Having read Mr. REGINALD BLUNT'S book, _In Cheyne Walk and Thereabout_ (MILLS AND BOON), I am now prepared to pass an examination in the history and the worthies (or unworthies) of Chelsea. I know that DON SALTERO was no Spaniard, but an ardent collector of childish curiosities who for a time kept a coffee-house and a smoking club of which "the ornaments and apparatus" were eventually offered to CHARLES LAMB. If I am asked about Dr. MESSENGER MONSEY I shall say that he "tried hard, but with indifferent success, to popularise his own method of extracting teeth by tying one end of a piece of catgut to the offending molar and the other to a perforated bullet, putting the latter with a full charge of powder into a revolver and then pulling the trigger." Then again there is BARTHOLOMEW JOSEPH ALEXANDER DE DOMINICETI, Lord DE CETE ET DE CORTESI, Knight of the Holy Boman Empire and Noble of Venice in terra firma. How did he with his resounding name come to be in Chelsea and there establish "baths, fumigatory stoves and sweating chambers" for the relief of distressed humanity? This question and a hundred others of a similar nature you will find answered in Mr. BLUNT'S delightful book. Let Mr. BLUNT take you by the hand and guide you through his beloved Chelsea. He is the most urbane and the most agreeably gossiping companion. He will re-introduce you to Sir THOMAS MORE, Sir HANS SLOANE; to NEILD, the prison-reformer, and his son JOHN, the famous miser; to the CARLYLES and their servant JESSIE HEDDLESTONE, and a host of others. And he will remind you that Dr. JOHNSON endeavoured to manufacture Chelsea china, and that his _chefs d'oeuvre_ always collapsed in the firing. Take my advice and acquire Mr. BLUNT'S book.
I suspect that _Mr. Simpson_, who gives his name to the story _Simpson_ (METHUEN), can hardly have shared my own exhausting acquaintance with modern fiction, otherwise it is unlikely that he would have behaved as he did. What happened was this. _Simpson_, though on the wrong side of forty, well off and eminently lovable, was unmarried. Finding a charming old house in the country, he conceives the idea of renting it as a kind of bachelor residential club where he and other congenial cronies can enjoy the life of ease untroubled by any form of feminism. Well, that, to start with, one might fairly describe as "asking for it." But when I add that the old house in question was the property of a still young and charming widow you will probably agree with me that poor _Simpson_ hadn't even a dog's chance from the beginning. It is possible that this fore-dooming may a little spoil your enjoyment of Miss ELINOR MORDAUNT'S otherwise pleasant tale. Naturally, so far from women being banished from its pages, they simply abound; and the tale of the progress of the bachelor club resolves itself into a chronicle of proposals. There is however an attractive variety about the love affairs, of which I liked best that of the youngest couple. With two there is a note of tragedy; and though the courtship of _Gilbert Strong_, a respectable country lawyer, and the wild gipsy whom he marries may strike you as fantastic, the end of their romance is well told with a fine suggestion of inevitability. On the whole an agreeable and easy-going tale, though without any unusual claim to distinction.