For King and County : a Story of 1812. (Adams,
Stevenson, and Co., Toronto.)—This little tale forms one of a series published under the head of " Collection of Canadian Authors." It is a quiet story, cleverly told in the Erckmann-Chatrian style ; a story in which we are brought into close contact with the homely life of the men who success- fully, with little noise and indomitable pluck, maintained against such fearful odds the contest which left Canada still a name of pride in every Englishman's mouth. The (on this side the water more than half forgotten) names of Brock and Scott once more stand out before us, and recall our attention to a page in our history too lightly scanned ; but as a story, the chief, perhaps the only literary merit of these pages lies in the bits of description here and there given of the natural features of the country at a time when the " forest primeval" was more sparsely dotted than at present with homesteads, such as Major Meredith's, whose child, "Lilies," forms a pleasant picture, as she sits at her work "mending household linen, with the graceful, wavy boughs of a large hickory lying like a green cloud between her and the blue sky ;" while "the tiny humming-birds were hanging from the opening honeysuckles." The story deals with a time when the Falls of Niagara were, as yet, unvulgarised by "the obtrusive embodiments of the common-place" which now disfigure their immediate vicinity. It is just a peep at the simple life of some of those who subdued the forest and took part in the struggle which succeeded. But to the mind accustomed to associate Canadian life with the hurry of steamboats, and railways, and money-making, and all the dust, and moil, and toil of life, these few pages out of the past are like a cool breeze on an otherwise sultry day.
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