Mr. Helps tells us that the tender-heartedness which pervaded Mr. Brassey's character was never more manifested than on the occasion of any illness of his friends. At the busiest period of his life he would travel hundreds of miles to be at the bedside of a sick or dying friend. In his turn he experienced, in his own last illness, similar manifestations of affectionate solicitude. Many of the persons, we are told, who had served him in foreign countries and at home, came from great distances solely for the chance of seeing once more their old master whom they loved so much. They were men of all classes, humble navvies as well as trusted agents. They would not intrude upon his illness, but would wait for hours in the hall, in the hope of seeing him borne to his carriage, and getting a shake of the hand or a sign of friendly recognition. "The world," remarks Mr. Helps, "is after all not so ungrateful as it is sometimes supposed to be; those who deserve to be loved generally are loved, having elicited the faculty of loving which exists to a great extent in all of us." "Mr. Brassey," we are told, "had ever been a very religious man. His religion was of that kind which most of us would desire for ourselves-- utterly undisturbed by doubts of any sort, entirely tolerant, not built upon small or even upon great differences of belief. He clung resolutely and with entire hopefulness to that creed, and abode by that form of worship, in which he had been brought up as a child." The religious element in his character was no doubt strong, and lay at the root of his tender-heartedness and his charity as well as of the calm resignation with which he met disaster, and his indifference to gain. At the time of a great panic, when things were at the worst, he only said: "Never mind, we must be content with a little less, that is all." This was when he supposed himself to have lost a million. The duty of religious inquiry, which he could not perform himself, he would no doubt have recognised in those to whose lot it falls to give their fellow-men assurance of religious truth. Mr. Brassey's wife said of him that "he was a most unworldly man." This may seem a strange thing to say of a great contractor and a millionaire. Yet, in the highest sense, it was true. Mr. Brassey was not a monk; his life was passed in the world, and in the world's most engrossing, and, as it proves in too many cases, most contaminating business. Yet, if the picture of him presented to us be true, he kept himself "unspotted from the world." His character is reflected in the portrait which forms the frontispiece to the biography, and on which those who pursue his calling will do well sometimes to look. A WIREPULLER OF KINGS. [Footnote: Memoirs of Baron Stockmar. By his son, Baron E. Von Stockmar. Translated from the German by G. A. M. Edited by F. Max Muller. In two volumes. London: Longman's, Green and Co.]