The Art of Living. By Robert Grant. (D. Nutt.)—Though this
work bears the name of an English publisher, it comes from the other side of the Atlantic, and is wholly adapted to the conditions of American life. It is interesting certainly, and, in its way, in- structive, for the author has a good grasp of principles. But there is much of which the application to readers in this country is somewhat remote. The idea of an enterprising person making a neighbourhood fashionable is strange to us. Money does not go far with us, but it has not yet come to this, that a man with an income of 21,000 is " cousin-german to a mendi- cant." Then the conditions of service are different. We find servants for a people which cannot find them for themselves. No American woman will demean herself by taking a menial place.' The question of education has a different aspect there to that which it bears here. What we call " public " schools—by a curious misnomer—do not exist there. Then the "Woman's Rights" question is in a different stage, to say the least. But all these things are interesting to read about. The author does not by any means despair of his country, though he says with much emphasis that the so-called aristocracy is "aggravating and frivolous," and the mass "ignorant and um:esthetic."
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