England--the best sketch of the series, because drawn from life and
not from documents. If the author has a fault it is her detached
allusiveness, her flattering but mystifying assumption that one can
follow all her references, and her rather mannered idiom: "He proved a
kind husband, but sadly a tiresome." These, however, be trifles. Read
this pleasant book, I beg you, and send it on to your own Joan.

* * * * *

I have read with deep interest and appreciation and with a mournful
pleasure the _Letters of Arthur George Heath_ (BLACKWELL, Oxford). It
is the record, in a series of letters mostly written to his parents,
of the short fighting life of a singularly brave and devoted man.
There is in addition a beautiful memoir by Professor GILBERT MURRAY,
whose privilege it was to be ARTHUR HEATH'S friend. HEATH was not
vowed to fighting from his boyhood onward. He was a brilliant scholar
and afterwards a fellow of New College, Oxford. The photograph of him
shows a very delicate and refined face, and his letters bear out
the warrant of his face and prove that it was a true index to his
character. Until the great summons came one might have set him down
as destined to lead a quiet life amid the congenial surroundings of
Oxford, but we know now that the real stuff of him was strong and
stern. He joined the army a day or two after the outbreak of war,
being assured that our cause was just and one that deserved to be
fought for. He had no illusions as to the risk he ran, but that didn't
weigh with him for a moment. On July 11th, 1915, he writes to his
mother from the Western Front: "Will you at least try, if I am killed,
not to let the things I have loved cause you pain, but rather to get
increased enjoyment from the Sussex Downs or from Janie (his youngest
sister) singing Folk Songs, because I have found such joy in them,