do persons, pleasantly true to their decorous type, retaining always, despite modernity of clothes and circumstance, a gentle aroma of late Victorianism. Perhaps _Sara_ is the most immediate of Mr. NORRIS'S heroines so far. Her money-bags had been filled in Manchester, and from time to time in her history you are reminded of this circumstance. It explains much; though hardly her marriage with _Euan Leppington_, whose attraction apparently lay in being one of the few males of her acquaintance whom _Sara_ did not find it fatally easy to bring to heel. Anyhow, after marriage she quickly grew bored to death of him; so much so that it required an attempt (badly bungled) by another woman to get _Euan_ to elope with her, and a providential collapse of the very unwilling Lothario, to bring about that happy ending that my experience of kind Mr. NORRIS has taught me to expect. I may add that he has never done anything more quietly entertaining than the frustrated elopement; the luncheon scene at the Metropole, Brighton, between the angry but amused _Sara_ and a husband incapacitated by rage, remorse and chill, is an especially well-handled little comedy of manners. * * * * *