I fear it may sound an unkindly criticism, but my abiding trouble with _Broken Colour_ (LANE) was an inability to get any of the characters, with perhaps one exception, to come alive or behave otherwise than as parts of a thoroughly nice-mannered and unsensational story. Perhaps it was my own fault. Mr. HAROLD OHLSON (whose previous book I liked) has obviously, perhaps a little too obviously, done his best for these people. It is a tale of two rivalries: that for the heroine, between the penniless artist-hero and a pound-full other; and that in the breast of the p.a.h., between the flesh-pots of commerce and the world-well-lost-for-Chelsea. It is typical of Mr. OHLSON'S care that, though one would in such a situation nine times out of ten be safe in backing Art for the double event, he makes so even a match of it between _Hubert_ and _Ralph_ that he leaves the heroine ringing the door-bell of the one immediately after kissing the other. You observe that I was perhaps really more interested in the contest than my opening words would suggest, but it was always in a detached story-book way; except in the case of a mildly unsympathetic secretary, represented as having spent too much time in the contemplation of other persons' affluence, also as owning an expensive-looking stick that made him long to be as rich as it caused him to appear. I hate to think that there can have been anything here to touch a chord in the reviewing breast, but the fact remains that _Mr. Burnham_ stands out for me as the only genuinely human figure in the book. * * * * *