deal with the mechanics of the nation.

These may be fruitless speculations now, and Mr. Bullock wisely leaves
us to draw our own conclusions as to the eminence to which Thomas
Andrews might have attained had his life been spared. Abundant proof of
the immense influence he might have exercised is furnished in the
eloquently sincere grief which pervades the letters of condolence that
poured into the home of the parents at Comber when it was known that
they had lost their distinguished son. They came--over seven hundred of
them--from all sorts and conditions of men, ranging from a duke to a
pauper in a workhouse. In one of these letters, too intimate to publish,
a near relative pays to the dead shipbuilder a pathetically simple
tribute with which I may well leave to the reader Mr Bullock's tale of a
noble life and heroic death. "There is not," ran this fine epitaph, "a
better boy in heaven."

HORACE PLUNKETT.

THOMAS ANDREWS SHIPBUILDER

I.

For six generations the Andrews family has been prominent in the life of
Comber: that historic and prospering village, near Strangford Lough, on
the road from Belfast to Downpatrick: and in almost every generation
some one or other of the family has attained distinction. During the
eventful times of 1779-82, John Andrews raised and commanded a company
of Volunteers, in which his youngest son, James, served as Lieutenant.
Later, another John Andrews was High Sheriff of Down in 1857; and he
also it was who founded the firm of John Andrews & Co., which to-day
gives employment to some six hundred of the villagers. The present head
of the family, William Drennan Andrews, LL.D., was a Judge of the High
Court, Ireland, from 1882, and has been a Privy Councillor since 1897.
His brother, Thomas Andrews, is a man whose outstanding merits and
sterling character have won him an honoured place among Ulstermen. One
of the famous Recess Committee of 1895, he is President of the Ulster
Liberal Unionist Association, Chairman of the Belfast and County Down
Railway Company, a Privy Councillor, a Deputy Lieutenant of Down, High
Sheriff of the same county, and Chairman of its County Council. Two more
brothers, James and John, were Justices of the Peace. In 1870 Thomas
Andrews married Eliza Pirrie, a descendant of the Scotch Hamiltons, Lord
Pirrie's sister, and herself a woman of the noblest type.

To these, and of such excellent stock, was bo