towards _Mrs. Delmore_ had not been as correct as that of a seller of
Bibles is reasonably expected to be, especially by people like the author
who don't believe in Bibles. At any rate _Sebastian_, son by the first
marriage, is desperately in love with _Ruby_--so, 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?

* * * * *

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