BOOKS AND CEITICS. 



169 



public," which is below the Smith and Mudie 

 level. Enter a book-shop in a small town in a 

 remote province, and you will find on its counter 

 and shelves a class of literature of a grade so 

 mean that a Smith's book-stall instantly rises 

 fifty per cent, in your imagination. Ask for 

 Thackeray's " Vanity Fair." The well-dressed 

 young person who attends to the shop never 

 heard of Thackeray. The few books she can 

 offer are mostly children's books — grown people 

 don't seem to read in country places — or they 

 are books of a denominational cast, books which 

 perhaps are called religious, but which are, strictly 

 speaking, about nothing at all, and made up of 

 strings of conventional phraseology. Some of 

 these books, unknown as they are to the reviews, 

 have a circulation which far surpasses anything 

 ever reached by one of our "new books" which 

 has been ushered into the world by compliment- 

 ary notices in all the papers. In estimating the 

 intellectual pabulum most relished by my coun- 

 trymen, I do not forget that " Zadkiel's Almanac " 

 had a circulation of 200,000. Commander Mor- 

 rison, R. N., who only died as lately as 1874, was 

 perhaps the most successful author of the day, 

 and a great authority on astrology. He wrote, 

 among other books, one entitled " The Solar Sys- 

 tem as it is, and not as it is represented by the 

 Newtonians." He brought an action against Sir 

 Edward Belcher, who had called him in print an 

 impostor. It was tried before Chief - Justice 

 Cockburn, and Commander Morrison, who re- 

 tained Sergeant Ballantine, obtained damages. 

 The Court of Queen's Bench decided that Zad- 

 kiel was not an impostor. The tastes of this 

 widest circle of readers — the 200,000 abonnes of 

 Zadkiel — are not now under our consideration. 

 We are speaking of the " reading public " in the 

 narrower sense, and of what are called new books. 

 And I was saying that this public reads for amuse- 

 ment, and that this fact decides the character of 

 the books which are written for us. 



As amusement I do not think reading can 

 rank very high. When the brain has been 

 strained by some hours' attention to business 

 some form of open-air recreation is what would 

 be hygienically best for it. An interesting game 

 which can be played in the fresh air is the health- 

 iest restorative of the jaded senses. It is a na- 

 tional misfortune that as our great towns have 

 grown up in England there has been no reserve 

 of ground in the public interest. The rich have 

 their fox-hunting and their shooting, their deer- 

 forests and their salmon-rivers. But these are 

 only for the wealthy. Besides, they are pastimes 



turned into pursuits. "What is wanted, in the in- 

 terest of the humbler classes, is public places of 

 considerable extent, easily accessible, where rec- 

 reation for an hour or two can be always at 

 hand. After manual labor rest and a book, after 

 desk-work active exercise and a game, are what 

 Nature and reason prescribe. As every village 

 should have its village green, so every town should 

 have its one or more recreation-grounds, where 

 cricket, fives, tennis, croquet, bowls, can be got 

 at a moment's notice in a wholesome atmosphere, 

 not impregnated by gas, not poisoned by chemical 

 fumes. Our towns are sadly behind in the sup- 

 ply of pleasant places of public resort. The co- 

 operative principle has yet to be applied to open- 

 air amusements. It is surely bad economy of 

 life that in one of our wealth-producing centres a 

 game of fives should be almost as difficult to get 

 as a salmon-river. 



Still, even if these things were to be had, in- 

 stead of being as they are unprocurable, in the 

 long winter of our northern climate there are 

 many months in the year during which our amuse- 

 ment must be sought in-doors. Here come in the 

 social amusements — theatres, concerts, dances, 

 dinners, and the varied forms of social gathering. 



It is when all these fail us, and because they 

 do so often fail us, that we have recourse to the 

 final resource of all — reading. Of in-door enter- 

 tainment the truest and most human is that of 

 conversation. But this social amusement is not, 

 in all circumstances, to be got, and when it is to 

 be had we are not always fit for it. The art of 

 conversation is so little cultivated among us, the 

 tongue is so little refined, the play of wit and the 

 flow of fancy so little encouraged or esteemed, 

 that our social gatherings are terribly stupid and 

 wearisome. Count Pozzo di Borgo, miserable 

 amid the luxurious appliances of an English coun- 

 try-house — it is Lord Houghton tells the story 

 ("Monographs," page 212) — "drew some newly- 

 arrived foreigner into a corner with the eager 

 request, ' Vicns done causer, je n'ai pas cause 

 pour quinze jours." 1 Neither our language nor 

 our temperament favors that sympathetic inter- 

 course, where the feature and the gesture are as 

 active as the voice, and in which the pleasure 

 does not so much consist in the thing communi- 

 cated as in the act of communication, and still 

 less are we inclined to cultivate that true art of 

 conversation, that rapid counterplay and vivid 

 exercise of combined intelligences, which presup- 

 poses long and due preparation of the imagina- 

 tion and the intellect." 



Instead of stimulating, we bore each other to 



