Wayside Wisdom. By E. M. Martin. (Longmans and Co. 55.
net.)—Here we have a volume of essays. They are not without merit; but we cannot rank the writer with great essayists. He has not caught the spirit of the thing. In his first chapter he comes to speak about gipsios. Charles Lamb would have written an apologia for the gipsy which would have offended no one ; but it is too absurd when we are gravely told that the gipsy gives back as much as he takes. The man steals the fowl, but the woman makes it up by telling fortunes for a shilling instead of a guinea, and offering remedies "at which science laughs, but that credulity tries and is rewarded." The experiences of credulity, if we trust to sober facts, are not so happy. Then we read about "Being in Love." We have a string of names from Helen and Paris to " Abailard and Heloise" (the usual spelling suits better the popular character of the essay). They are all blameworthy "from the highest moral standpoint of conventional civilisation." What in the world does this mean ? What conventional civilisa- tion is there in the Ten Commandments ? If the essayist must treat such a subject, let him see how Charles Lamb dealt with the morality of the Restoration Drama.
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