Book Reviews.

"The Life of Gladstone," by Justin McCarthy. Macmillan Co., New York. The task of writing the life of a man who is not yet dead requires the exercise of so much discretion, and can but be attended with such difficulty in the way of gathering biographical material, especially of the personal sort, that it is rarely successful. We can not well say that Mr. McCarthy's Life of Gladstone is pithy. But it can by no means be criticised as a book that will permit of much skipping. Mr. McCarthy is always interesting. And in this book he tells the simple story of Mr. Gladstone's life from the time when he was president of the Oxford Union, and when he waited quietly in the House for his opportunity, till after he retired from private life, a parliamentary debater equalled only by Fox, William Pitt and Chatam, and unequalled by any in his "capacity for constructive legislation." Mr. Gladstone's figure must command the interest of every member of this generation. And Mr. McCarthy's story of his life is well worth reading.