22 JANUARY 1898, Page 16

CARDINAL WISE MAN.

[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] Sin,—When the Times spoke last month of "The Life and Times of Cardinal Wiseman" as being a very long biography because it contains over twelve hundred pages, I did not think it worth while to point out that the statement was mis- leading. As, however, my kind reviewer in the Spectator has apparently taken it seriously, may I observe that twelve hundred of these pages would amount, on a page of the size used in my father's Life (with which Wiseman's Life has been compared), to less than eight hundred. The one book is crown octavo, with about two hundred and ninety words to. a page ; the other octavo, with four hundred and forty. The- page for "Cardinal Wiseman" was chosen before the necessity had arisen for the additions referred to in the preface ; but even as it stands this biography is not longer, but much shorter, than the other, which consisted of nine hundred and.

forty-nine pages.—I am, Sir, lee., WILFRID WARD.