has long
ago perceived. _Tristram_ loved two _Iseults_, and JOHN MILTON was
an exasperating husband; but these things I knew, and the author of
_Lost Diaries_ has made no more capital out of the situations than
the eternal merriment which the bare statement of the facts inspires.
But where Mr. BARING, pleasantly disdainful alike of consistency
and taste, examines the pocket-book of the "Man in the Iron Mask,"
and finds him complaining of the noise and disturbance in dungeon
after dungeon until he is removed at last to the lotus island of the
Bastille; or records the blameless botanical pursuits of TIBERIUS in
seclusion; or the first consumption of the Colla di Gallo by COLUMBUS
in the newly discovered West, he is, for all the simplicity of his
methods, amusing enough. Yet even so I am inclined to think that the
first of his essays, which reads like an actual transcript from the
jottings of a nineteenth-century private-school boy, is the diary
which I most heartily congratulate Mr. BARING on having rediscovered,
and which I should be least willing for him to lose again.

* * * * *

With the Land Question staring us in the face, _Folk of the Furrow_
(SMITH ELDER) should attract the attention of those who wish
thoroughly to understand what the agricultural labourer wants and
why he wants it. Mr. CHRISTOPHER HOLDENBY is no amateur, for as Mr.
STEPHEN REYNOLDS has lived with fishermen and shared their daily lives
so he has lodged in labourers' cottages and hoed and dug with the
best (and worst) of them. The result is a book that is stamped with
the hall-mark of a great sincerity; and three facts at least can be
gathered from it by the very dullest of gleaners. First, and I think
foremost, that the decencies of life cannot be observed if children
of very various ages are to be crowded into cottages too small to hold
them; secondly, that it is useless to expect morality from youths who
have few or no amusements provided for them; thirdly, that the passing
of the old families and the advent of the week-end "merchant princes"
do not make a change for the better. All which may be stale news, but
after reading this book I think that you will admit that Mr. HOLDENBY
has contrived to make an old tale very impressive. In some instances
it is true that I could bring evidence directly in opposition to his,
but on the whole he deserves well for the way in which he has won the
confidence of a class natur