6 APRIL 1878, Page 23

The Lawyer's Nose. By Edmoni About. Translated by J. E.

Mait- land. (Remington and Co.)—This is an unfortunately selected sample of N. About's works for translation into English. In the original, it is a heavy and laboured jeu d'e.spi it ; such humour as it possessesis essen- tially French, and apropos to situations, customs, and ideas which are exclusively French, having no counterparts among us ; the pseudo- science that it satirises is not of a kind that is talked here. A mediocre jest in French is a very bad one in English, and the jokes hero are indifferently translated. " Ladies of the two worlds," meaning good and bad society, and a man "who lives between two wines," meaning a man who is habitually muddled, are not happy examples of the translator's skill, and yet these are not the gravest ineptitudes of the work.