fession, and bade
him be content thenceforward with home life. Idle or inactive of course
a man of prime mental and bodily vigor could not be. The violoncello,
farming, volunteering, magistrate's work, getting up laborers'
reading-rooms and organizing Sunday evening classes for the big boys in
his village, gave outlets enough for his superfluous energies. And
meanwhile he was now become a pater-familias, and had boys of his own to
send to Rugby, and to encourage and advise in their school-life by
letters which--and it is paying them a high compliment to say so--are
almost as good as those which his father had, thirty years before,
addressed to him at the same place. It is impossible to overestimate the
advantage to a school-boy of having a father who can appreciate and
sympathize with boyish thoughts and aims, and knows how to use his
natural mentorship wisely. We shall be much surprised if readers do not
find the letters from George's father to him, and his to his own boys,
among the most attractive parts of this book. Like most men who care
heartily for anything, George Hughes always continued to feel a strong
interest in public affairs, though circumstances had "counted him out of
that crowd" who do the outside working of them. He had a considerable
gift of rhyming, and that incident of the ex-prince imperial's "baptism
of fire" with which the late Franco-Prussian war opened drew from him
some vigorously indignant lines. Here are a few of them:

By! baby Bunting,
Daddy's gone a-hunting,
Bath of human blood to win,
To float his baby Bunting in,
By, baby Bunting,

What means this hunting?
Listen, baby Bunting--
Wounds--that you may sleep at ease,
Death--that you may reign in peace,
Sweet baby Bunting.

Yes, baby Bunting!
Jolly fun is hunting.
Jacques in front shall bleed and toil,
You in safety gorge the spoil,
Sweet baby Bunting.

Perpend, my small friend,
After all this hunting,
When the train at last moves on,
Daddy's gingerbread _salon_
May get a shunting.

It is not our place here to do more than record how that suddenly, in
the early summer of last year, the true strong man was struck down by
inflammation of the lungs and passed away. What the loss must be to all
whom his influence touched the pages before us sufficiently attest. It
is perhaps well, though, that no