servatives, of Churchmen and Dissenters, in short, of all the boni viri.

We have heard, indeed, of a dinner at a club, with a Tory member of the Government in the chair, which discussed the formation of an entirely new party. The company, we understand, was not composed of politicians known in public life, but of the directors of armament firms and certain colonial financiers. The object is with a political pruning-hook to cut off the dead unbearing branches of the Tory tree.

And graft more happy in their stead. The club, we know, was not Boodles: but we fancy that the name of the new party is to be the Imperial Boodlers.

Another and more respectable attempt to shake off the lethargy and confusion that seem to paralyze our political leaders greets us too late for an analysis of its aims and names. Twenty-seven gentlemen, including

The Saturday Review.

members of both Houses of Parliament, have announced their intention of separating themselves from the Unionist party, and of forming a National party, whose principles are sketched with unavoidable vagueness. To separate from a party which, as we have shown, has ceased to exist, is easy. To construct a new party is a task calling for more experience and more brains than are discoverable in the twenty-seven individuals who challenge the world. The title "National" always reminds us of orthodoxy as "my doxy": all parties always claim to be national, and until you have defined the nation, the term is a little ridiculous. There is no mention in the new program of the maintenance of existing institutions-an ominous omission. Everything, however, must have a beginning, and we have no wish to discourage gentlemen, who at least realize that the Unionist party is a sham. The first step towards a cure is to know that you are ill.

The world was a streak of green and white bubbles, and there was a great roaring noise which disturbed his thoughts. "Boots-Boots-I must get them off." He remembered the only occasion on which he had experienced an anesthetic, the mental struggle to retain his ego, and the loss of willpower he had known at every breath. He was going down now, the roaring was less terrible and he felt very tired. A check in his descent and a little voice at the back of his brain: "There was a big sea running." Then a blur of white foam and a long gasping breath. Something rasped his forehead and a rough serge sleeve was across his throat. He fought feebly to keep the choking arm away, but as they rose

on the crest of a long blue-green swell he was jerked from the water by the neck and the belt of his overcoat. His first clear sensation was one of intense chill. Although there was little wind, it was cold in the air. He raised his head and moved to avoid the uncomfortable pressure of something on his chest. As he saw his situation he dropped his head again quickly and lay still. He was across

the keel of a broad gray boat which pitched and heaved at terrifying angles as the seas passed. He crawled cautiously round, pivoting on his stomach till his legs straddled the keel and he had a grip on it with his hands under his chin. Facing him in a similar attitude was a seaman he knew, a tall,

brawny torpedo-man whom he had noticed rigging the lights in the Wardroom flat on occasions when Evening Service had been held there. What was his name? Davies? Denny? No, Dunn! of course the ship's boxer and the funny man at the concerts. Were they two all that was left? He opened his mouth and gasped a little before speaking.

"All right, Sir-take it easy-I've been off this billet twice, and it's no joke getting back to it. Good thing you're a light weight, Sir, or you'd've pulled me in just now."-"Are thereare there any more, Dunn?"—"God knows, Sir-beggin' your pardon, that is the mine got us forr'd and the magazine went. This is the pinnace we're on, and it's the biggest bit of the ship I've seen floating yet."-"Good God! Where were you?"-"On the bridge, Sir, just sent for by the Officer of the Watch about the telephones, but I'm-I don't know 'ow I got away, Sir-flew, I reckon. Where were you, Sir?”—“Coming up the Wardroom ladder, and as I got on deck I was washed away. Dunn! do you think we'll be picked up?" The seaman raised his head and shoulders cautiously and took a rapid glance around as they topped a sea, then resumed his attitude along the keel, his chin on his crossed wrists. "You're a parson, Sir," he said, "and you're ready for it, so I'll tell you. We were on detached duty, and there mayn't be another ship here for a week yet." -"A week! But, man, a merchant ship or fisherman might pass any time."-"A fisherman might, Sir; but

pinnace, and she's stove in a bit.""Do you mean she'll sink? But they float when they are waterlogged, don't they?"-"Not this one, she won't, and she's got the launch's slings in her toohalf-an-hour I give her; but you're right, Sir; the sea's going down, and I'm keeping a watch out for more wreckage if it goes by, Sir."

The shivering fit passed and he tried to collect his thoughts. Yes, the pinnace had settled a bit since he had been dragged aboard. She did not lift so easily to the sea, and had lost the tendency to broach-to which had made him grip the keel so tightly at first. He was quite calm now and everything seemed much more simple. Half-an-hour! He lowered his forehead to his hands and his thoughts raced. What had he left undone? Yes, the ship was gone, so he had nothing to think of in connection with her. As Dunn would say, his affairs in her were all "clewed up" by her loss. But ashore, now-ah! For a full minute he fought with his panic. He felt a rage against a fate that was blindly killing him when he had so much more of life to enjoy. He wanted to scream like a trapped rabbit. He felt his eyes wet with tears of self-pity, and at the feeling his sense of humor returned. He thought of himself as a child about to be smacked, and when he raised his head he was smiling into Dunn's eyes. "Half-anhour is not long, Dunn," he said, "but it is longer than our friends had." Dunn took another swift glance to right and left, then, reaching a hand cautiously into his jumper, pulled out a wet and shiny briar-pipe, and began to reflectively chew the mouthpiece.

He was a young padre, but he had been in the Service most of the war. He knew enough to choose his words with care as he spoke again. "Dunn," he said, "we haven't got long. I am

On

going to pray."-"Yessir," said the bony, red face before him. He tried again. "Dunn, you're Church of England, aren't you?"-"Yessir. the books I am, Sir."-"You mean you have no religion?" Dunn blew hard into the bowl of his pipe and replaced the mouthpiece between his jagged teeth. "Not that sort quite, Sir-but I'm all right, Sir." The padre moved a little bit nearer along the keel. The pinnace was certainly deep in the water now, but his mind was at ease and he did not feel the cold. "Listen, Dunn,” he said; “I am going to pray-I want you to repeat what I say after me." Dunn moved his hands from under his chin and took his pipe from his mouth. "Yessir," he said. The padre paused a moment and looked at the long blue slope of a sea rising above his eyes. He wondered vaguely why he was not feeling seasick. "O God, Who made the sea and all that therein is, have mercy on us Thy servants called today to Thy judgmentseat. Pardon us the manifold sins we have committed, and lead us to a true repentance, and to us, who have in the past neglected Thee in our hearts, send light and strength that we may come without fear before Thy throne. Have pity, O Lord, upon those who are made widows and orphans this day. Grant to our country final victory and Thy peace. Amen."

The sun was behind clouds now, and the seas were washing occasionally along the sinking boat. "You did not join me in the prayer, Dunn," he said. "Was it not within the scheme of your religion?” Dunn put his pipe carefully back in his jumper and took a firmer grip of the keel. "Yes, Sir," he said, "it was-but I don't whine when I'm down."-"Do you mean I was whining, Dunn?"-"No, Sir, I don't. You've always prayed and you're not going back on anything. I don't go much on Church, and God

wouldn't think nothing of me if I piped down now." The padre was, as has been said, a young man, and being young he did the right thing and waited for more. It came with a rush. "You see, Sir, it's God this and God that, and no one knows what God is like, but I'm a Navy man and I think of Him my way. If I'm not afraid to die I'm all right, I think, Sir. It wasn't my fault the ship sank, Sir. I've always kept my job done and I've got 'Exceptional' on my parchment. When I joined up I took the chance of this, and I ain't kicking now it's come. I reckon if a man plays the game by his messmates, and fights clean in the ring and takes a pride, like, in his job-well, it ain't for me to say, but I don't think God'll do much to me. He'll say, 'Jack,' He'll say, 'you've got a lot of things against you here, but you ain't shirked your work and you aren't afraid of Meso pass in with a caution,' He'll say. You're all right, Sir, and it may be because you're a good Christian, but I reckon, Sir, it's because you know you've done your job and not skrimshanked it that you ain't afraid, just the same as me. . . . Hold tight, Sirshe'll not be long now." The padre ducked his head as a swell passed, but the sea had no crest now, the weather was certainly improving. "I don't say you're right," he said, "but I haven't time to bring you to my way of thinking now." The pinnace began to stand on end with a gurgling and bubbling of air from her bow. The two men slipped off on opposite sides, still holding the rough, splintery keel between them. "Listen, Dunn-repeat this after me: 'Please God, I have done my best, and I'm not afraid to come to You.' 'Please God, I've done my best, and I'm not afraid to come to You.'-Goodbye, Sir."-"Thank you, Dunn-goodbye."

46

The sunset lit up the slope of a sea

that looked majestically down on them, and flashed on something behind it. As they looked the wet gray conningtower of a submarine showed barely fifty yards away. The startled sea The Spectator.

pounded at her hull as she rose and grew, and a rush of spray shook out the folds of a limp and draggled White Ensign that hung from the after-stanchion of her bridge.

Klaxon.

There is no disgrace in loving books, provided that they are loved in reason and in reasonable fashion. The penitent men of Ephesus had passed the bounds of reason, and, therefore, burned their books in the sight of all men, to the value of fifty thousand pieces of silver. A terrible business it must have been-the burning of that great library devoted to the curious arts. And the Reverend George Oldham often thought over it in his study at the Rectory of Little GreenPaul or no Paul, he could not have brought himself to the bonfire. Indeed, he never quite forgave the Apostle for his action in the matter; and as for the Preacher, he refused to be admonished by the statement that "of making many books there is no

moor.

end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh." How could there be any weariness in books. He loved his books; he loved the smell of his books, their dust, their faded bindings, their readiness to give, their silence full of words, their orderliness. Mr. Oldham had no wife; the only hostages that he had given to fortune were his books. They caused him many an anxious moment, though they sowed no wild oats on their own behalf. Yet there are dishonest people in the world, and little books are helpless as babes in the presence of dishonest people. That was why Mr. Oldham had an illiterate housekeeper for a time, but she proved more dangerous than a thief, for she tore pages out of books to light fires with, and lined her

cake pans with the buttered pages of some almost priceless seventeenthcentury theological works printed at Prague. His next housekeeper loved books, and used to read them when she should have been cooking. But the golden mean arrived at last, some years before he was moved on to Little Greenmoor, and almost at the same time that he bought his white Mesopotamian donkey. The Golden Age seemed to have come, and Mr. Oldham, in his sixtieth year, settled down in this lonely parish to a life of real enjoyment without a single care, if we except the cure of souls. But here the faithful donkey, who rapidly became more of a friend than a donkey, and seemed to understand his master with the sagacity of a twin, helped him. His powers of visiting multiplied, and the even music of his life was deepened by the sense of parochial duties better done. He felt that this idyllic life might in reason go on for centuries, so drowsily would the years pass, lived in the very presence of the great masters of human and divine thought assembled in perpetual session round that long, well-bayed library of his. Mr. Oldham asked nothing more of life. His cup was as full as his library, and there were no dregs. The library opened into a garden close, and the close, through a hedge of roses, into a great meadow, and beyond the meadow the moor shone and the hills rose, locking him in from that world that he had never loved or even known. Mrs. Prue, his housekeeper, and the

little maid-servant and the old gardener had lives as comfortable and sheltered as those of the man and the ass. When the organ droned on an August evening from the neighboring church, and Mr. Oldham, ready and robed, moved in stately fashion from his library to the vestry, the whole household felt that the universe was running on well-oiled wheels to the murmur of multitudinous bees and the scent of Eastern bowls of dried rose petals and bundles of fragrant lavender. Peace lay upon the land, and the time had come for Mr. Oldham to write his monograph on "Peace as the Perfecter of Character." The potential author loved Nature, wild or even cultivated Nature, almost as well as he loved books. Even human nature he loved as reflected in the mirror of his township. So he was a gardener, a pruner of roses, an owner of hives, who (for bees know human nature) moved among his bees like a charmed man, a lover of lawns and hedges of sweet briar and mounds of thyme and garden herbs, a grower of apples, a planter of trees. Certainly there was no pleasanter rectory in the world and none better haunted with quietude and peace, such peace as the town can never know, a peace that seems inevitable and eternal, sweet-scented peace that is hardly conscious of the passage of time, and takes the seasons as reflections of nature's character rather than as symbols of her evanescence. But the books were the center of all, and were a mighty and tremendous world within this quiet, slow-beating heart of untroubled and noiseless life. And the chief of the books were, not strangely at all, dear reader, the sermons of Jeremy Taylor, and especially the sermons preached at Golden Grove by that eminent chaplain to King Charles the First, sometime Lord Bishop of Down and Connor. First of all, there was the

sound doctrine of the sermons, then there was the wide and almost unique scholarship that shone through them, and, lastly, there was the superb prose style. No, not lastly, since lastly there was the sense of peacefulness, the Christian simplicity that stood out as the solvent of all troubles: "This is God's dealing with mankind; He promises more than we could hope for; and when He hath done that He gives us more than He hath promised." That was the note of Jeremy, and on it Mr. Oldham ever dwelt, and especially now in his garden of herbs and roses.

Much he pondered over the move into this new Rectory. What a business it had been! First, Mrs. Prue and the little maid and the old gardener had set out over the ten miles of moor with the procession of carts of all sizes that carried the furniture. He was left behind with the ass and the donkey-cart to bring on the sacred residue of the books, the books which he had determined that no unscholarly hand should touch. Mrs. Prue had felt anxious at leaving him, for she feared that an uprooting such as this might affect his health. The Bishop had sent him to Little Greenmoor (the fact is not one to talk about) because of the library fittings at the Rectory. It was the only library in the county that would reasonably hold Mr. Oldham's books. For days the anxious work had gone on, and now the Rector was left behind with the sacred residue. Mrs. Prue had packed into the cart an ample lunch a bottle of cider, a flask of tea, a traveling rug, a small bucket to give the ass water from, a nosebag for the ass; and so had left the Rector at nine o'clock on an August morning, a perfect morning, with a little cloud to break the sunlight and a little breeze to keep the winnowing screen round the sun as he worked his way across the moor,