Not even the most confirmed Gallio can avoid caring for Arthur Stanton—­A Memoir, by the Rt.  Hon. G.W.E.  RUSSELL (LONGMANS), when he has once dipped his mind into the book.  It is the record of a singularly beautiful and beneficent life, lived to the very utmost in the service of God and man, and ruled by a simple and direct religion which constantly forced practice up to the exalted level of precept.  Judged by merely worldly standards of achievement, ARTHUR STANTON’S life could not be considered a success.  He began as curate of St. Alban’s, Holborn, and as curate of St. Alban’s he ended after many years of enthusiastic devotion to humanity.  He was foiled and thwarted by the great ones of the Church, inhibited in one place, suspended in another, and frequently doomed to find a Bishop or a Chaplain-General set, like a lion, across his path.  But nothing could avail to stop him where he found a soul that could be saved or misery that could be relieved.  His congregation, drawn from the slums of Holborn, would have died for him to a man, for they realised with how great an ardour his life was spent in order that he might help them.  His faith was not a mystery kept apart for special occasions, but a daily and hourly influence vivifying his words and directing his actions.  And no man could have enjoyed himself more than this true saint and interpreter of God to man.  His religion was not one of gloom and foreboding, but a cheerful and delightful habit of mind and soul. Tantum religio potuit suadere bonorum. Mr. RUSSELL has done his work with great skill and perfect sympathy, and has produced a book that does honour to himself and to the beloved friend whom it is his privilege to commemorate.

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The many readers of Punch who took a close interest in ALEC JOHNSTON’S letters written “At the Back of the Front” and “At the Front” will be glad to have them in collected form.  The memory of his gallant end—­he was killed in action after the brilliant capture of a salient near Ypres, at the head of his company of Shropshires—­is fresh in all our hearts.  A preface to At the Front (CONSTABLE) contains an appreciation of his high character and soldierly qualities by his friend and fellow-officer, Captain INGRAM, R.A.M.C., D.S.O., M.C., who a few weeks later was himself killed.  It is a fine tribute paid by one true soldier to another.  These letters of ALEC JOHNSTON, as their editor reminds us, “were composed in the brief interludes snatched from hard fighting and hard fatigues.  They never pretended to be more than the gay and cynical banter of one who brought to the perils of life at the Front an incurable habit of humour.  They are typical of that brave spirit, essentially English, that makes light of the worst that fate can send.”

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