21 JANUARY 1911, Page 23

SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.

• [Under this heading ws notice such Books of the week as have net isn► reserved for review in other forms.] A Short History of the Church of England. By the Rev. J. F. Kendall. (A. and C. Black. 7s. 6d. net.)—This is a "beautiful" book, with some really pretty pictures from the Church Pageant.. Of course it is not a history ; how could it be such when seventeen hundred years have to be crowded into about two hundred pages ? Great subjects had better be left alone if they cannot be adequately treated. Epitomes ought to be neutral. Mr. Kendall wishes his readers to place in their "true perspective" the facts which he does not pretend to give. This perspective, to put it briefly, is the minimising of the sixteenth-century changes. If Mr. Kendall

will look again at his biographical dictionary, he will find that the "great Bishop Butler" was at Bristol, not at Gloucester (p. 191).