"Take us at home of a night! The Bishop in an easy chair, with his gaitered legs crossed, and elevated on the back of another, with a short clay pipe in his mouth, is vaguely mixing his eleventh tumbler of hot gin-and-water, causing us girls great pain to conceal our titters, when, as happens very often at this period of the evening, he deposits the greater part of the hot water on the tablecloth or himself. My mother, regardless of him, sits, carefully studying a sporting paper, and the Racing Calendar, and making her selections for the next day's horse-race. For a heavy gambler is my mother, as is my brother, who, when at home--which is seldom--is either delighted at having won, or in the sulks because he has lost money to his fellow legal students at billiards. As a rule he is delighted, and always carries a lump of chalk in his pocket. My sister is writing notes to Men about Town, Peers and Guardsmen, her lovely features only losing their serenity when lit up by an arch look of wonderment whether she has made appointments with two different men at the same hour and place, while I am sitting, in my school-girlish way, by myself, making notes, so as to tell the world some day the true story of my life." Space forbids us to say any more of the merits of this charming work, but we cannot resist one extract which shows how true was the estimate of the Bishop's noble character:-- "We were one night at the Italian opera, of which my father was passionately fond, and during the ballet our attention was drawn to a singularly lovely girl on the stage. 'Alas!' said the Colonel, 'she is as bad as she is beautiful.' The Bishop immediately avowed his readiness to investigate the case at the earliest opportunity. He was always thinking of others, despite Mamma's occasionally stubborn opposition." This concludes our notice. In brief, the book is a most excellent specimen of the modern style of Memoir, conceived with kindliness of heart and charity of remembrance and executed with literary taste, skill and polish. This was fiction, based on what purported to be truth, and in turn was destined to be easily eclipsed by the actual reminiscences of a later generation. It may be noted in this context that the "blazing indiscretions" in the "Life of Bishop Wilberforce," published in 1883, and the letters of protest which they evoked, had already prompted the satire and sympathy of _Punch_. [Illustration: OVERDOING IT "What? Going already? And in Mackintoshes? Surely you are not going to Walk?" "Oh, dear no! Lord Archibald is going to take us to a dear little Slum he's found out near the Minories--such a fearful place! Fourteen poor Things in One Bed, and no Window--and the Mackintoshes are to keep out Infection, you know, and hide one's Diamonds, and all that!"] [Sidenote: _Thought-Reading and Theosophy_]