MR. HARRY JONES'S REMINISCENCES.* EVERY reader who has any knowledge

of what Mr. Harry Jones has done, and is happily still doing, will welcome this pleasant little volume, in which the author relates some of his

• Fifty Years ; or, Dead Leaves and Living Seeds. By the Rev. Harry Jones, M.A. London: Smith, Elder, and Co.

clerical experiences in town and country. That such a record should be egotistical is inevitable; but the egotism contained in it is of a wholly inoffensive kind. It is curious to remember that very much of the story which he tells belongs so entirely

to the day in which we live, that the agencies set on foot, and the good deeds recorded, would have been beyond the reach of the most earnest of clergymen fifty or sixty years ago. Religions and philanthropic work was then left almost wholly to individual effort. A man bent on doing good had to strike

out a path for himself; nowadays, he travels on the King's. highway with friends everywhere to aid him on the road.

Mr. Harry Jones, who has been surrounded by fellow-workers, writes as though the labour of his hands had yielded a fund of pleasure, and we have no doubt that it has. The reader who follows him from the West of London to the East, from the East to an agricultural parish, and thence to St. Philip's, Regent's Street, will see how readily this healthy-minded clergyman found in each position a, vocation and a home. The hopeful spirit which breathes through every page of the volume has doubtless been the fruitful source of many successful labours. No clerical rigidity has cramped Mr. Jones's efforts, and in good deeds he has felt free to associate with all good men. That he should have most sympathy for those with whom he holds most in common is inevitable. F. D. Maurice is Mr. Jones's "prophet," and it is interesting to read how on one occasion Maurice came to him saying that he had few opportunities of visiting the sick poor while at St. Peter's, Vere Street, and would be glad if he might be permitted to see some in St. Luke's. " Glad !" exclaims Mr. Jones ; "it was I who had cause to be thankful, as well as those by whose bedsides he prayed."

A highly intelligent and persistently active man who has lived with his eyes open and his heart responsive to all noble influences throughout a long life, can scarcely fail to win a.

hearing when he notes down some of its memories and lessons. Although several of Mr. Jones's judgments differ from those commonly held by his brethren, they are expressed with the utmost frankness, and if now and then he pleads guilty of actions which may startle the clerical Mrs. Grundy, they are such as most readers will readily forgive. On one occasion he broke his stick on a man's back who was acting outrageously, and gained the praise of the Magistrate for so doing. One of his vigorous efforts when at St. Luke's, Ber- wick Street, was to raise an artisans' brigade of Volunteers. Mr. Jones invented a uniform, got leave from the War Office to have it worn, became chaplain to the corps, and afterwards

held the same office for the 1st City of London Artillery Volunteers. "When they attend a church parade' at St. Philips," he writes, " I wear my ' long-service' medal." He

considers that the People's Palace has lost much of its worth and charm by losing several of its "entertaining features, among others its social dances," and from having "taken to itself more of an educational character." " This is owing," he writes, "to the generous patronage and supervision of the Drapers' Company. All the same, I cannot help feeling somewhat disappointed at the change. It is like the coming of a cloud over Mr. Besant's delightful dream."

Neither total abstinence nor Local Option and its facetious leader meet with much favour from Mr. Harry Jones. " For nasty liquors," he writes, " commend me to a thirsty and inquiring total abstainer ; " and he considers that the

presence of working men in public-houses is often most unjustly blamed, " since, whatever other place of resort may be philanthropically provided for them, it is their tradi-

tional club and smoking-room." In this, as in most cases, the author looks at things from the hopeful side, acknow- ledging the possibilities of evil, but believing in the prepon- derance of good. This feeling is strongly expressed in his remarks upon the Stage

Though the throng of theatres in Central London," he writes, "is flanked by places of clandestine, evil resort which taint their surroundings, I hold that the drama is radically intended to be no mere vehicle of entertainment, and that the true actor is called to be a preacher of righteousness. The play's the thing wherein we'll catch the conscience of the King.' And though the keenest humourists will agree with me in feeling that the genuine comedian is no more necessarily coarse than that the effective tragic actor is dismal, still all do not realise the high vocation of the playwright and the performer, nor the educational place which the theatre is capable of filling, and, especially in a Christian country, is called to fill. It is a mirror of mankind. and should be the colleague of the Church, a seemly revealer of life and guide to the lessons which it ought to teach."

It is a platitude to say that what " should be " differs too often from what is. Mr. Harry Jones's estimate of the edu- cational value of the stage, and of the exquisite and honest pleasure it is fitted to yield, is not in any degree exaggerated; bat it applies mainly to the legitimate drama, and not to theatres which depend for their success on burlesques, comic songs, and ballet dancers. On his remarks about Sunday- schools there will be probably a larger divergence of opinion : "I confess," he writes, "that I never felt eager about these religions institutions, since they fail to encourage parents in bringing children to worship with them, and tend to make them look on the school and church as consecrated nurseries, where their boys and girls will be kept out of mischief for two or three hours on Sunday morning, leaving paterfamilias to smoke his pipe and read Lloyd's in peace. I know that I am a heretic in this matter—but so it ie.'

If there be an evil associated with Sunday-schools, the good, we think, greatly predominates. Is it probable that the man who spends his Sunday morning in the way described by Mr. Harry Jones would be likely to take his children to church or chapel if the Sunday-school were not open to receive them P Is it probable that from such a father they would gain any religious instruction if these schools were abolished ? More- over, our Church services are above the comprehension of children, and a painful tax upon their patience. Greatly, indeed, are they to be pitied when, after one hour of school, they are marshalled into church for nearly two hours longer,— a mistake committed, it is to be hoped, by comparatively few clergymen in the present day.

Energetic work of all kinds has been the author's delight. In "the autumn of Sedan" Mr. Jones visited the seat of war to report for the Guardian on the condition of the sick and wounded. He once spent the best part of one night on the roof of a public-house in order to ascertain for himself the defects said to exist on the premises of a gas company, and on another occasion his visit to a hospital was far from complimentary

Kindly predecessors had gone round with a nurse and re- ported general contentment. I went alone, shutting the door of each ward behind me, and, amonc, some other discoveries, found that divers beds were filled with among wheat straw, and sewn up tight. Then I borrowed the knife of a patient and ripped one bed up, leaving a heap as big as a haycock in the middle of the room. To judge by the eyes of the inmates, this was as good as a tonic all round."

Like a tonic, too, as the reader will find, is this little volume, which contains the record of a well-directed and hopefully energetic life. The book, however, is not flawless. Mr. Harry Jones has the curious and irritating habit of placing every word within brackets that can be used parenthetically, so that his pages are literally studded with these useless disfigure- ments.