BISHOP DIGGLE ON HOME LIFE.* THE Bishop of Carlisle has
written a very plain-spoken and courageous little book. Whether it carries the reader with it or not, it will certainly make him think, and not unfruitfully.
• Home Life. By J. W. niggle, D.D., Bishop of Carlisle. London: Cassell sad Co. [is. Bd. net. j The first four chapters treat of the relations of the sexes. This is a subject which is commonly left to the writer of fiction, who, to say the least, is not always equal to his task. It is no small gain to have the carefully-thought-out judgment of a writer who speaks with authority, and is, if we may use the phrase, "on the side of the angels." The graver questions which Dr. Diggle raises we must pass by ; it is impossible to do justice to them here. One minor matter of no little interest we rhay mention. Our author thinks that the practice known as "walking out" has advantages missed, not a little to their loss, by the classes to which it is, so to speak, impossible. "Walking out," it may be remarked, is not the same as engagement ; it is a preliminary which may or may not have this ending. And it gives opportunities for mutual knowledge which it is well should be given before the engagement is made. In the upper class young men and women for lack of this knowledge take upon themselves obligations or quasi-obligations which cannot be broken without discredit or observed without permanent damage. Incompatibilities of taste and temper reveal themselves when it is too late for a remedy. Possibly if the freedom of social intercourse increases as much in the next half-century as it has done in the last, some modus vivendi in the matter may be discovered. The last four chapters are given to the "Home," as in the first four we are told how it may be rightly constituted. The Bishop is an unques- tioning follower of Solomonic precept in the discipline of children. " Of all punishments for boys," he says frankly, "the least injurious and the most effectual is flogging," though he would commonly limit it to moral offences and to early years. False concords and false quantities used to be thus visited in the days of our grandfathers, and even later; but that is a thing of the past. Obstinate idleness may well be regarded as coming into the class of " moral offences." It is one of the advantages of superior social station that corporal punishment does not degrade. An artisan is much more solicitous than a Duke about the dignity of his child in this matter. All these chapters are full of sound sense, often expressed with much vigour and keenly pointed. Here are some examples :—" The sleeping sickness of ennui" ; "A man without a hobby is like a woman without a needle "; "Roughness is sometimes fun, but rudeness is a vice" ; "Don't try to build a character in a day "; "There need be little solicitude about a child's future if it is daily growing " ; "Some austere people seem to think that virtue cannot be kept white beneath the level of perpetual snow." This is certainly an admirable little book.
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