Living in Ernest, with Lessons and Incidents from the Lives
of the Great and Good By Joseph Johnson. (T. Nelson and Sons.)--The author calls this 'A Book for Young Men," but we do not think that any one who is presented with it will be very thankful. The whole tone of the book is that of exaggeration. The first essay, "Living in Work," con- sists of common-place praise of industry, with a 'tedious enumeration of persons who have worked very hard and risen to great eminence, and then a picture of the non-worker leading a life of utter misery. This is really absurd. Everybody knows thousands of non-workers who are among the happiest of men, while the persons who really cannot be happy without hard work are generally those who have been driven to it by poverty in early life, and find, later on, that their habits ire formed and cannot be altered. What is really desirable is occupation without toil, something which is pursued for its own sake, and not for a liveli- hood, and so can be suspended whenever the collar begins to gall. Perhaps the author would call occupation of this kind "work," but the public hardly thinks of an ordinary country gentleman as a "worker." The type, paper, and binding are sumptuous.
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