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 436 NOTICES. u development " which that thought ran through from the first public utterances of the Fellow of Oriel to the last words of the aged Priest of the Oratory/ The Index seems to us very ingeniously planned and skilfully carried out, and we have found it extraordinarily interesting. A. W. P. Hardware. A Novel in four books by Kineton Parkes. T. Fisher Unwin^ London, 1914. 6s. It is not the habit of THE LIBRARY to review contemporary English fiction, but if ever the rule is to be broken, we feel it may be when a pro- fessional bookman makes an essay in that branch of literature, and therefore we are glad to notice ' Hardware/ by Mr. Kineton Parkes, so well-known to many of our readers as a librarian until three years ago. 'Hardware' is the author's sixth novel, and indicates, as did his previous books, that he is clearly of the 'school of Mr. Arnold Bennett and Mr. H. G. Wells the 'Saturation School' as Mr. Henry James calls it. The chapter arrangement and the style of ' Hardware ' prepare us at once for the discovery that Mr. Parkes is endeavouring to do for Birmingham what Mr. Bennett does for the Potteries, and this study of the rise of Birming- ham under Mr. Chamberlain thinly disguised as Mr. Richard Astbury is an interesting bit of civic history. In the consequent social and commercial up- heaval are involved the fortunes of the hero, Thorpe Chatwin, and of Edward Sharp and his