5 AUGUST 1865, Page 22

aumbs from a Sportsman's Table. By Charles Clarke. Two vols.

(Chapman and Hall.)—Mr. Clarke has attained a certain popularity, which is far from undeserved, as a writer of short tales and sketches for the Sporting Magazine and similar publications. In these volumes he has collected a number of those papers which he considers his best, revising and altering them where necessary, and he has also added some original stories. The character of this sort of literature never varies very mach, but Mr. Clarke, without losing that extreme airiness of manner which it seems sportsmen greatly prefer, even if they do not find it indispensable, keeps free from that flippant familiarity of tone which is to us rather offensive than attractive. We cannot say that even he has nothing to retrench in this matter, but if you write for a special class it is, we suppose, inevitable that its peculiar tastes should be consulted. If a portrait painter paints an alderman's wife, he must paint her, if she will have it so, in crimson velvet.