Ater looking forward, for what seemed a very long time, to Father Martindale’s Life of Father Plater/ we now find ourselves wondering how anything so thoroughly well done can have been prepared so quickly. The book is not the mere history of an eventful life; it is a skilful revelation of a remarkable personality. Many of us who before only knew Father Plater now feel that we understand him; and in human relations an understanding signifies more than it says.

It is not the usual lot of a man to be understood in his life-time by the majority of those who know him. Father Plater was more fortunate than most men in this respect, though even he had his critics. His good nature saved him from serious misunderstandings in the less pleasant sense of that word; but occasionally the differences of opinion between himself and others were serious enough. Most misunderstandings of this sort were solved during his life; but one, and that the most serious, has not only survived him, it still exists with regard to the work with which he was principally identified and which others are still carrying on in his name and spirit.