In the Wilderness. By Charles Dudley Warner. (Sampson Low and
Co.)—This little volume contains some entertaining little essays of a humorous kind, almost peculiar to Transatlantic writers. We cannot define the humour, or describe it, without giving more space than we can spare ; bat a reader who can imagine Mr. Matthew Arnold without any satirical or didactic purpose, may form a notion of the style. The first and most amusing of the essays describes "How I Killed a Bear." It is full of happy touches, which, unhappily, cannot be used as extracts, unless we take as a specimen one of the thoughts which crowd upon him in the moment when the bear is charging him. He thinks of his widow and his epitaph. How annoying to his wife to have her husband eaten by a bear ! How distressing the epitaph,—" Here lie the Remains of — —, Eaten by a Bear, August 20th, 1877." It would not answer to put upon the atone simply "eaten," for that is in- definite, and requires explanation ; it might mean eaten by a cannibaL The difficulty would not occur in the German, where essen signifies the act of feeding by a man, and fressen by a boast: "Hier liegt leech-
wohlgeboren Herr — Gefressen August 20th, 1877."
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