There is in drama a situation where one man on the stage holds a secret, which he shares with the audience, but wishes to keep hid from the other players. He never gives the secret away on the stage, yet he acts all the time in the presence, so to speak, of the fact kept thus hidden. It is only the presence of that fact that fully explains what he says, by giving a second and deeper significance to his words. Where the other characters in the play will be able to see only a normal, even necessary flow of words, the audience may be able to see a strain, a definite turn given to the conversation, a deliberate undercurrent introduced. It is tremendous fun for the audience.

This goes to explain much of the enjoyment derived from a recent reading of Dean Inge’s Protestantism. A Catholic will see at once what another man may not be table to see, namely, that Dean Inge writes in the presence of a certain fact, the Catholic Church; that he cannot altogether rid himself of its presence ; that when he is writing about something apparently different he will be, perhaps unconsciously, referring back to it; that this—a normal exposé of Protestantism—is in truth a painful, straining affair; that what would seem to be the logical sequence of statement is a sequence adopted for a purpose ; and that many things written have twa planes of meaning, the often calm surface being not the more interesting or instructive.

From the narrow majority by which the House of Commons lately rejected the Revised Book of Common Prayer it has been argued—by Bishops Barnes and Welldon and Sir William Joynson Hicks—that the English nation still remains Protestant at heart and loyal to the Reformation.

The conclusion may or may not be true; the argument is manifestly unsound. The Times, in its grief, has been at pains to analyse the voting by which the Commons reached its decision. It finds that the New Prayer Book was favoured by a considerable majority of the Members representing English constituencies. The groups representing Ulster, Scotland and Wales all disapproved of the new Book with overwhelming majorities.

Why do these names come to me, ‘giving me short sighs,’ when I try to recall the romancers and novelists I have known or encountered, loved, liked, disliked? Is it because the haze of the Defence of Guenevere floated, drifted autumnally through my youthful dreamland just at the moment I met novelists of my own selection?

I had often seen Hector Malot (sixty of whose volumes are on the shelves of the London Library) with my parents. I knew his beard, his Sans famille, and I had wondered why his Romain Kalbris had never been given to me. His Bohème tapageuse, his Héritage d’Arthur (oddly connected in my first impressions with my elder brother’s prospects), and his Belle Madame Donis were not for the young, I was well aware.

How charming were those nights and wintry days we spent at Charter Alley. Experiences, poignant at the time and wholly occasional, are now rounded in contemplation of them and generalized by apparent distance. We have the curiosity to find if a place to us so notable is known to readers of the gazetteer. They should be thankful for what little they learn from that useful book: that it has a post office and is a mile and a half from Ramsdell. It is also near Monk Sherborne (where retired and retiring people enjoy electric light) and The Fighting Cocks ; and sometimes exasperatingly far ; when the crow as she flies can count the ducks at our home. We believe that there are no revolving guide-posts upon the dry land of Great Britain ; but, aedepol, they seem sometimes to possess that dreadful property in Hampshire. The way to deceive the pixie is to inquire for Pamber End ; and indeed, what you miss in the main you gain on the bye; for though the lanes are all alike tortuous, gravel-surf aced, with hedges for ever trying to reach hands across them, it is a good type and change might be for the worse.

This little town, so famous throughout Europe in the eighth and ninth centuries as a school of saints and doctors, is situated on the left bank of the Shannon, about ten miles south of Athlone, almost in the centre of Ireland. It gives its name to the small and ancient See, which, conjoined with Ardagh, now forms the diocese of Ardagh and Clonmacnois in the province of Armagh. Its patron, St. Ciaran, or Kieran, born in 516 (one account gives his birth as 483, and says he was baptised by St. Patrick), died in 549 after having founded in the previous year his celebrated Abbey of Clonmacnois.

Another earlier St. Ciaran, a contemporary and afterwards a companion of St. Patrick, is said to have built a church here ; but his labours; were more generally confined to the southern portion of the country. St. Patrick, on his first journey into Connaught, crossed the Shannon at this point. Here, too, according to tradition, he set up a Cross where had been a pagan monolith, and baptised a great number of the natives. (It is curious to note that learned antiquaries are of opinion that the Celtic Crosses, so numerous in Ireland, superseded in the ninth and tenth centuries other Crosses of wood or rough stone which had been erected by the early missioners wha assembled their neophytes around them before churches had been built.)

There are those who protest that they look upon gardening as a hobby—not with an eye of joyous anticipation for the fruits of their labour, but simply as a pastime : they have warped minds. The aim of work is to produce something one can enjoy, to effect something desirable ; and muddy shoes, grimed hands and an aching back are neither good nor profitable. The result of such labour is a spick and span floral display that one is invited to admire but not to enjoy : and such toilers who chance to be dog-lovers as well grow almost demented when a lively terrier goes about his ‘ lawful occasions ’ of digging. And as likely as not they work on a formal plan, and produce an exhibition. of colours and shapes such as skilled window dressers effect in London shops. The only delight I can imagine in a garden like, that is to pretend one is back in the eighteenth century, being cavalier and subtly artificial.

One ought to feel immediately at home in a garden, and what Beau was ever at home ?

Mr. Chesterton derives a divine joy from the use of words. ‘ Thunder-throated hounds,’ ‘ starspotted, violet leopards,’ ‘ torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,’ ‘ red rust like crawling gore,’ ‘ dim drums throbbing,’ ‘ strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far’ are phrases that, like the rare wine of Montefiascone, he loves to roll on his tongue with a beatific relish. He wrote with praiseworthy humility, yet needless regret in the verse which runs :

Words, for alas my trade is words, a barren burst Rubbed by a hundred rhymes,

Rubbed by a hundred rhymsters, battered a thousand times,

Take them, you, that smile on strings, those nobler sounds than mine,

The words that never lie, or brag, or flatter, or malign.