IN VICTORIAN DAYS By Sir David Hunter Blair
Sir David Hunter Blair, the Abbot of Dunfermline, has a remarkable memory, an enquiring and receptive mind, and a mellow style. These miscellaneous and tantalisingly brief papers make up an unprofessional book (Longmans, 6s.) that is a continuous delight. The first third of the book deals with social life in England and Scotland in the days of Queen Victoria, the second with Oxford in Sir David's time, and the third section is made up of unrelated essays on such themes as the lost Inca treasures of Peru, Scottish monasteries, and Rome during the 1870 occupation. At Oxford Sir David was a contemporary and close acquaintance of Oscar Wilde, to whom he devotes an exceptionally interesting chapter. Of the other chapters none is more interesting than that on how Oxford received his own conversion to the Roman Catholic Church. Sir David is a delightful raconteur, and his pages are studded with excellent anecdotes. Perhaps the most agreeable is the story of Sir Frederick Gore Ouseley, the Pro- fessor of Music who was reputed to have composed music at the age of three and thought of little other than his art :
Dining once at a cavalry mess, he told his host how he had been examining a certain candidate's exercise for his Mus. Bac. degree. " I give you my word, Colonel," he wound uo, " the whole of the last movement was written in the hyper-mixto-lydian mode." " God bless my soul, Sir Frederick," gasped the mystified Colonel: " You surely don't mean to say so ? "
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