It must, I should think, be exceedingly difficult to find a new title in these days for a volume of reminiscences.  Mr. RAYMOND BLATHWAYT seems to have solved the problem happily enough by calling his contribution to the rapidly-increasing library of recollections, Through Life and Round the World (ALLEN).  One way and another, first as a curate (rightly termed by the publishers “rather unconventional"), later as journalist, Mr. BLATHWAYT has contrived to use a pair of remarkably open eyes with excellent effect.  The result is this fat volume, whose contents, if honesty constrains me to call the most of them gossip, are at least generally entertaining and never ill-natured.  Needless to say, Mr. BLATHWAYT, like the elder Capulet, can “tell a tale such as will please.”  For myself, out of a goodly store, I should select for first honours a repartee, new to me, of Sir HERBERT TREE (forgive this dropping into rhyme!).  It tells of a boastful old-time actor, vaunting his triumphs as Hamlet, when “the audience took fifteen minutes leaving the theatre.” “Was ha lame?” If our only HERBERT did not in fact make this reply, I can only hope that he will at once hasten home and do so.  But while we are upon Mr. BLATHWAYT’S dramatic recollections, I must respectfully traverse his dictum that some of the acting at the local pageants of a few years back “surpassed the very best I have seen upon the stage.”  As one who took a personal part in many of those well-meant revivals, and dates a relaxed throat from the effort of vociferating history, up-wind, towards a stand full of ear-straining auditors, I bow but remain unconvinced.

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Although the literary style of Mr. JULIUS M. PRICE, of The Illustrated London News, is too breezy for my taste, I am glad to have read his Six Months on the Italian Front (CHAPMAN AND HALL).  Possibly he under-estimates our appreciation of Italy’s share in the War’s burden, but his account of the conditions prevailing upon the Italian front, and of the courage and skill with which they have been overcome, deserves our undiluted approval.  It is difficult to believe that anyone who is not at least a member of the Alpine Club can dimly realise the engineering feats which the Italian soldiers have performed.  Mr. PRICE has been given many opportunities of observation, and where none was given to him he has contrived to make them for himself.  And the result is a book full of incident and excitement.  I hope that he will pardon me when I add that my sense of gratitude would have been greater if, in addition to the photograph of himself—­or even instead of it—­he had given us a map.  For the rest his illustrations are excellent.

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