To-day we present an extract from Rhoda Broughton's 1902 novel Lavinia, a work which we at least find more entertaining than anything of Austen or Eliot (can there be any one who has actually enjoyed the nevertheless so influential Chapter Forty-Two of Daniel Deronda from beginning to end?):

"That is unanswerable," says Lavinia, blushing even before the children at this new instance of Féodorovna's monstrous candour; adding, in a not particularly elate key, as her glance takes in a recherché object nearing their little group across the white grass of the still wintry glebe, "Why, here is Féo!"

"They told me your mother was out," says the visitor, as if this were a sufficient explanation for her appearance.

The children greet her with the hospitable warmth which nature and training dictate towards any guest, qua guest, but without the exuberant, confident joy with which they always receive Lavinia. However, they repeat the tale of General Forestier Walker's crime and fate, and add, as peculiarly interesting to their hearer, the name of the presiding judge.

Féodorovna listens with an absence of mind and eye which she does not attempt to disguise.

"I was coming on to you," she says, addressing Lavinia, and turning away with an expression of boredom from her polite little hosts. "I should have asked you to give me luncheon, but since I find you here, it does as well."

Neither in voice nor manner is there any trace of the resentment that Miss Carew is guiltily feeling. Féodorovna never resents. Too well with herself often to perceive a slight, and too self-centred to remember it, Lavinia realizes with relief that all recollection of the peril Miss Prince's shoulders had run at Sir George's all-but ejecting hands has slidden from that fair creature's memory.

"I went to London yesterday," she says, turning her back upon the cocks and hens, and their young patrons, as unworthy to be her audience.

"We saw you drive past," says Phillida, innocently; "you went by the 11.30 train. We were not looking out for you; we were watching Lavy and Rupert. From mother's bedroom we can see right into their garden."

"Can you, indeed?" interposes the voice of Mrs. Darcy, who has come upon the little group unperceived by the short cut from the village. "I am glad you told me, as I shall try for the future to find some better employment for your eyes."

Her voice is quite quiet, and not in the least raised; but the children know that she is annoyed, and so does Lavinia, who, with a flushed cheek and an inward spasm of misgiving, is trying to reconstruct her own and her fiancé's reciprocal attitudes at eleven o'clock of yesterday's forenoon. To them all for once Féodorovna's unconscious and preoccupied egotism brings relief.

"I was telling Lavinia that I went to London yesterday."

"For the day? to buy chiffons? I suppose I shall have to reclothe this ragged regiment soon," looking round ruefully at her still somewhat abashed offspring, and avoiding her friend's eye.

"Chiffons! oh no!" a little contemptuously. "I went up to see the Director-General of the Army Medical Department."

"Indeed! Is he a friend of yours?"

"Oh dear no; I went on business."

"To offer your services as a nurse, I suppose?" replies Mrs. Darcy, as if suggesting an amusing absurdity, and unable to refrain from stealing a look at Lavinia, while her own face sparkles with mischievous mirth.

"Exactly," replies Féodorovna, with her baffling literalness. "I sent up my name, and he saw me almost at once." She pauses.

"And you made your proposal?"

"Yes."

"He accepted it?"

Féodorovna's pale eyes have been meeting those of her interlocutor. They continue to do so, without any shade of confusion or mortification.

"No; he refused it point-blank."

As any possible comment must take the form of an admiring ejaculation addressed to the medical officer in question, Susan bites her lips to ensure her own silence.

"He put me through a perfect catechism of questions," continues Miss Prince, with perfect equanimity. "Had I had any professional training?"

"You haven't, have you?"

"I answered that I hadn't, but that I could very easily acquire some."

"And he?"

"Oh, he smiled, and asked me if I had any natural aptitude."

"Yes?"

"I answered, `None, but that no doubt it would come.'"

The corners of Mrs. Darcy's mouth have got so entirely beyond her control that she can only turn one imploring appeal for help to Lavinia, who advances to the rescue.

"And then?" she asks, with praiseworthy gravity.

"Oh, then he shrugged his shoulders and answered drily, 'I have had three thousand applications from ladies, from duchesses to washerwomen, which I have been obliged to refuse. I am afraid that I must make yours the three thousand and first;' and so he bowed me out."

She ends, her pink self-complacency unimpaired, and both the other women look at her in a wonder not untouched with admiration. Neither of them succeeds in making vocal any expression of regret.

"It is one more instance of the red tapeism that reigns in every department of our military administration," says Miss Prince, not missing the lacking sympathy, and with an accent of melancholy superiority. "Next time I shall know better than to ask for any official recognition." After a slight pause, "It is a bitter disappointment, of course; more acute to me naturally than it could be to any one else."

With this not obscure intimation of the end she had had in view in tendering her services to the troops in South Africa, Féodorovna departs. The two depositaries of her confidence look at each other with faces of unbridled mirth as soon as her long back is turned; but there is more of humorous geniality and less of impartial disgust in the matron's than the maid's.

"Poor thing! I wonder what it feels like to be so great a fool as that!" said Mrs. Darcy, with a sort of lenient curiosity. "I declare that I should like to try for the hundredth part of a minute!"

"She meant to nurse him!" ejaculates Lavinia, with a pregnant smile. "Poor man! If he knew what he had escaped!"

"And now, what next?" asks Susan, spreading out her delicate, hardworking hands, and shaking her head.

"'What next?' as the tadpole said when his tail dropped off!" cries Daphne, pertly - a remark which, calling their parent's attention to the edified and cock-eared interest of her innocents, leads to their instant dispersal and flight over the place towards the pre-luncheon wash-pot, which they hoped to have indefinitely postponed.

Is it the tadpole Mr. Now?

Here is a page from the sixth of our "top twenty books of all time," Carlo Coccioli's The Eye and the Heart, first published in 1952 and in English translation in 1960.

It describes very well a certain kind of youthful life does not it?

Thank you for that, Mr Grew. An enjoyable read.

The ninth book in our list of twenty first-raters is by Wyndham Lewis, and entitled "The Art of Being Ruled." It came out in 1926, and is all about the difference between people who conform to type and those who think for themselves.

Tentatively, I put forward a lot less than a page; an extraordinary and touching excerpt from a letter written to her 12 year old daughter Eudora by Manon Roland the French revolutionary on the eve of her own execution at the hands of the revolutionaries.
' I do not know, my little friend, if it will be given to me to see you or to write to you again.  Remember your mother.  These few words contain all that I can best tell you......Be worthy of your parents, they leave you great examples and if you profit from them, your existence will not be without value.  Adieu beloved child, you whom I have nourished with my milk and whom I would like to penetrate with all my sentiments.  A time will come when you will be able to judge the effort I make at this time not to weaken (at the thought of) your sweet face.  I press you to my breast.  Adieu, my Eudora'
I came across this years ago reading Citizens, Simon Schama's magnum opus on the French Revolution.  A wonderful book.

Murdoch's novel The Sea, the Sea is the tenth in our list of twenty first-raters. It tells of a famous theatrical director who retires to live alone and motorless in a West Country cottage; but before long in a typical Murdoch way his friends and former acquaintances one by one turn up. This page contains one of the author's several intriguing and encouraging descriptions of how appetizing a meal can be conjured up out of how very few and unpromising ingredients in a remote location. Of course everything is tremendously symbolic and philosophical underneath; there are layers upon layers upon layers, and mysteries everywhere.