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in his ear. The effect was magical. Johnson became at once reconciled, and begged His Highness to dress himself as quickly as possible, and, turning to Basil Tchelichev, who was helping his master, said: "All is well, Basil,'at last all is well for us now. I am so thankful.”

'Johnson whispered to the Grand Duke what the leader of the band of soldiers had said. Basil had not been able to hear distinctly, but he gathered that these soldiers were friends of His Highness, disguised as Bolshevists of the Red Army, who had come to save him. The Grand Duke did not believe this, and smiled sadly at the joy and relief of his friend. He dressed without a word, and as soon as he was ready, they entered the waiting Troika. In the front seat sat the Grand Duke, Johnson, and the leader; behind were the four soldiers. As they drove away, Johnson waved his hand, elated and in the best of spirits, an absolute contrast to His Highness, who waved his last good-bye with a sorrowful smile. He seemed aware of the doom that awaited them.

'Then they disappeared and nothing has been heard of them since.'

OLGA POUTIATINE.

P.S.-A 'Times' Correspondent, writing from Riga on March 24, 1925, reported the death in an aeroplane accident of three high Soviet officials, one of whom was Miasnikoff, 'who carried out various commissions of a most responsible and often most repulsive nature,' including the murder of the Grand Duke Michael.

'Miasnikoff conducted the Grand Duke and Johnson in two motor-cars in an eastward direction, but halted in a forest, where he personally shot Michael, and his attendants murdered Johnson. They had prepared a heap of dry brushwood soaked in petrol and burnt the bodies. Later Miasnikoff fell into temporary disgrace because he headed a so-called Labour opposition against the orthodox Leninists, but after a reconciliation he was restored to his high position.'

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SOME RECENT BOOKS.

Coleridge-Transitions in Literature-Stella Benson-Sea and Jungle-Roman Britain-Miracles of the VirginPetra, Egypt, and Maeterlinck-Elizabeth and the lyrics of her age-The English Pope-Bibles-Mr Yeats-The Red Terror.

IT is easy to believe that in her generous desire to champion a personality, somewhat battered, although possessed of genius and some undeniable charm, Mrs Watson should paint Coleridge in rosier, kindlier colours than he deserved; for poor S. T. C. was pummelled sufficiently by the vicissitudes of life and the critics who came afterwards, to justify the feeling that a little exaggeration on the other side would be only fair-play. The mere fact of his enjoying the hospitality of Dr and Mrs Gillman at Highgate for over eighteen years, while living apart from his wife and family, was enough to invite too many unkindnesses of thought and word. Mrs Watson is the granddaughter of the Gillmans. From her grandmother, who died in 1860, she heard much to the credit of the poet-philosopher, and inherited a number of documents, letters, and fragments of notes, which support the view that Coleridge was not the selfindulgent idler and driveller that generally he had seemed. 'Coleridge at Highgate' (Longmans) is, undoubtedly and naturally, a partial volume; but it explains a few circumstances which may well be accepted. The opium-taking was a necessity due to severe rheumatic agony; in his household ways he was considerate, unselfish, helpful; he endeavoured to work, and did work, more than some of his critics believed. He was not in those days quite the man of shining thought and guidance which Mrs Watson suggests, for his ponderousness grew sometimes terrible, he often lost his way along futile philosophical by-roads, and he could easily forget his good purpose in a verbose dream. Yet is there among our outstanding poets and thinkers-a congress to which S. T. Coleridge rightly belongs-a more pathetic figure than he-helpless often, yet ever well-meaning? For that reason it is well that this gallant and gracious volume should have been written.

Let us confess that in the beginning we felt that Miss M. P. Willcocks, in laying the foundations of her ambitious scheme of 'Between the Old Worlds and the New' (Allen and Unwin), was projecting an unwieldy structure, for she made occasional assumptions which rather begged the question, being, to use her own words, 'lost in the desire to express a vast incomprehensible unity.' Yet soon the excellence of her spirit and argument prevailed, and having regard to the book as a whole, it is to be recognised as a sincere endeavour to realise leading tendencies during a great literary age. Beginning with the impulse to which Goethe, Balzac, and Shelley gave expression in their diverse ways, she proceeds to study the Victorian mind through the works and personalities of Carlyle, George Eliot, Thackeray, Trollope, Dickens, and Tennyson. Browning, the Brontës, and Meredith are regarded by her as rather passengers than producers of the spirit of their times; but there followed the 'wreckers,' Ibsen, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Tchehov, with Anatole France; and, lastly, the doubtful builders' of whom the greatest was Dostoevsky. On the whole, Miss Willcocks makes out a good case, but her judgments are often doubtful, as in the assertion that Byron 'had to be raised out of his grave by industrious journalists at the time of his centenary,' for with authority we can declare that never was there a more spontaneous celebration than that of April 1924. It is rather in the larger ways that her natural bias intervenes. To Thackeray she is unfair, as there is far more in his works than gilded snobbery. While Dickens she represents as too kind to be a true picture. Neither of these men is to be judged by his writings alone; and in his heart as in his life Thackeray assuredly was the finer.

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The fiction fantasies of Miss Stella Benson are not for everybody, as half the world likes its humour to be as plain and unsubtle as the dome of St Paul's on a frosty morning; but it will be a sad, even a sour, mind that cannot extract joy of the most delicious quality from her book of traveller's impressions, The Little World' (Macmillan), in which she has gathered glimpses of man in his importance from the United States to China and Japan. She notices humanity at odd moments, often

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comical and generally picturesque. She has the right mind for making pleasing discernments; and confesses that while one of its compartments is atune with soulstirring impressions, the other is filled with little, curious happenings connected with everything or nothing, with spiders and spaghetti, boarding-house keepers and beetles, puppies and Prime Ministers.' In visiting the Taj Mahal, therefore, while still she was under the spell of its inspiration, she was aware of the beetles, lizards, and tourists that were about it; while Akbar's tomb was thrown out of perspective for her by the gibbons, with grey velvet coats and black earnest faces, which peered out of a tree. This is well; for every globe-trotter may photograph a pyramid, but not every one can see the incidents and accidents which refresh its greatness. The little world is happily full of that sort of thing. Miss Benson affects to be more impressed by the sadness of the cows in India than by the danger from Chinese pirates; and even in Yunnan was not unmindful of Putney. One of her happiest revelations is that of the elephant race in Rajpatana. The animals entirely failed to grasp the theory of the entertainment. In a perfect row they started; in a perfect row they proceeded slowly along the track, pensively waving their trunks to keep one another in step; in a perfect row they breasted the tape together.

The delight that every one not bedridden of mind obtains from books of strenuous travel and adventure is realised again in Mr H. Warington Smyth's 'Sea-Wake and Jungle Trail' (Murray). With him we are out among the baffling waters; sometimes in a bananaskin of a boat,' at other times on active service in African seas, transporting troops and looking after the many material details upon which the success of a campaign depends. The Jungle has comparatively little to do with this volume, though Mr Smyth proves his love of the genus Elephant, and is able to induce his readersfor are not we all converts even before the sermon ?to believe those creatures are playful, affectionate, and, in many respects, even nicely human. Mr Smyth passes from the wild ways of nature among the forests and the waves to tell an episode of his school days at Westminster, The Retardation of the Abbey Clock';

evidently not wholly an imaginary incident, for he
mentions by name persons-such as old, white-bearded
Thomas Wright, the Clerk of the Works-who were
well known at the Abbey thirty years ago. The best
chapters have to do with episodes in boat-sailing. Mr
Smyth has the enthusiasm and the skill to bring out the
magical attractiveness of the waters; and yet we realise
that it is a delight paid for generously with hard work,
self-sacrifice, and a plentiful endurance, moral and
physical, of the buffetings of seas and winds and that
charming old harridan, Dame Fortune. In all the
adventures of which he tells, whether he is racing,
visiting mines and potentates, or serving as a lieutenant
of the R.N.V.R., Mr Smyth comes out successfully.
we should, indeed, like to know how, when standing in
water up to his neck or swimming to recapture his
strayed boat, he could shout, 'Come on, old cockadoodle !'
without losing the cigar in his mouth!

But

That history may be as interesting as good fiction is proved once more by the volume on 'The Last Age of Roman Britain' (Harrap), which Mr Edward Foord has written. If his theories stand the tests to which they are bound to be put, they will fill in valuably the littleknown story of the final departure of the legions. The generally-accepted date for this ultimate retreat from Britain is about 410 A.D.; but after re-reading the sparse documents and considering the probabilities as evidenced by the drift of coinage and the examples found at the stations of the legions, Mr Foord places the actual date some forty years later. He has, of course, to use conjecture to some extent, and thereby offers opportunities to those whose theories he threatens; but his spirit is frank and reasonable-he even finds words of benediction for Carlyle's pet aversion, Dr Dryasdust—and in the course of his theme suggests the stimulating thought that the Angles and the other tribal invaders of the deserted Britain were not positive marauders, but themselves were the forced victims of the pressure of Attila, the scourge of God.' He adds strength to the very probable truth of the existence of Hengist and Horsa, who recently were disestablished by some of the authorities; and makes Arthur, under his Romano-British name, Artorius, a gallant and successful champion of the

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