THE OLD ROOF-TREE.
The Old Roof-Tree: Letters of Ishbel to her Half-Brother, Mark Latimer. (Longmans and Co. 5s. net.)—Something of an intro- duction to tell us the point of view from which " Ishbel " observes the things and persons that she writes about would have been useful. She has something to do, it would seem, with Australia, for she resents the "astounding ignorance" which some people show of that country and its institutions. More than this we find it hard to discover. It would not be profitable to discuss the opinions which she formulates from time to time. These might
be significant if we knew the conditions under which they have come into existence. Still, the book may be read with pleasure. There is some force of expression ; there are fine touches of description; there is a certain originality of thought. One petty criticism we must make, because it touches on a thing which recurs in books of this kind with a quite incomprehensible frequency. Wby is Latin almost invariably misquoted in them
" Post molestum senectutem Nos habebat humus,"
so stand the last two lines of a well-known drinking-song.
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