The Amateur House Carpenter. By Ellis A. Dayidson. (Chapman and
Hall.)—If Mr. Davidson had definitely adhered to his plain and very practical purpose of being a "guide in building, making, and re- pairing," he might have produced a useful handy-book. Ho appears, however, to have considered that in that case, it would have been chill, and perhaps we might not have differed with him. Accordingly, he has garnished his more substantial faro with a variety of trimmings, which cannot, we should think, be much to the taste of many readers who want to learn carpentering. For instance, we turn to the headings of two subjects, which we may perhaps be supposed to know respectively something and nothing about, namely, "Bookshelves" and "A Baby's Crib." The first subject, Mr. Davidson begins thus;—" Some people call their sanctum by one name, some by the other, but a rose by any other name," ■Icc. This is followed by two or three pages of a farrago of rubbish about slippers, old songs, bonnets, and the magazines, before we come to the gist of the matter. The article about a baby's crib begins in this way;—" It cannot be denied that many of the babies introduced into this sublunary world of ours, in former years, grew up to be great men and women." This is very true, but it is a roundabout way of intro- ducing the matter in hand ; the particular "crib," moreover, strikes us as an uncommonly ugly one. Mr. Davidson's advice about varnishing, staining, colouring, and the like, is more to the point, and is direct and businesslike.
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