If the true aim of romance is to find beauty and laughter and heroism in odd places, then Mr. Wells is a great romantic. His heroes are not knights and adventurers, not even members of the quasi-romantic professions, but the ordinary small tradesmen, whom the world has hitherto neglected. The hero of the new book, Mr. Alfred Polly, is of the same school, but he is nearer Hoopdriver than Kipps. He is in the last resort the master of his fate, and squares himself defiantly against the Destinies. Unlike the others, he has a literary sense, and has a strange fantastic culture of his own. Mr. Wells has never written anything more human or more truly humorous than the adventures of Mr. Polly as haberdasher's apprentice, haberdasher, incendiary, and tramp. Mr. Polly discovers the great truth that, however black things may be, there is always a way out for a man if he is bold enough to take it, even though that way leads through fire and revolution. The last part of the book, where the hero discovers his courage, is a kind of saga. We leave him in the end at peace with his own soul, wondering dimly about the hereafter, having proved his manhood, and found his niche in life. DAISY'S AUNT. _E. F. Benson._ It is Mr. Benson's chief merit that, without losing the lightness of touch which makes good comedy, he keeps a firm hold upon the graver matters which make good fiction. The present book is a tale of conspiracy--the plot of a beautiful woman to save her young niece from a man whom she regards as a blackguard. None of Mr. Benson's women are more attractive than these two, who fight for long at cross-purposes, and end, as all honest natures must, with a truer understanding. THE OTHER SIDE. _H. A. Vachell._ In this remarkable book Mr. Vachell leaves the beaten highway of romance, and grapples with the deepest problems of human personality and the unseen. It is a story of a musical genius, in whose soul worldliness conquers spirituality. When he is at the height of his apparent success, there comes an accident, and for a little soul and body seem to separate. On his return to ordinary life he sees the world with other eyes, but his clearness of vision has come too late to save his art. He pays for his earlier folly in artistic impotence. The book is a profound moral allegory, and none the less a brilliant romance. SIR GEORGE'S OBJECTION. _Mrs. W. K. Clifford._