storative to turn to the naturalness, the honesty, and the simplicity of Miss Ménie Muriel Dowie's Gallia, Miss Ella D'Arcy's Monochromes, and Mr. Kenneth Grahame's Golden Age.
Of Miss D'Arcy's book I will leave the would-be winners of my prize full liberty to say what they like; only, they must say this: that the book gives its author at once a place among the three masters (indulge the gender), the three masters of the short-story form at present working in the English tongue; and they must add that Miss D'Arcy is by no means the smallest of the three, and that she does not in the least resemble either of the other two.
Again, of Mr. Grahame's book, say what you will; but be careful also to say that a more melodious or mellow book you have seldom read. Dwell upon the sweetness of the book's voice, the tenderness of its humour; dwell upon its pathos, its sympathy, its imagination; upon the rich golden glow it has, which is like a second justification of its title.
In Gallia, I own, I suffered one disappointment—nay, I suffered two. First, I was all along haunted by a suspicion that the book had a moral, that it had a purpose, that it was intended, in some measure, as a tract for the times, and not as a mere frank effort in the art of fiction. And secondly, I missed that brilliant personal note, that vibration of the author's living voice, which had delighted me in the Girl in the Karpathians, and (still more) in the marvellously clever and vivid little drama, Wladislaw's Advent, which you, sir, published some time back in the Yellow Book. But, all the same, though I could have wished Miss Dowie to come nearer to the front in proper person, I enjoyed reading Gallia as I have rarely enjoyed reading a latter-day English novel. The style, if severely impersonal, is sincere, direct, effective; the story is new and interesting, the central idea, the motive, being
