_Manhood End_ (HURST AND BLACKETT) is the title, not very cheery, that Mrs. HENRY DUDENEY has given to her latest novel, a simple and quite human story of country vicarage life, told sympathetically, but in too many words for so slight a theme. The publishers are at the wholly superfluous pains of urging you as a preliminary to read the "turn-over of cover." Don't! All you will find there is a synopsis of the plot, just sufficient to destroy the slender thread of your interest in its development. And I must record a protest against the entirely unneeded Prologue, in which total strangers sit round at a churchyard picnic on the graves of the real protagonists, and speculate as to their history. The tale itself is placed in Sussex (why this invidious partiality of our novelists?), the actors being for the most part clerical. The main interest is centred in the matrimonial trials of the _Rev. Frederick Rainbird_, whose bride, having married him in haste, repented at leisure, eloped with the promising brother of a neighbouring parson, repented more, returned to domesticity, ran away again, and so on, _da capo_. Perhaps really these simple but not short annals have a flavour that I have failed to convey. Mrs. DUDENEY writes easily, but should avoid the snares of originality. To say of her heroine's morning appearance at the breakfast table, that she "stood in the tangle of a delicious coffee smell," may convey an impression, but at a ruinous expense of style. * * * * *