Nothing pleases me better in these days of “sex problem” novels, novels with a purpose, novels which are “Blue Books” in disguise—Hansards and Government papers, as it were, in sheep’s clothing—to come across a real live (a most useful American adjective, that) romance. Trans port me from these days of pessimism and fads, of societies and papers for the spread of all sorts of cranky ideas, from these days when so much in life appears to be dull and dreary, back to the brave old times when there was clanging of swords and brave deeds done of gallant men in sylvan glades or ’neath castle walls— let him be good enough to do this for me, and an author earns my gratitude. The story which takes us out of ourselves and out of this neutral-tinted life of to-day is the story for me, and as I know you are of my way of thinking, and that you have enjoyed Mr Stanley Weyman’s “Gentle man of .Prance,” his “Under the Bed Robe” and “The Bed Cockade,” let me tell you that in my humble opinion both Mr Weyman and Mr Anthony Hope have now a most formidable rival in the person of a Mr A. E. W. Mason, whose "Courtship of Maurice Buckler” (n.) is quite the best romance published for some time past. It is so full of incident, so free from any pages wherein one may he tempted to “exercise the judicious art of skipping,” so brisk in narration, so full of well drawn, interesting characters— real men and women, not pasteboard pup pets, novelists’ lay figures—that it kept me entranced for some hours, and caused politics, journalism and all latter-day matters to fly into a temporary Unknown. To detail the plot would take too long, but I may say that the scenes are cast partly in England, shortly a'ter Monmouth’s rebel lion, and partly in the Tyrol, a romantic country, a fit background for such a roman tic story. The hero is a young Englishman who sets out to avenge a, foul wrong done to a friend. His revenge is soon accom plished, and in the course of its narration the author {jives us the weirdest, moat power ful “thing" in duels (forgive the nine teenth century vulgarism) that I have happened across in fiction this many a day. 