27 MAY 1876, Page 21

Winter Sunshine. By John Burrows. (Hurd and Houghton, New York.

Sampson Low and Co., London.)—An art of essay-writing, which is not very successfully cultivated among us, seems to flourish on the other side of the Atlantic. This pleasant little volume is one of the outcomes of it. Very pleasant indeed it is. Mr. Burrows strokes us "Britishers" so very gently and nicely in his essay on "Mellow Eng- land," that one shuts his book with a quite unaccustomed feeling of satisfaction with one's own country. Even English inns, which we are wont to grumble at, not to say curse, become the delightful hostelries which Washington Irving described. Everything, indeed, pleased our most judicious essayist ; even our " roughs " are not so bad, and the vice of our dancing-saloons comparatively virtuous by the side of the deeper dye of Transatlantic wickedness. But it is not only the praise, or, as some would call it, the flattery of England that charms us in this book. The author is quite as pleasant in describing his own country. The " Snow- Walkers," for instance, is a most readable little essay on the animals, two-footed and four-footed, whose track may be found in the snow of an American winter. Here is a pretty little piece about the squirrel :—

" He loves to linger about the orchard ; and, sitting upright on the topmost stone in the wall, or on the tallest stake in the fence, chipping up an apple for the seeds, his tail conforming to the curve of his back, his paws shifting and turning the apple, he is a pretty sight, and his bright, pert appearance atones for all the mischief he does. At home, in the woods, he is the most frolicsome and loquacious. The appear- ance of anything unusual, if, after contemplating it a moment, he concludes it not dangerous, excites his unbounded mirth and ridicule, and he snickers and chatters, hardly able to contain himself ; now darting up the trunk of a tree and squealing in derision, then hopping into position on a limb, and dancing to the music of his own cackle, and all for your special benefit. There is something very human in this apparent mirth and mockery of the squirrels. It seems to be a sort of ironical laughter, and implies self-conscious pride and exultation in the laugher. 'What a ridiculous thing you are, to be sure r he seems to say ; how clumsy and awkward, and what a poor show for a tail ! Look at me, look at me r —and he capers about in his beet style. Again, he would seem to tease you and to provoke your attention ; then sud- denly assumes a tone of good-natured, child-like defiance and derision. That pretty little imp, the chipmunk, will sit on the stone above his den, and defy you, as plainly as if he said 80, to catch him before he can get into his hole if you can. You hurl a stone at him, and No you didn't' comes up from the depth of his retreat."