Homespun; or, Five - and - Twenty Years Ago. By Thomas Lackland. (Low, Son,
and Marston.)—We had none of that difficulty in detecting the nationality of this volume which seems to have oppressed the Pall' Mall Gazette. But we agree with our contemporary that it would be right to label foreign goods with their own names, and not to pass them off as English. Mr. Lackland's book would be equally pleasant, whether the scene of it was laid in Old or Now England. There is a heartiness in his appreciation of country life, with a knack of seizing on the pic- turesque points of scenery and character, which carries us agreeably over his pages. But writing of America, he has the further claim of novelty. We are rather too well acquainted with sketches of English. country life. If they are to be repeated now, they must have excep- tional merits. Much, however, in Mr. Lackland's book is quite strange.. The wood he burns is hickory, the berries he picks are huckleberries. His winter amusement is "coasting down the long-winding New England hills with the girls, on the white moonlit evenings," and his vehicle "a. sled." This spice of originality gives a peculiar flavour even to subjects in which there is nothing distinctively national. Fires, and rainy days, and garden work, and Sunday in the country, and mornings at the brook are not purely American headings, like "Thanksgiving" and "The Country Store." But there are New England touches throughout, and the book will be valuable to all who would know the country life of our cousins, though it is worthy of an even wider audience.
Previous page
