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THE NOVEL OF INCIDENT

tiguing, and half a hundred border closely on the burlesque. Chaka, "a Napoleon and Tiberius in one," reminds the irreverent reader irresistibly of the Queen in Alice in Wonderland, who is all the time saying, "Off with his head!" and ordering everybody to execution; the only difference being that the Queen's victims turn up blandly in the next chapter, and Chaka's never reappear. He it is who slays Unandi his mother, Baleka his wife, all his children save one, all his enemies, and most of his friends. Then his turn comes—and none too soon—to be murdered, and Dingaan his brother, "who had the fierce heart of Chaka without its greatness," sets to work systematically to kill everybody who chances to be left. By the time he, too, is flung over the cliff to die, Mopo and Umslopogaas alone survive; the first because he has to tell the tale—after which he promptly expires—and the second because he has already been slain in battle during the progress of another story. The most curious thing about this wholesale devastation is that Mr. Haggard apparently deplores it as much as the rest of us. "It