Is 4 Green Suave: A Country Commentary, By Maurice Hewlett.
(Bell. "6s, net.)
What happier state than that of the man of letters who, in middle age, with a conipetency of fame and of goods, has retired to a country home? Mr. Maurice Hew Jett has a house in a Wiltshire village, a garden, the choice remnant of his library, neighbours who like him and trust to him for help. Thence he looks out upon this moiling world of ours, glad to be quit of it, but interested in it still, and ready to send from his green shade some of the green thought which may induce it to correct. its values and prevent it, perhaps, from running more violently than need be down a steen place into the sea. Let him fold about him ever so snugly the wrap of his earned leisure, he will think, in garden or library, for the world that he has left; if a_call come, he will get up, throw off the wrap, and go about his neighbour's business.
This little hook of essays admits us to the private leisure and to the half-private activity. We read with the student, and go about with the man of affairs. And_ in hath we find the love of rural England and her people. Such understanding as this may still keep our countryside irimune from the influence of those who buy country houses in order to live a town life in them, and a country life inimune from the ridicule earned by those who play at the complicate ed game of the "simple" but unneighhourly life. There engaging touch of the student in the man who, going to live in the country, wil] read Thomas Tusser right through; but the student _is continually proving himself better able than other men to make the most of his conditions; and Mr.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.