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Charterhouse may easily fall under the ban, and few will believe the Board of Education are fair judges of efficiency. The strength of England in the past has been that she has had schools and universities of many types. Thus we have found men who could perform the widely differing duties imposed by the governance of a large empire. If the ambition of the Board of Education be not checked we shall all be shaped and inspected to a single pattern. We shall all learn the same thing at the same hour, and be fit only to obey the unreasonable behests of a nicely engineered majority. We shall think alike and act alike, and instead of going and coming freely as we please, we shall be packed into whitewashed buildings provided by the Government, and there shall sit, like Peter Bell's party, "all silent silent and all damned."

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The Memoirs of William Hickey,' of which a second volume has just been published (London: Hurst & Blackett), deserve more careful editing than they have received. We have a right to be told something more about their ingenious author than the editor has told us. We have a right to ask precise questions about the manuscript, whose pedigree apparently goes back only to 1865, and to see a specimen reproduced in facsimile.

As it is, an air of mystery per

vades the book, and a little explanation might have dispelled it. However, we must e'en take it as it comes, and admit that William Hickey was an engaging ruffian, who has earned our gratitude by painting a portrait of himself in which nothing is sacrificed to diffidence or modesty.

He wrote his memoirs long after the events which they chronicle, and they lack the precision of a journal kept from day to day. Otherwise we might describe Hickey as a Pepys of the eighteenth century. He has something of Pepys's candour and Pepys's lack of self-consciousness. He gives himself away with the same light-heartedness wherewith he gives away his friends. His standard of honour is not high, and he makes no pretence that he is any better than he is. He steals money from his respectable father, a friend of Burke, and the "blunt, pleasant creature" of Goldsmith's 'Retaliation,' as gladly as he robs his friend of his mistress. Throughout his life he kept the worst of good company, and was most intimately at home in the taverns and gambling-hells of London. Drury Lane was his favourite quarter, though in later years he did not disdain the masquerades which Mme. Cornelys arranged in Soho Square. And though, when he chose his own companions, they were rather cheerful than wise, fortune threw him continually among the great. His book contains sketches - the more valuable

perhaps because they appear select the companions of his to be drawn without intention revels. If we may believe -of Burke and Francis and Hickey, Henry Mordaunt, my Warren Hastings, and many Lord Peterborough's brother, another distinguished or neto- was an unredeemed scoundrel, rious statesman, And Hickey mad, brutal, and unscrupulous; is no hero-worshipper. He yet Hickey, who hated him, bends the knee to nebody. could no more easily avoid his Whoever it be that crosses his society than Mordaunt could path, he meets him upon equal avoid the society of Hickey, terms, and keeps himself in- whom he cordially detested, and genuously in the centre of the who at last carried off from picture, as though he was him the beautiful Charlotte rather conferring than accept- Barry. Truly, the bottle which ing a favour. He has all the makes odd companions never lighter vices. He is raffish, brought together an odder rowdy, extravagant, unscrup- couple than William Hickey ulous in money and in love, and Henry Mordaunt. and yet he defies the censor in his book as he defied most censors, except that "special attorney," his father, during his life.

challenge.

It is characteristic of him that, as he sat down in middle age to compose his 'Memoirs,' he remembered with the greatest pride and vividness his triumphs with the bottle. Never once he unresponsive to the He would drink with any one who was ready to sit late and to drink deep. In his hot youth champagne and burgundy seem to have caught his palate. Grown to manhood, he preferred claret, and if we numbered the bottles which he says that he drank in his second volume, the result would be astonishing. If he falls in the encounter, he confesses defeat like a man. He speaks almost as tenderly of the headaches, the proper consequence of his debauches, as of the debauches themselves. Nor is he careful always to

In the second volume of his 'Memoirs' Hickey carries his reader abroad with him to the West and East Indies. And if he changes his sky he does not change his mind. The hottest climate neither checks his zest of life nor moderates his appetites. The pursuit of law, which seems in India to have been profitable enough, was but an interlude in his life of busy amusement. And yet he finds time to paint, after his summary fashion, the great men whom he encountered. He speaks familiarly of Hastings and Impey. He agrees with the rest of the world that Francis was a pompous fellow, the more readily because he replied to Burke's letter of introduction that the idea "of his ever having it in his power to be useful to an attorney was ridiculous; and he notes with pleasure the litigation in which Francis was involved with George Francis Grand, the husband of a famous lady, to

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whom Francis was attached, India, where he hoped that pleasure and the rupee would still await him. So we look forward to a third volume of these entertaining 'Memoirs' with ouriosity, and our debt to the editor will be increased if, as we have suggested, he describe more clearly the history of the manuscript and throw a little more light upon the life and character of its author.

and whom Talleyrand presently married by order of Napoleon. Yet he never takes us very far or very deep into affairs of State, which are, in his eyes, mere interruptions to the proper business of life. No sooner had he made a comfortable sum of money than he hastened home to spend it in London, and he takes leave of us at Lisbon, on his way back to

Printed by William Blackwood ana Sons.

This is the Original Edition printed in Edinburgh and issued in America by authority of the Publishers.

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THREE YEARS

From September 3, 1914 to September 3, 1917

By BARR FERREE

A chronological survey of the bombardment of Reims from September 3, 1914 to September 3, 1917, giving the details of the bombardment day by day for the entire period of the siege. This is the first book in any language dealing with the bombardment of Reims in its entirety, and presents a remarkable picture of daily life at Reims under the shells.

The book includes a general introduction on the bombardment, a sketch of the history of the cathedral, churches and other notable buildings, and a history of the destruction of the cathedral and other important structures in Reims.

Price, post-paid, $2.00

LEONARD SCOTT PUBLICATION COMPANY

249 West 13th Street, New York

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