A Water biography. By Robert C. Leslie. Illustrated by the
author. (Chapman and Hall.)—In this brightly written volume Mr. Leslie, who is a boating man and artist, relates the experience of a long life in so far as that life has been spent upon the 'water. In his youthful days he was a Royal Academy student, and later on he exhibited at the Academy, boats and water being the subjects selected for his art. When a boy Turner gave him "an early lesson in seamanship," and sixteen years later be praised one of his pictures, saying, "I like your colour." Twelve years were spent by Mr. Leslie at Sidmouth, when he built a small boat for himself, the doings of which are enthusiastically described. When the time came to leave the Devonshire coast, he built a craft of thirty-six tons as a conveyance for his family. " We might perhaps have effected an escape by other means," he says, "but they did not occur to us, or we wanted the energy to use them." We cannot follow Mr. Leslie in his exploits as a eailor, which were sometimes not a little perilous. It must suffice to say that the book "drawn from life," and written with a fresh- ness which savours of the sea, will amuse landsmen as well as nautical readers. The author dedicates it to his wife "in affec- tionate remembrance of many days of self-denial spent at sea with me."
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