CURRENT LITERATURE.
Rainy Days in a Library. By Sir Herbert Maxwell, Bart., M.P. (Elliot Stock.)—A library in a country house on a really wet morning is the place and time, says the author, for vagabond reading, and he has managed while thus house-bound to stumble on some curious books. The fira volume Sir Herbert Maxwell opens is Adam Petrie's "Rules of Good Deportment," a work regarded with much reverence by the book-hunter, seeing that only two copies of the original exist. So at least Sir Herbert states in his preface, but in another place he observes that there are three, one being in the library at Abbotsford. Petrie, to judge from the few quotations given, appears to argue that the first duty of man is to show respect to "persons of quality." His precise directions, written in all seriousness, are sufficiently absurd to be amusing. From Petrie the author passes to Count Baldassare Castiglione, whose picture of a perfect Italian gentle- man was conceived in Italy three centuries ago. The Sporting Magazine, the first number of which appeared in 1793 and the last in 1870, supplies another subject for gossip. The writer, after describing the slow process of reloading a fowling-piece in the reign of George III., observes pertinently enough that "it would be difficult to prove that the enjoyment of the sport was less to one in those days armed with the best weapon then known, and contented with two or three brace of cock-pheasants beaten out of hedgerows, than it is to the modern hero wielding a pair of hammerless breech-loaders fitted with ejectors and all the rest of it, and surrounding himself with piles of slain." A long, curious, and melancholy essay might be written on the remedies for diseases known to our forefathers. A folio entitled "A History of the Wonderful Things of Nature," 1657, contains prescriptions which are scarcely more absurd than some recommended by Lord Bacon or by John Wesley in his "Primitive Physic." Here is one which Sir Herbert Maxwell commends to the notice of the United Kingdom Alliance :—" Owls' eggs given for three days in wine to drunkards will make them loath it." The little book is the fruit of thirteen rainy days, and we can believe that they were passed pleasantly.
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