The arrangement of Lady POORE'S new volume of recollections, _An Admiral's Wife in the Making_ (SMITH, ELDER), reminded me quaintly of certain romances familiar to my boyhood, in which the fortunes of the hero were traced from cadetship in aspiring sequence. Because, of course, this is exactly what happens to the hero of the present book; the chief difference being that he himself makes only a brief personal appearance therein (though the chapters in question, formed from letters and diaries of Commander POORE during the Nile Expedition of '85, are by no means the least interesting part of the volume). For the rest, one might perhaps call it a draught of Naval small beer, but a very sparkling beverage and served with a highly attractive head upon it. To drop metaphor, Lady POORE has brought together a most entertaining collection of breezy reminiscences of life ashore and on the ocean wave. There is matter to suit all tastes, from her recollections of economies in a furnished villa at Parame, where chickens were to be bought for thirty-two sous, to more exalted anecdotes connected with the time when her hero had been advanced as far as the post of Commander of the Royal Yacht _Victoria and Albert_. It is all kindly gossip, not ill suited to the best-tempered service in the world. Especially did I like Lady POORE'S gently maternal attitude towards the many junior officers who figure very attractively in her pages (_e.g._ the jovial pic-nic party in the Blue Mountains, who slaked their thirst from the Government rain-gauge, and thereby disorganised the meteorological records of Jamaica). Certainly the book could not have appeared in times more apt to give it a hearty welcome. * * * * *