SOME 1300.KS OF THE WEEK.
[Under this heading we notice such Books of The wools as have not bus reserved for review in other form.] A Country Gentleman of the Nineteenth Century. By F. Awdry. (Warren and Son, Winchester. 7s. 6d. net.)—The "Country Gentleman" is Sir William Heathcote, of Hanley, who may be remembered as having sat for Oxford University, where he suc- ceeded Sir Robert Harry Inglis. He was elected in 1854, and resigned on account of ill-health in 1868. Curiously enough, he had resigned his seat for Hampshire for the same reason some years before, and he survived his second retirement from public life thirteen years. Sir William was a model landlord, an excellent Chairman of Quarter Sessions, and generally all that the "country gentleman" should be, even to a certain splendour about his public appearances,—witness the admiring account given by an American guest (Richard Henry Dana). Perhaps we may quote a few words from a passage whieh appeared in the Spectator (October 18th, 1868) :—" Though a Conservative, he is a Conservative of so high- toned and earnest a character, and so lucid an understanding, that it is impossible to listen to him without respect, and difficult to listen to him without profit. Party feeling has left his mind almost untouched, and of political acrimony he seems never to have heard." The life-story of such a man is not out of date, even though a quarter of a century has passed since he died.
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