3 DECEMBER 1870, Page 21

Village Sketches. By Thomas Whitehead, M.A. (Routledge.)—Some of our readers

will have, we are sure, a pleasing recollection of a former volume from the same hand and dealing with the same class of subjects. Nothing could be more genuine and excellent than the rela- tion which they describe as existing between the parson and his parish- ioners, the friendship without patronage on the one side and presumption on the other, recognizing a manly equality between the two parties, to- gether with that virtual superiority which a man of wider culture and larger knowledge of the world, cannot fail, given a certain amount of intellectual power, to have. The sketch entitled " Our Coal Club" is specially admirable. Altogether the volume, which is very modest in size, ought to be in every country parson's hands.