Neariv a Hundred Years Ago. By Annie R. Butler. (S.
W. Partridge and Co. is. net.)—Miss Butler tells the life-story of her father, Thomas Butler. He was left at twenty-one with a heavy charge by his father's premature death. One immediate necessity was the sale of his father's collection of books. Then there was the problem of earning his own living. His pre- possession was for the ministry, and he went so far as to enter at Cambridge as a "ten years' man." But circumstances hindered, and he found his vocation in the British Museum Library. After some temporary work he became in 1837 permanent assistant in the secretary's department. He left the Museum with a pension forty-one years later, and survived his superannuation for sixteen years, dying in his ninety-eighth year. It is a singularly pleasing rtiteerd that we have in this volume. No one Amid be more devoted to his official work, and no one more eager to take every oppor- tunity of doing service to his fellows outside his occupation. He was a good man, as he came of a good stock. Of this same stock, Thomas Butler's ancestors and collaterals, we are told something Well worth hearing.
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