you see, the old man had something to worry about.  However, it all turns out to be, in fact, mere illusion, developing into a fatal monomania, and the family business is left to be carried on by such of the next generation as have not been convinced by the formidable array of evidence, anti-Theistic and anti-Christian, of two of the characters (who, it is clear, have sedulously read the same books). Sebastian loses his faith apparently because he has been distressed by the sight of a wounded horse in the great War, as if it were necessary to wait for the great War for this kind of a difficulty!  A certain rough earnestness lies beneath this rather crude presentment of a world-old problem.  But I wonder how much of the honest patriotism which fills the book would survive a rationalism as perverse and shallow as Mr. SWIFT applies to traditional faiths.  Does he imagine they have no better defences than those which he puts into the weak mouth of silly Mr. Teanby, the parson?

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The arrangement of Lady POORE’S new volume of recollections, An Admiral’s Wife in the Making (SMITH, ELDER), reminded me quaintly of certain romances familiar to my boyhood, in which the fortunes of the hero were traced from cadetship in aspiring sequence.  Because, of course, this is exactly what happens to the hero of the present book; the chief difference being that he himself makes only a brief personal appearance therein (though the chapters in question, formed from letters and diaries of Commander POORE during the Nile Expedition of ’85, are by no means the least interesting part of the volume).  For the rest, one might perhaps call it a draught of Naval small beer, but a very sparkling beverage and served with a highly attractive head upon it.  To drop metaphor, Lady POORE has brought together a most entertaining collection of breezy reminiscences of life ashore and on the ocean wave.  There is matter to suit all tastes, from her recollections of economies in a furnished villa at Parame, where chickens were to be bought for thirty-two sous, to more exalted anecdotes connected with the time when her hero had been advanced as far as the post of Commander of the Royal Yacht Victoria and Albert.  It is all kindly gossip, not ill suited to the best-tempered service in the world.  Especially did I like Lady POORE’S gently maternal attitude towards the many junior officers who figure very attractively in her pages (e.g. the jovial pic-nic party in the Blue Mountains, who slaked their thirst from the Government rain-gauge, and thereby disorganised the meteorological records of Jamaica).  Certainly the book could not have appeared in times more apt to give it a hearty welcome.

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