21 SEPTEMBER 1929, Page 23

A worthy man is worthily commemorated in the memoir of

Francis James Chavasse, Bishop of Liverpool by his former chaplain, Canon J. B. Lancelot (Oxford, Blackwell, 10s. 6d.). Dr. Chavasse did a great work as head of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, for eleven years (1889-1900) and as Bishop of Liverpool for twenty-three years. He was definitely Evangelical in his views, but his natural kindness and keen sense of humour made him popular with all parties, and the biographer for- tunately does justice to the Bishop's human qualities. It is interesting to know that in his boyhood Chavasse was thought to be doomed to an invalid's life and that, despite his interrupted education, he got a First in History at Oxford. Ill-health never prevented him from doing two men's work, and he lived to be eighty-one. At Liverpool Chavasse was extremely successful ; the movement for the building of the great new cathedral owed its astonishing success to him, though he had retired just before the first part was consecrated.