ow well I remember the summer of 18--, when dear
P---- was staying at F----. I and my wife had a little house in the
neighbourhood. We found it convenient to be able to run down there and
to rest a little after the fatigues of London life. I remember very
well a walk I took with P----. It was the time of the Franco-Prussian
War, and I was full of indignation at the terrible sacrifice of life
which appeared to me to be for no end. I remember pouring out my
thoughts to P----." Here followed a page or two of reflections upon the
barbarity of war. "P---- listened to me with great interest; I cannot
now recall what he said, but I know that it struck me very much at the
time." And so on through many closely written pages.

Well, the editor of the Professor's letters has not done this at all;
he keeps himself entirely in the background. But, after reading the
book, the reflection is borne in upon me that, unless the hero is a
good letter-writer (and the Professor was not), the form of the book
cannot be wholly justified. Most of the letters are, so to speak,
business letters; they are either letters connected with ecclesiastical
politics, or they are letters dealing with technical historical points.
There are many little shrewd and humorous turns occurring in them. But
these should, I think, have been abstracted from their context and
worked into a narrative. The Professor was a man of singular character
and individuality. Besides his enormous erudition, he had a great fund
of sterling common sense, a deep and liberal piety, and a most
inconsequent and, I must add, undignified sense of humour. He carried
almost to a vice the peculiarly English trait of national
character--the extreme dislike of emotional statement, the inability to
speak easily and unaffectedly on matters of strong feeling and tender
concern. I confess that this has a displeasing effect. When one desires
above all things to have a glimpse into his mind, to be reassured as to
his seriousness and piety, it is ten to one that the Professor will, so
to speak, pick up his skirts, and execute a series of clumsy, if comic,
gambols and caracoles in front of you. A sense of humour is a very
valuable thing, especially in a professor of theology; but it should be
of a seemly and pungent type, not the humour of a Merry Andrew. And one
has the painful sense, especially in the most familiar letters of this
collection, that the Professor took an almost puerile pleasure in
tr