We fear not to say, the best English story the year 1891 has seen, with the possible exception of one or two tales from the pen of Mr. Thomas Hardy - is as Northern in feeling as it is in subject. This little work is "Elsket," and a man who has read it will forget a good many other things before memory relinquishes the sad and noble figure of the daughter of Olaf of the Mountain, descendant of the Vikings, who was deserted by her false English lover. Doubtless every Anglo-American has Norse blood in his veins, - Olaf held that the Saxons had been boatmen to his ancestors, - and all of Mr. Page's shows itself in this little masterpiece. Not only is Elsket herself a memorable person, but her father, Cnut the avenging lover, and Harold the Fair-Haired, who won poor Elsket's heart, are sufficiently well drawn; and the tale as a whole is told with a clearness and singleness that are remarkable. In nothing is this better shown than in the series of pictures that remain with the reader. The brief introduction of the American coming to the Norwegian town, his long and perilous trip over the mountain with Olaf, and the sight of Elsket coming to meet them, - these are the first impressions. Then comes Olaf's recital of the tragedy; and in the severe narrative one gees the first coming of Harold and his departure, his return and his final going away, and the struggle of Cnut and Harold on the Devil's Seat (like the more famous fighters in The Ring and the Book), when the Fair-Haired is flung down a thousand feet. The American remains long after the pitiful story is told, und is a witness to its conclusion. Elsket sews on her wedding gown; waits for the letter from the young lord, which Olaf crosses the mountain to fetch, knowing that it can never come; then sickens and dies, in Olaf's old log house with the blue pansies covering the roof. "She was dressed like a bride in the bridal dress she had sewn so long; her hair was unbound, and lay about her, fine and silken; and she wore the old silver ornaments she had showed me. No bride had ever a more faithful attendant." Olaf "had put them all upon her."It was an unnecessary rigor, and one that might be stigmatized as romantic, to make Elsket the last of her race; but seldom has the story of a broken heart been told with greater pathos or with a restraint more wise. The North has crystallized Mr. Page's talent.In " 'George Washington's' Last Duel" and "P'laski's Tunament" the author holds out to the reader "a beaker full of the warm South." The former of these pieces in particular is excellent comedy, and Mr. Page may be easily forgiven a redundancy of characters, love - story, ante-bellum society, and frippery of one sort and another, for the captivating presentment of "George Washington.""Run to Seed," too, is keyed rather high, but is yet a terse and admirably told story of a heroism that finds its last expression in death. It has the further merit of showing keenly the condition to which many a good Southern family was brought by the war."A Soldier of the Empire" celebrates an old Frenchman who, in the Franco-Prussian war, was saved the trouble, by a shell from the enemy's camp, of shooting a cowardly son. He himself, after prodigies of valor, died shouting, "Vive la France! Vive 1'Empereur," and fancying himself at Waterloo, in the service of Napoleon the Great, instead of Napoleon the Little. Roman history, not to speak of the works of Mr. John Howard Payne, has exhibited the same motif; and Mr. Page, to tell the truth, has not, in augmenting it, divested it of its associations with the theatre. But again the story is told "con spirito," as they say in the music books, and it was worth telling.