Those who love to fasten on the Victorians' charges of
starchiness, prudery and want of self-liberation might try, as an antidote to their trouble, liberal doses of The Hardman, Papers (Constable, 21s.), of which a third instalment now appears to increase the gaiety of the world. Here is a full- blooded man of the world, overflowing with the joy of life, relishing and detailing the most Rabelaisian of stories (the book is full of them), going everywhere, and meeting or hearing about everyone that mattered, and then sitting down to write about it all with the liveliest of pens, and not a particle of restraint, to an intimate correspondent in Australia. Such was Sir William Hardman, Chairman of the Surrey Bench of Magistrates, and later editor of the Morning Post. Among his numerous friends were counted Meredith, Shirley Brooks, who edited Punch, Cotter Morison, and John Morley, and with them, during the years 1865-8, Hardman chatted on law, polities (including Mr. Gladstone's pepperiness and Dizzy's artful quips), letters, religion, Fenian outrages, the stage and the Boat Race, which Oxford was always winning. Time rolls on its revenges, for Hardman, a Cambridge man, mournfully laments that " our men are trained in a bad school." The book is throughout entertaining in the highest degree—perhaps it appeals more to the manly palate—and is lucidly and usefully edited by Mr. S. M. Ellis.
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