I.—Rupert of Hentzau.

The novel that has the most vogue this month is Mr. Anthony Hope's "Rupert of Hentzau."

This extract is a characteristic one. The greater part of the story is strung up to this high pitch, for whatever faults Mr. Hope may be guilty of, he never allows the interest of his narrative to flag.

II.—"The Yellow Danger."

"None of your gaudy colours for me," said an old pit wife, "give me good plain red and yellow." Those persons who share the taste for such simple hues will find them gratified to the full in Mr. Shell's romance, "The Yellow Danger" (Grant Richards, 6s.) For the yellow is in it in the shape of the Chinaman, while as for red, it is supplied by a "blugginess" which, for horror, dwarfs the boldest efforts of Mr, Rider Haggard. Those who do not like murder, torture, and bloodshed on the largest scale, had better give Mr. Sheil's book a wide berth, page 331 for as a record of carnage it is quite unequalled, so far as I know, in modern fiction. But the majority of human beings, who would spend a sleepless night if they gave the most objectionable of their fellow-creatures a bloody nose, nevertheless revel in blood when it is shed for them vicariously by the pen of the romancer. Such persons, and they probably constitute an enormous majority of the human race, will find Mr. Shell's "Yellow Danger" the book of all books with which to enliven their holiday by the seaside. It is a seasonable book, and no mistake. All the year the newspapers have vibrated and throbbed with the sound, imaginary and otherwise, of the cannon thunder supposed to be echoing in the West Indies and in the Philippines; while the last exploit of Parliament was to listen, with cheers, to Mr. Goschen's proposed addition of eight millions to the already Atlantean load of our naval expenditure. For "The Yellow Danger" is a book in which navies play a great part. The hero is a sub-lieutenant, who blossoms into an admiral of dimensions far exceeding those of Lord Nelson, before he is old enough to have obtained a captaincy, and the whole volume, from cover to cover, simply reverberates with battle thunder.

The motive of the story is simple enough. In my humble way I ventured to touch upon the same theme in "The Splendid Paupers," or "The Yellow Man with the White Money," which indulged in a more or less fantastic vision of the economic triumph of the Chinese over the Western World. Mr. Sheil paints with a much bigger brush, and dabs it on with much more glaring tints. Therein lies the probability that "The Yellow Danger" will be a great and sensational success, for a public which in the course of the last six months has seen two Spanish fleets wiped off the face of the sea in a couple of battles, is apt to be exacting in its demands upon those who attempt to outvie the realities of actual life. Mr. Sheil rises to the occasion, and in his romance he has constructed a story which for extravagance of horror and for colossal Gargantuan scale upon which everything is drawn, leaves all competitors far behind. If you could imagine a man who has spent a year in constructing gigantic scare-heads for the "New York Journal" during war time turned loose with a free hand to invent a story which would outvie even his wildest imaginings in the shape of horror and bloodshed, we might conceive him producing something like this book of Mr. Sheil's. As a story it is a distinct success even apart from the carnage in which the romance literally welters from first to last. There is a severe simplicity and unity running through it all. In brief the story is this:—

Yen How, a Chinaman of marvellous genius, with a brain of ice, in which he is able to concentrate all the science of the world, has so much intellect that he has no conscience, and only sufficient heart to fall in love with an English servant lass whom he meets on his visit to London. He conceives the idea of wiping the Western races out of existence. China, with its vast reservoir of four hundred millions of the human race, must be mobilised on a war footing, and launched as a tremendous weapon of conquest on the white section of the world. The description of Yen How, as a man with the intellect of a friend, uniting the genius of a Napoleon and of a Tamerlane, who pursues his policy with the ruthlessness of a Bismarck and the savagery of a Red Indian, is powerful, almost appalling from the vividness with which it is worked out from first page to last. Against Yen How Mr. Sheil pits John Hardy, a consumptive English lad alike marvellous in naval warfare and for political insight. The story which Mr. Sheil has to tell is the conflict between two supreme representatives of the white and yellow races, a conflict, the theatre of which is two continents, both of which are fairly well depopulated before the story finishes. Yen How's scheme for the conquest of Europe has its germ in a thought which undoubtedly animates the mandarins at the court of Pekin. Not that they contemplate the conquest of the world. Their objective is far less remote, being limited for the most part by a desire to protect themselves against being conquered by Europe, but their idea and Yen How's is the same. The true policy of the Chinese must be to sow dissension among the European nations. Let them quarrel among themselves. When rogues fall out, the honest Chinaman will come to his own. So concession after concession is forced into the hands of England, France, Russia, and Germany, with the result that before long Yen How attains his end and England finds herself at war with the allied nations. Universal war convulses Europe from Archangel to Sicily. Then when all the European fleets have been reduced to a decimal point of their former strength, when every nation on the Continent has exhausted its resources in men and in munitions of war, then Yen How launches his thunderbolt in the shape of the mobilised millions of China on a distracted and impotent Europe.

III.—Humorous Books.

One of the greatest things to be desired in the books which you take off to the seaside with you is something to make you laugh. If you cannot be made to laugh, it is a case, not for the seaside, but for the surgical ward of a hospital or some other place where the human apparatus can be subjected to searching and drastic repairs. "Laughter holding both his sides" is the best of all physicians. A merry heart doeth good like a medicine; and a good book which tickles the midriff and makes you laugh till you cry does more to recuperate the worn-out nervous system than any specific that page 332 has ever been devised in the pharmacopoeia the druggist. It is possible that you may not be able to laugh right out, if you read your funny book all to yourself alone. The best prescription for extracting the maximum amount of merriment out of a book is to read it aloud to a sympathetic circle of people, young by preference, who can see a joke and are not ashamed to greet it when it comes with a giggle for a little joke and a hearty guffaw for a champion. If you have never tried this prescription, put it in practice this holiday, and you will regard me as your benefactor for life. To read an amusing book to a small, good-humoured crowd is like mercy—it is twice blessed: it blesses him who reads and those who are read to, and is a Striking manifestation of the scriptural saying about scattering and yet increasing, while he that withholdeth more than is meet tendeth to poverty. There are some supercilious people so fastidious they will not laugh at any but a superfine joke, and there are others so shameless that they refuse to smile at any joke except on first making its acquaintance. Now a good joke is like a good wife-one of the best gifts vouchsafed to mortals; and only to laugh once at a joke is as absurd as only to kiss your wife on your wedding day, and never again.

There are several authors whom critics of the blue china school have never deigned to recognise, who nevertheless distribute more health and happiness among the crowd of holiday makers than all the cynics in Christendom or the borders thereof. I can remember when Mark Twain was tabooed as vulgar; and as for Max Adeler—"Who is the creature?"—they never heard his name. The American humourist has won recognition of late years; but it is still a more or less temerarious exploit to venture to praise a comical book merely because it has made you and your children laugh till their sides were sore.

There, for instance, is Mr. W. L. Alden, whose delightful tales, "Told by the Colonel" (McClure, 3s. 6d.), have contributed much to the gaiety of the nations which speak English. It is about time the genial humourist brought out a new selection, and included in it the inimitable story of how the saloon-keeper out West got the better of the praying sisterhood. I have searched for that story in vain. Even my indexer cannot find it, and when my indexer cannot find anything, I generally conclude that it has followed Prospero's magic book into depths deeper than any plummet sounded. The wily but wicked barkeeper welcomed his pious visitants who came to hold a prayer-meeting in his saloon, then locked the door, and when the prayer meeting was in full blast, he let loose a friendly, timid, and innocent mouse! Imagine the scene of consternation! the pious sisters climbed on to the top of the tallest stools and screamed. But their relentless host, with relays of rats at his disposal, refused to release them until they had all partaken of his liquor, and appended their signatures to a certificate that as his Old Rye was the best they had ever tasted, they had every confidence is recommending it to their friends. It is a broad, screaming farce if you like, but it is unspeakably funny, and the man is indeed fit for nothing but stratagems, and spoils, and all manner of political scoundrelism who does not feel irresistibly impelled to laugh at Mr. Alden's story.

Mr. Alden, although living for the most part in England—when he is not in Italy—is an American. In Yorkshire there resides a native humourist, English born and English bred, whose books are rapidly acquiring somewhat of the popularity which they deserve. His name is W. Carter Platts, he is angling editor of the "Yorkshire Post," and to his books I owe many a hearty peal of laughter. There are few writers who move their readers more irresistibly to merriment. To have a house full of young folks on a holiday without a volume of W., Carter Platts' to read aloud on a wet day, or when they are resting after lunch, is not to live up to your privileges. I began on "Tuttlebury Tales" (Jerrold, 2s. 6d.), and read it through aloud to my seaside party, and found each chapter was accompanied by those outbursts of laughter which are as, spontaneous as they are contagious. My sister carried off the book, and found it equally mirth-provoking when read to the inmates of a workhouse—who art; not much predisposed to gaiety.

Mr. W. Carter Platts is broadly farcical and exquisitely humorous. If sometimes there is a certain mannerism in his style, and a certain sameness in which he leads up to his effects, that is no more than can be said of much more famous personages in all departments of literature and art. I have never seen "Charley's Aunt," but from what I have heard of the way in which that play affects those who hear it, I should imagine Mr. Platts' writing is something like "Charley's Aunt" in print. The "Spectator" compares him to Max Adeler, and he is quite as amusing. No doubt much of the humour is simple, some of it even vulgar, and it is as exaggerated in its way as Mr. Shell's "Yellow Danger." But it is full of exuberant good spirits, good humour, and good jokes.

After "Tuttlebury Tales" we had his "Angling Done Here" (Jerrold, 1s.)—more or less impossible yarns strung loosely on the line of a more or less mythical angler. And now we have, just in time for the holidays, his latest shilling contribution to the mirth of mankind—"A Few Smiles" (Jerrold, 1s.) It will raise a few smiles—not a few, I hope, although perhaps not so many as "Tuttlebury Tales." the breadth of the author's smile, he says in his preface, will depend on the width of the book's circulation, and that, in turn, will depend upon how far it succeeds in spreading a few smiles over the countenance of the reader:— page 333

If any reader should find the title misleading, and that there is nothing whatever in these pages gay and joyous and calculated to make home happy, the author (being a conscientious man with a sincere dread of appearing before the public under false pretences) will be humbly grateful to him if he will buy up and destroy all the copies he can lay his hands on.

The story of the man who ruptured his nerve centres, and connected up the wrong way, so that every nerve was switched on to the wrong receiver, is as good as Max Adeler, and many of his monstrous fibs are equal in their capacious unveracity to the greatest of the American variety of news paper fable.

Mr. Platts is consciously humorous, deliberately and malice prepense farcical. It is far otherwise with the little unconscious humourists whose essays Mr. H. J. Barker has just reissued in a fourth edition under the title, "The Comic Side of School Life" (Jerrold, 6d.) "Very Original English" was the original title of the collection, portions of which appeared in "Longman's Magazine." It has been going about doing good and making people laugh at the delightfully humorous touches of the juvenile authors until it has now reached a circulation of 17,000. I have noticed it before, but I must welcome it again, and, for the sake of readers who may not have seen the previous notice, I make free to sample Mr. Barker's contribution to our holiday mirth by extracting a few passages from the papers written by his scholars on subjects in Natural History. They speak for themselves, and need neither introduction nor comment:—

The Cat.

The house cat is a fourlegged quadruped, the legs as usuerl being at the corners. It is what is sometimes called a tame animal, though it feeds on mice and birds of prey. Its colours are striped, tortusshell, black, also black and white, and uthers. When it is happy it does not bark, but breathes through its nose, instead of its mouth, but I can't remember the name they call the noise. When you stroke this tame quadruped by drawing your hand across its back, it cocks up its tail like a ruler, so as you can't get no further. Never stroke the hairs acrost, as it makes all cats scrat like mad. Its tail is about too footlong, and its legs about one each. Never stroke a cat under the belly, as it is very unhelthy. Don't teese cats, for, firstly it is wrong so to do, and 2nd, cats have clawses which is longer then people think. Cats have 9 livses, but which is seldom required in this country because of Christianity.

The Dog.

The dog is the commonest kind of all living brutes. Its legs are four, and one tail of all sizes. Cats are very common in all large towns and streets, but dogs are more so. There is only 3 things wiser than the dog which is ourselves, all monkeys, and all eliphents. You may call the colours numerous, except pink, red, and blue. The thing about dogs is that they keep gentlemen's houses safe when they are asleep. Only think how frightened a robber must feel, when, just as he is putting his face to the keyhole, he hears a sharp growl on the other side of the keyhole. Then the robber runs away quick, for he does not know whether it is a lady's dog, or a bull-dog. When the robber gets home and thinks about it, he thanks the dog in his heart for having tought him a lesson not to commit sin for it is the 8 commandment.

The Cow.

The Cow is a noble quadrerped, though not so noble as the horse, much less the roaring Lion. It has four short legs, a big head for its size, and a thick body. Its back legs are bent, and there's two big bones sticking out just above. Its tail is more noble than the donkey's but nothing to come up to that of the race horse. The cow gives us milk, and niced beef, and shoolether. How thankful should children be to this tame quadrerped. How thankful ought we to be to the cow for nice hot beef. Pertaters grows; they are not on the cow. The four things what you sees under the cow's belly are what the milk comes through. How thankful should we be, the cow makes milk from grass. God teaches the cow how to do it. A cow's feet are split in two, like sheeps; they are called hooves. Little cows are called carves. Carves are the stupidist of all tame quadrerpeds, except pigs and donkeys. When you drive a carf, never prick it behind, but push it gently with your flat hand. Men are crewel to carves because they cant draw milk from them. Cows are painted different colours: white, and red, and yellow. When they are black and white they are genlly half bulls so you must not go near them. Cream which rich people eats is got from cows which are all white.

The Turkey.

The Turkey is a large blew bird, genelly fat, with thick legs. It has no tail worth mentioning at the side of a cock's tail, but it has instead a long piece of skin hanging from its head and under its chin just like red tripe. This skin is genelly dirty at the bottom because of draggling on the ground when the bird is a feeding. The Turkey is the king of the goose and most other birds, but the eagle can fight it. It is like a very big cock if it wasnt for the tail. It is not cruel to kill a Turkey, if only you take it into the back yard, and use a sharp knife, and the Turkey is yours. Boys like the Turkey to run after them, because they get home quicker without feeling tired, and the Turkey has to go all the way back.

At the Zoo.

When you see the lion, he looks at you as if he sez, "think as you can fight, don't yer, little boy, just coz you no I can't get out all coz of this bloomin kage. If I could only skweez through, I'd swallow you and yer mother too." I said to my mother "I should like to hear the lion aroaring." When she said "why that was aroaring just now when the keeper looked in at him." Then I nearly cried, I was so wild; why, it wasn't like thunder and lightning at all.

"Martha and I," by R. Andom (Jerrold, 1s.), illustrated by Alec Carruthers Gould, is a book reminding us at every turn of Mr. W. Carter Platts'. There is even a Tuckleberry family in "Martha and I," and the book is as like, or unlike, Mr. Platts' as Woodford, in Essex, is like the West Riding of Yorkshire. The illustrations would seem to suggest that artistic talent is hereditary. Alec C. G. will, if he goes on like this, make his initials as famous as those of "F. C. G." of the "Westminster Gazette."

"A Feast of Fun" is the title of the little volume containing the first six numbers of the Pennyworth Series, edited by David Macrae, one of the best of our Scottish humourists. The contents are varied, consisting of puns, parodies, blunders, epitaphs, chestnuts, and repartees.

Professor J. S. Nitti, the editor of "La Riforma Sociale," who is perhaps the ablest student of political and economic problems of Italy to-day, contributes a strong and thoughtful article to his review on the position of affairs. While fully realising the gravity of the crisis through which the country is passing, he condemns emphatically a policy of panic and repression. The price of bread he states to have been the immediate cause of the recent riots, but there are other and more far-reaching reasons. Discontent is rife in every part of the country. "After thirty years of peace, we have to-day a high rate of exchange, an enormous national debt, heavy taxation, customs which crush all industry and commerce, and, what is still worse, a cumbrous and costly administration." the Professor maintains that the Chamber of Deputies is not specially to blame for this state of affairs: it is more liberal and more enlightened than the country at large; but thousands of persons are ever struggling to obtain administrative berths, and Deputies are frequently constrained to vote expensive public works merely to provide for their clamorous supporters. The State is founded on a radically unjust and undemocratic basis, and in self-defence is obliged to combat every wide aspiration towards liberty. In other countries religion and authority buttress each other; in Italy they are in constant antagonism. The State has done its utmost to eradicate the Catholic faith of the nation, and so to-day it cannot fall back upon the Church in its need. Professor Nitti points out that not only has the people been deprived of its religious ideal, but it has not even been given material prosperity. Protection has favoured the North at the expense of the South, and, in spite of all Luzaatti's assurances to the contrary, the present financial year will still show a grave deficit. In spue of this severe indictment of his country, Nitti is no pessimist. He believes in United Italy, and in the House of Savoy; he pleads for no persecution, whether of Catholic or Socialist, but for a large retrenchment of unproductive expenditure in public works, and he urges fiscal reform, the abolition of the hated Dazio, a wide scheme of decentralisation, and the abandonment of vain dreams of national aggrandisement.

"Gentleman's" for August is very readable. Macaulay's ancestors are traced by W. C. Mackenzie to the Norse clan of that name in Lewis, and are shown to be "a fighting, a writing, a preaching, and a political stock." One whom Macaulay hated intensely, John Wilson Croker, is set in a more favourable light by P. A. Sillard. A concise and chatty history of Oxford is given by Mr. C. J. M. Allen. Mr. Henry Attwell tells the story of the French epigrammatist Chamfort, with many of his most striking apothegms. T. S. O. attempts a bold bit of Browningesque, entitled "Victory," purporting to be "by the heroine of Browning's poem, 'The Worst of It.' "F. G. Walters' "Tudor Garden" is a pleasant piece of writing. Mr. Pendleton engages in a seasonable chat about railway passengers and tunnels, and wonders why, with so many contrivances for improving railway travel, nothing effective has been done to ventilate tunnels. Mr. Arthur Smith's "Brain Power of Plants" requires special notice.

"Macmillan's" for August has a pleasant sketch by H. C. Macdowall of the character and career of the historian Michelet.