Some Memories of William Pevers7 Turnbull. By his Son, H.
W. Turnbull. (Bell. 10s. 6d. net.)—Mr. W. P. Turnbull, who died in 1917, was one of the first inspectors of schools appointed under the Act of 1870. He began his official career in Manchester, and spent many years in Wolverhampton and Sheffield. He had a brilliant career at Trinity, Cambridge, as a mathematician, being Second Wrangler in 1864 and Smith's Prizeman. But his heart was in literature, as this attractive and judicious memoir shows. He was a devoted student of Wordsworth, and his comments on other great authors are often illuminating, though brief. He collected some amusing anec- dotes in his official tours. An essay on eels, written in a Sheffield school, ran thus : " There are two sorts of eels—cow eels and shoe eels. I should think there are two thousand eels in this school." Again : "Boy ' The boy stood on the burning deck, When Sawbuttee had fled.' Master (suspecting a. misreading of the verse): Who was Sawbuttee ? ' Boy r 'Please, Sir, the captain, Sir.' " Mr. Turnbull liked to annotate his books. On the fly-leaf of .Robert Elsraere he wrote : " Acts xxvi. 8 " ; the verse runs : " Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead ? " The quiet scholar, like other men, had occasional cravings for adventure, and his passionate admiration for Gladstone sent him, with other ardent spirits, to Ireland to see " coercion " at work. Thus, by accident or by design on the part of Nationalist friends, he was at Mitchels- town in 1887 when the police had to fire in self-defence on an unruly mob. Mr. Turnbull's letter describing the scene is admittedly evidence at second hand, and shows his unfamiliarity with the tactics of Nationalist agitators, who delighted in goading the police, as the banderillero goads the animal in a Spanish bull-ring.
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