was bred and born a Tory, and I can't help it.'" However, our biographer tells us, "he (George) continued to pay his subscription, and to get his clothes at our tailors' association till it failed, which was more than some of our number did, for the cut was so bad as to put the sternest principles to a severe test. But I could see that this was done out of kindness to me, and not from sympathy with what we were doing." After a few years of law-work in the ecclesiastical courts, the call of a domestic duty took George Hughes--not, one may well imagine, without a severe struggle--from the active practice of his profession, 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.