18 NOVEMBER 1899, Page 8

In Founders of the Empire, by Philip Gibbs (Cassell and

Co., Ss.), we have some storios that have been often told before, and will have to be told often again, for every generation likes a setting of its own for these familiar pictures. King Alfred heads the list ; no one else has been chosen from the pre-Conquest days. We should have been glad to see Harold, and possibly Dunstan. Archbishop Langton is indeed the only ecclesiastic that finds a place in the list. Simon de Montfort represents the Plantagenet period. But surely Edward I., who did more towards conciliating England than any other man, has claims that cannot be lightly set aside. The other names are Drake, Hampden, Blake, Lord Clive, Wolfe, the elder Pitt, Captain Cook, Nelson, and Welling- ton. Certainly it is not easy to dispossess any one of these.