English Home Idfe. By Robert Laird Collier. (T. Fiaher Unwin.)
—Mr. Collier is a native of the United States, who has lived several years in England, and who gives us in thin volume his im- pressions of our manners and customs, and of our character generally. Of our cookery he has but a mean opinion ; he admires our kitchens, but thinks that for the most part they turn out but indifferent results. We have, however, the merit of being economical, in comparison at least with his own countrymen. The impression left by such American cookery-books as we have seen inclines us to agree with him. We are civil or servile, according to our station, but not polite. Our preachers are indifferent ; the Nonconformists being better than the Established Church. (A propos of preachers, we have the story of the "fatted calf that had been in the family for a great many years" trotted out.) On some matters, on the other hand, Mr. Collier speaks with high praise. Our children are admirably managed, and the body of the nation is religious. Mr. Collier seems, on the whole, a good specimen of the "candid friend."—Another book about England is The Chronicle of the Coach, by John Denison Champlin (Chatto and Windus), containing a pleasantly told narrative of a coach journey, taken last Jammer, from London to Ilfracombe, cid Dorking, Winchester, Sherborne, Exeter, with sundry digressions, as each journeys should have. Such a drive shows England at its best, and the travellers seem to have appreciated it.
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