Pictures of English Life. After original studies. By R. Barnes
and E. M. Wimporis. Engraved by J. D. Cooper, with descriptive poems by J. G. Watts. (Sampson Low, Son, and Marston.)—This handsome volume is entirely in the English taste. It represents "the cottage home life of England" on the theory that "neatness and comfort are its common attributes, health and happiness its most constant atten- dants, and womanly delicacy and manly spirit rarely wanting." Whether those who know our rural population best will be able to endorse this couleur-de-rose view of the subject we very gravely doubt. But perhaps saying that it has all these merits is pleasanter than the truth, and at all events it is a theory which makes pretty sentimental pictures. Mr. Watts's verses and Mr. Kennedy's floral borders both deserve a kindly word. The volume is, we should imagine, likely to be popular.
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