CURRENT LITERATURE.
Life and Labour. By Samuel Smiles, LL.D. (John Murray.)— Dr. Smiles has put together these " characteristics of men of industry, culture, and genius," in his usual fashion. He has transferred, not without a sufficient skill of arrangement, the contents of his commonplace-book to these pages ; and as the said commonplace-book is filled with the results of a wide reading, the result is, in its way, satisfactory. One does not, indeed, carry away any definite notion what these " charac- teristics " are, except it be that they are of the most diverse, one might almost say, contradictory kind. Some great men live long, and some do not ; some transmit their greatness to their descendants, and some conspicuously fail to do it ; some are happy in their home, and some are exactly the contrary. There is a genius that flowers late, and there is another that comes into bloom very early, and so on, through all the circumstances of human life. Every view is supported by a great cater of evidence in the shape of anecdote. The result is a very readable book, full of instruction, whether of the encouraging or deterring kind; but, as we hinted, not making us much wiser about the "charac- teristics " of genius.
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