The New Year's List of Honours is not very exciting.
On the other hand, there is little to criticize. Lord Derby and Lord Chesterfield are made Knights of the Garter and Lord Lovat a Knight of the Thistle. Lord Aberdeen becomes a Marquis and Lord St. Aldwyn, who has been rendering great help to the Treasury of late, gets an earldom, an honour which is well deserved by this representative of an old and distin- guished West of England family. There are no better public servants than our political squires, and Sir Michael Hicks- Beach is a typical representative of this particular class. Among the Knights we see with no small satisfaction the name of Mr. Henry Newbolt. Sir Henry Newbolt knows how to join a simple and sincere patriotic utterance with a fine vein of English scholarship. His verse stirs the heart of the plain man, and yet is essentially distinguished. No record of gallant deeds is with him ever spoilt either by a pedantic scholarship, by a false quantity, by a slipshod phrase, by a vulgar metaphor, or by that over-emphasis which is the patriotic poet's chief pitfall. Another well-deserved knighthood is that conferred on Mr. Arthur Chapman, the Chairman of the Surrey County Council. Few men have given more unpaid hours to public services than he has.
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