To the number of these Miss Manning's book has added many. She teaches others to love her heroes because she loved them herself. Erasmus and More and Holbein, Gunnel and Clement, Will Roper and faithful Patteson, she knew as if she had lived among them. These, and such as these, are the characters of whom she so skilfully drew portraits which were much more than the fictions of imagination. She wrote from a considerable knowledge of the literature of the time, and with a genuine love of all things beautiful and good. In her style she imitated the quaintness of old English without any precise restriction to the period of Henry VIII.; and in the same way the vocabulary and the spelling which she adopted were not claimed by her as minutely accurate. Over her book and her characters I would gladly linger. But the first speaks for itself, and my office is only to direct readers to it; and for the characters, what I can say is said in my own Life of the great Chancellor and Saint himself, the father of the gentle Margaret whom Miss Manning so happily drew. But there is a special feature in this reprint of which I must needs say a word. Mr. Herbert Railton and Mr. John Jellicoe show that they too are skilled in the drawing of imaginary portraits--that they have seen More's house as indeed we think it must have been, and his family in their habits as they lived. As the barge brings us past old London Bridge to the Chelsea stairs, the mansion of the Chancellor stands before us in the warm sun as when Ellis Heywood saw it three centuries and a half ago. The children play in the garden, the Jew tells his story, the peacocks flaunt their gay colours, and More reads his old books and cracks his jests, as if the old time had come back again. Bright pictures indeed, and a worthy setting; and the old story is told anew as More himself and Holbein might have loved to think of it. But good wines need no bush, and good pictures no prologue. W. H. HUTTON. THE GREAT HOUSE, BURFORD, _July 9, 1895_. THE HOUSEHOLD OF SIR THO^[.S] MORE [Illustration: THE HOUSEHOLD OF SIR THO^[.S] MORE] _Chelsea, June 18th._ On asking Mr. _Gunnel_ to what Use I should put this fayr _Libellus_, he did suggest my making it a Kinde of family Register, wherein to note the more important of our domestick Passages, whether of Joy or Griefe--my Father's Journies and Absences--the Visits of learned Men, theire notable Sayings, etc. "You are ready at the Pen, Mistress _Margaret_," he was pleased to say; "and I woulde humblie advise your journalling in the same fearless Manner in the which you framed that Letter which soe well pleased the _Bishop of Exeter_, that he sent you a Portugal Piece. 'Twill be well to write it in English, which 'tis expedient for you not altogether to negleckt, even for the more honourable Latin." Methinks I am close upon Womanhood.... "Humblie advise," quotha! to me, that have so oft humblie sued for his Pardon, and sometimes in vayn!