Butler's reputation will probably rest more and more, as time goes on, on his _Note-books_ and on Mr. Jones's biography, which might be described together as the story of a distrustful man. Indeed, posterity reading these alone, will probably miss little of what it should retain: for Butler was careful of his best things, and most of them are to be found here as well as in the books in which he enshrined them among more perishable material. On the strength of these two books he will remain a definite and unforgettable character, though he may, probably will, recede in importance, perhaps even to the level of those wits whose "table-talk" is read by the curious in every generation. But even so, there he will be still: a man whom fate tortured into such distrust of his fellows as to make him question everything and teach others to do the same. He suffered intensely in the process that made him what he was: he suffered again, much more than he would ever admit, from the ineffaceable results of the process. "I do not deny, however," he bursts out, "that I have been ill-used. I have been used abominably." This cry rings truer, echoes longer in the memory, than the assertion which follows that he considered the balance of good fortune to have been on his side. By one of those contrivances of events with which fate marks the lives of distinguished men, an atmosphere of distrust followed him on to his death-bed and beyond it. For the doctors disagreed during his last illness, and Mr. Festing Jones doubts the accuracy of the causes given in the certificate of death. THE CRYSTAL VASE By MAURICE HEWLETT