romantic and thrilling chapters too, for the most part dated in
the decade following the great Anglo-French peace of a century ago.
Probably you couldn't say off-hand what the Black Office was. Let me
whisper. It was, amongst other things, a postal censorship that opened
and perused all letters intended to cross the Channel. With what
natural indignation would you, in July three years ago, have read of
such monstrous activities! Truly, as the authors say, there is some
interest in the comparison of then and now. Of the other stories, my
own favourites would he "The Resurrectionist" and "The Smile on the
Portrait." The first of these is a haunting affair of body-snatching,
or rather of an early escapade of the notorious BURKE, who was
asked to supply a red-haired corpse, and not finding one produced
instead a gentleman who had yet to fulfil the condition precedent
to body-snatching, i.e. who had to be killed first and snatched
afterwards. This is certainly as grim as anything I have met over the
Castellated signature. Beside it, "The Smile on the Portrait," the
tale of a jealous husband who becomes a maniac, is almost soothing.
They had clearly their little worries even a century ago. The CASTLES,
as everybody knows, have always had the trick of adventurous fiction;
_The Black Office, etc._, proves that their hands have lost nothing of
their cunning.

* * * * *

One has heard so often of works of "absorbing interest" that appeared
at "the psychological moment" that one feels a bit squeamish about
applying these phrases even to such a book as Mr. HARRY DE WINDT'S
_Russia as I Know It_ (CHAPMAN AND HALL); but honestly their
appropriateness cannot be denied in view of the author's peculiar
knowledge of the too mysterious country on which interest just now