Rambles and Studies in Old South Wales. By Wirt Sikes.
(Samp- son Low and Co.)—It is pleasant to hear a friend, candid, indeed, but never allowing his candour to get the better of his friendliness, talking about ourselves and our belongings. Mr. Sikes, who is a native of the United States, has studied Wales and the- Welsh to good purpose. Having told us in a previous volume about its spirit inhabitants, the goblins and fairies which haunt or used to haunt it, he now turns to speak of its palpable and visible inhabitants. It is satisfactory to find that they please him as much as the goblins interested him. He does not admire everything among us. The pourboire of a driver annoys him, though it has the merit of being a fixed charge, and so is unlike the unlimited extortion of a New York car-driver. But he likes the Welsh people ; their culture, the keen interest which, down to the lowest class, they feel in the literature of their language, impress him most favourably. Of their manners and character, their outer and inner life, he gives us in this volume some very kindly and pleasing sketches. Sometimes they will seem slight to an English reader ; but it must be remem- bered that they were written for the public on the other side of the Atlantic. One serious protest we must make. "American peaches,"' he says, "have no peer among English fruits, except those which are reared with a sedulous care, which makes them very costly." What an American peach may be under its own sky, we unhappily do not know ; but as for the "canned peach," of which Mr. Mee has been speaking, a good English gooseberry (it would be an insult even to mention the strawberry in this connection) is worth a bushel of them.
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