23 OCTOBER 1909, Page 24

Home Life in Ireland. By Robert Lynd. (Mills and Boon.

8s. net.)—Mr. Lynd has written an entertaining and informing book about Ireland. On the whole, he holds the balance between North and South, minister and priest, and the various oppositions which are to be found in the country with an even hand. Some- times, indeed, his political prepossessions disturb him. He is a Home-ruler, and of the Protestant variety, commonly the most fanatical, and he argues accordingly. The Irishman, he thinks, is

not untidy by nature. He avoids any appearance of neatness in his home and its belongings because such appearance would cause a rapacious landlord to raise the rent. Just so the Jew was careful to keep a dismal exterior on houses that were splendid within. Then we find talk about the "economic wrong" of " pre- ference to bullocks over men, women, and children." The cattle trade, with the cognate business of butter-making, is the most profitable of Irish industries. What Mr. Lynd would bring back is the Ireland of the early "forties." (He actually mentions Achill as an Irish paradise.) "A cattle drive," he writes again, "means simply a driving of cattle." It means a great deal more. It means a violent breach of the habits of the animal, which is always feeding when it is not chewing the cud. Then our author is strongly for compulsory Gaelic, surely in itself a most useless contrivance, and one which would certainly be dropped should the political ends which it subserves be attained. There is a specially interesting chapter on " Marriages and Match Making." Mr. Lynd does his best for his clients, but is there any other Christian country where a girl "has not set eyes on her husband till the marriage morning " ? The Irishman, for all his sentiment, has a very keen eye for the main chance, and is sometimes not over-scrupulous in gratifying it. If perjury is a crime, it must have run up a fair account in the matter of old - age pensions for a " crimeless country." We naturally have said more about points of difference than about points of agreement ; but our criticisms do not touch the real value of the book. It is the work of a close and interested observer. Keep the grain of salt at hand and all will be well.