... A LITERARY LETTER The Biography of Disraeli. London, May 23, 1916. It would seem that a kind of confession album which is really called the Strangers' Book is kept at Raby Castle, near Darlington, and through the kindness of the Lord Barnard I am able to re produce a strip from it showing the signature of Mr. Disraeli, who, it will be noted, enters his profession as patriotism. Under the ...

... LITERATURE Some New Books of the Season. Lnrd Strathcona I know not if it be more difficult for a rich man to go through the eye of a needle than enter Heaven, but this I do know-- the world would have it so. People are pretty nearly equally divided into two kinds-- the kind which believes that no rich man is honest, and the one which likes to fancy that he is so for the simple reason that he ...

... A LITERARY LETTER The Latest Anthology of Poetry. London, February 3, 1919. In years gone by THE SPHERE has been very successful on the few occasions when it has appealed for funds for the preservation of literary associations dear to many. It was, for example, a paragraph in this Letter which called the attention of Mr. Cecil Harmsworth, now the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, ...

... A LITERARY LETTER on Shelley. London, July 2, 1917. One of the melan- choly, but nevertheless very in teresting, features of London life is that of the men and women of varied accomplish ments whom one meets now and again as the years roll on, receive a hearty handshake, and then they disappear from one's ken for a period. Among pleasant memories of this kind I must include Mr. and Mrs. ...

... LITERATURE Some New Books of the Day. On thj Eaves of the World Under the title of On the Eaves of the World (Edward Arnold) Mr. Reginald Farrer tells in two portly volumes the first half of the story of his travels with a fellow botanist, Mr. Lurdom, through the Kansu-Tibet country bordering on Western China, 1914-15. Their object was to obtain hitherto unknown species of Alpine plants ...

... A LITERARY LETTER A Great Flower Book. October 7. The summer has gone, but my garden still looks very beautiful. I have counted no fewer than thirty separate kinds of flowers in full bloom, the second crop of roses preponderating. There are hollyhocks and asters and golden-rod --but how can I enumerate the wealth of colour that a garden at the end of September still provides for those who love ...

... A LITERARY LETTER Some Shelley Documents. London, December 18, 1916. Mrs. Victor Rickard bears a name that should not be un known to readers of The SPHERE. She is the author of an admirable little book entitled The Story of the Munsters, which has more than once been quoted and its episodes illustrated in this journal-- one of the many picturesque narratives of the war. I have now before me a ...

... A LITERARY LETTER Wanted, Fifty Pounds. London, December 13, 1915. The accompanying letter from Charles Dickens to Thomas Carlyle, printed here in facsimile, has been put into my hands for sale for a good cause. I have offered 5 guineas for it, but shall be disappointed if someone does not offer £50. In any case, it is to go to the highest bidder. The charity for which this money is required ...

... A LITERARY LETTER 1 London, November 8, 1915. My readers will have observed what an extraordinary number of books have appeared of late in which the male author shows an an xiety to give a detailed account of schoolboy days. Time was when there was only one classic of this kind of literature Tom Brown's School days, by Thomas Hughes. Then came Dr. Farrar s Eric, followed long years after by Mr ...

... A LITERARY LETTER I Reminiscences of the Fabian Society. London, September 20, 1915. I give on this page a quaint piece of work by Miss Townsend which was made some five years ago, but is now on exhibition at the galleries of the Medici Society in Grafton Street, London. It represents Mr. Bernard Shaw and Mr. Sidney Webb hammering the world into shape, the Fabian Society having been started ...

... LITERATURE Some New Books of the Hour. A Serious Story No Graven Image, by Hilda P. Cummings (John Murray. 5s. net), is an earnest and painstaking work by a new writer. It will appeal to writers with Anglican sympathies. The story opens at Cambridge, where Dick Everard, a rich young man, an only son, with a distinct gift for literature, discloses to his friend, Philip Manning, that he intends ...

... C7/7Z Life, by J. Middleton Murry (Constable. 5s. net), is scarcely to be recommended as reading for the family circle. The life therein depicted, in spite of the title, seems to be the very opposite of still. The author must not be surprised if he finds that a few, perhaps dull-witted, readers mistake his novel for a study in insanity, only that it would be impossible to gather so many ...