3 JUNE 1899, Page 25

Memories of Half - a - Century. By Richard W. Hiley, D.D. (Long- mans

and Co. 15s.)—Dr. Hiley has written a volume of auto- biography. Probably there are at least a thousand clergymen who might have done the same, and with equal success This sounds like an unfavourable criticism, but it really is not. Very few of the thousand would take the trouble ; these few might easily be hindered by other circumstances. As a matter of fact, the one who perseveres, if he tells his story honestly and without malice—and Dr. Riley does bOth—deserves our thanks What a pity it is that the ancients did not take to this form of authorship I And what an abundance of materials for the historian of the future is being laid up by obliging people who take the trouble of writing what every one knows now, and no one, but for them, would know two centuries hence. Dr. Riley has seen, sometimes near at hand, sometimes at a distance, many interesting people, and his point of view, of course, differs from that of other observers, seeing that every man must have his own. We notice a curious remark about .Sir G. Osborne Morgan. Dr. Riley says that he had at Oxford the reputation of being a Munchausen. He certainly said things, notably about the Welsh Church, which it is hardly possible to suppose him to-have said except in a Munchausean sense.