St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1916-07-12


"Reminiscences and comment equal this
of Mr.. Shane Leslie's in d certain
vitality of thought and pungency of
expression. Apparently aiming at
brllliancy and certainly attaining il.
the author has packed his book with
anecdotes really meaningful and
choice in flavor, with shrewd criti-
cisms, and with sayings arrestingly
epigrammatic; and he has fastidiously
omitted whatever might seem to be
padding or mere indulgence in the
joy Of writing. The note of it all is
personal and genuine, and the under
lying spirit of this unusually enter
tanning book is one of dec! serious
ness. 1T was while invaded in hos
pital during the Great War" Mr..
Leslie tells US in a predatory note,
that 1 began to record notes and SOU
Venirs of the times and institutions
under which 1 had lived, realizing
that had witnessed the suicide of the
civilization called Christian and the
travail of a new era to which no gods
have been as yet rash enough to give
their name" Not the lurid glare of
battle, but faint, disastrous CLEAN
from this new era lights the pages of
Mr.. Leslie's book.
The book begins with a chapter OF
links with the past "Reminiscences
mostly drawn from the memory of
Mr.. Leslie's grandfather, who while
a Harrow boy subscribed to the first
shilling parts OF the Pickwick Pa
pers, and can remember five reigns
Personal recollectiOns of Walter Scott
the youthful Ruskin, Newman, Ma
poleon III, D'Orsay-the last of the
Dandles-and many other notabIes,
are included in the narrative. Mr..
Leslie's grandfather remembers the
famous prize fight between Savers and
Heenan, which reused more real
feeling between England and America
than the Alabama" and he was the
last sportsman to use a muzzle-Ioader
to shoot pheasants. An artist, he was
the close friend Of Holman Hunt and
of Millais, and he may justly claim to
be regarded as 'the last of the pre-
Raphaelites."
In its succeeding chapters, Mr.
Leslie's book becomes a short anat-
omy of English society, a cursory
analysis of Church and State, of
and schools, of politics
and politicians, of sport and imperial
ism and freedom. Somewhat apart
ireland and the Irish Dealing
with these topics in the untrammeled
manner of good talk, the author tells
as much perhaps about national traits
and conditions as could a writer of
greater philosophic pretensions.
Good talk, of course. is not argu-
ment; its value often lies simply in
its stimulating epitomes of views and
Somehow Mr.. Leslie
to be unreverent without be-
ing fippant, to be unsparingly crit
ical yet never sadly satirical. With
out giving serious ground for Of
Tense he can write that King
Edward was "a go-between rather
than statesman, a CONVERSE
tionalist rather than a man of let
tiers, but . . the only diplomat in
the public service; that George V
may rouse his subjects mirth, but he
is their best figurehead sailing
through the waters of Armageddon";
that "the Church of England reigns
chiefly as a social club, with which
are deposited the moral standards of
society; that IAN appreciation of
sportsmanship is the test for auton-
omy through the empire. cit
would be a mistake to read Mr.. Les
lies book unhumorously, a greater
not to perceive its essential
earnestness.