6 JUNE 1914, Page 26

Friends Bound the Wrelrin. By Lady Catherine Milne' Gaskell. (Smith,

Elder, and Co. 9s. net.)—The author of

this pleasant old-world book takes us •straight into her enviable garden, and introduces us to many well-marked characters, such as the old housemaid who maintains that modern " eddication " is " mostly poisom" on the ground that "it fills the maids' heads and disgusts them with their con- dition" without fitting them for anything better—"'tis a poor man's job to use his hands, and hands don't work with brains." Lady Catherine Milnes Gaakell diversifies her sketches of Shropshire peasant life by frequent dips into the past, through the medium of local associations or of the box from Mudie's. All that she writes she invests with an air of delicate distinction.