The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-14 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

The English at Home. By Alphonse Esquiros.
Third Series. One vol., pp. 370. Chapman and

Hall.

As a delineator of English life and manners, Ma
Esquiros stands altogether unrivalled amongst his
countrymen. He is the exact antithesis of M. Asso-
lant. The latter, conspicuous among the feaille-
tonists of his day, for what we may perhaps the
most accurately define as the priggish pertness of
his vivacity is remarkable for an excessive
amount of ignorance that is only surpassed,
indeed, by the abounding insolence with
which it is paraded. As affording a noble
contrast to superficial and ephemeral writers
like M. Assolant, et hoc genus omne, commend us
at all times to M. Alphonse Esquires. Without the
garrulity, and it is but fair towards our veteran
traveller and author that we should add
also without the exceeding gift of playful
humour for which Sir Francis Head is so
remarkable, the author of "The English at
Homo" is, as a foreign delineator of London and
Londoners, what the author of " The Faggot of
French Sticks" is, in that capacity, in regard to
Paris and the Parisians. He is a generous critic—
a man of enlarged sympathies—a careful collector
and collator of facts and statistics—a cicerone upon
paper, in whose candour and good faith the most
implicit trust may be placed. He has lived amongst
us here in London, has closely examined our
manners and customs, has noted down, in no cap-
tious or carping mood, our more conspicuous peen.-
liari ties. He has not only observed these peculiarities
and meditated on them, but has often analysed them
thoroughly, conscientously, and in a truly philoso-
phieal spirit. His sketches of England and the
English, or rather, as we have, said of London and
the Londoners, have been published originally piece-
meal in the shape of a correspondence in the Revue
des Deux Mondes. Among the gifted band of con-
tributors to that ablest of all periodical publications
upon the European Continent —a periodical taking
rank with our own first-class periodicals, whether
daily, weekly, monthly,or quarterly, with the 7imes,
Saturday Review, Blackwood, or the Edinburgh—
among the many eminent writers engaged upon the
Revue des Deux Mondes, M. Esquiros holds high
rank. He is one of the few leading correspondents
of a journal whose communications are worthy of
thus being collected together for separate publica-
tion. As the witty essays of " Elia" grew up in
successive numbers of the old London Maga-
zine, so bit by bit, letter by letter, these chap-
ters on " The English at Home" have expanded to
three goodly series under the industrious hand of
their observant writer, in his character as the Lon-
don Correspondent of the Revue des Deux Mondes.
Already the two earlier series have taken their
place upon an accessible shelf in many a well-
selected library on either side of the Channel—in
France as originally penned by M. Esquiros him-
self, in England as faithfully translated by Sir
Lascelles Wraxall. Of the First and Second Series
it were superfluous here to speak. All we have to
do with now is, the third series here before us,
this very welcome and very readable volume—a
volume that will be found by the majority of those
Englishmen who may come to look into it, almost as
instructive, certainly quite as amusing, as it is sure
to prove even among the better educated among
travelled Frenchmen. The English at Home, in
this third series are scrutinised for the most part by
M. Esquiros—out-of-doors. It is true that several
chapters are devoted by him to a description of such
matters of in-door life as those connected with
our banking system, and especially the Bank of
England; with our method of coining, a subject
conducting the reader successively into the Mint
and the Tower of London ; with the labyrinth of
our Exchange, involving all kinds of information
in regard to stock, funds, bears, bulls, and divi-
dends; with bank-notes and their manufacture;
with bullion (gold and silver), and the subterranean
places in which it is stored up—those cellars of the
Bank which Punch whimsically suggested the other
day must have given rise to the phrase of " a cool
thousand !" But in other portions of this third series
of "The English at Home," by Alphonse Esquires, we
have such exhilarating themes treated of—as—par
example—Tallyho! Who-whoop ! Foxhunting, and
every imaginable thing relating to that most
robustuous and invigorating of all cur national
sports. To everything of the slightest interest cal-
culated to afford a vivid notion of Cricket and
Cricketers! To Pugilism and the Pugilists! To
Pedestrianism and the Pedestrians ! To swimming
and rowing, and the glory of regattas ! To our
English Railway system—metropolitan, suburban,
and provincial ! M. Esquiros has the charm, as a
writer, peculiar only to those who enter thoroughly
and completely into an appreciation of the subject-
matter they happen to be writing about, He has
not only the faculty of observing keenly, but of
sympathising heartiiy with what he happens at the
moment to be observing. He is in his temperament
—though not one atom the less of a patriotic
Frenchman a generous hearted, open-handed,
oright-eyed, blithe-voiced cosmopolitan. He comes
amongst us here in England not as a cynic but as
an appreciator. He seems to be always in good
humour with himself and with those around him,
no matter whom the latter may chance to be—
banking clerks or roughs of the ring, gold
diggers or railway porters, wealthy country
squires or poor mouldy earth stoppers. All's one
to him, whatever the place or whatever the occa-
sion. Englishmen or Frenchmen, it seems hardly
to matter which to M. Esquiros—each is to him
dispassionately the fellow creature. Whatever his
class, creed, or country—no matter what the station
to which Providence, or in other words circum-
stances may have called him, it is another specimen
of the genus honzo Le has to describe in a different
garb and under certain new appearances. As agree-
able and instructive reading as can be found any-
where by an enquiring Frenchman desirous of ob-
taining a just estimate of what the English are and
look like when at home, may be found by that same
inquiring Frenchman in the pages of M. Alphonse
Esquiros. And here, too, in these pages, as trans-
lated by Sir Lascelles Wraxall, the English them-
selves may be sure of finding large stores of amuse.
ment, and with that no small amount of infer-
illation, while turning over these pictures of
themselves, drawn in no ungenial mood, and with
an ever-ready and master-hand by this gifted and
generous Frenchman.

Life ; its Nature, Varieties, and Phenomena. By
Leo H. Grindon, Lecturer on Botany at the Royal
School of Medicine, Mancheder ; Author of
" Figurative Language," " Manchester Walks
and Wildflowers," One vol., pp. 401. Third
Edition. Pitman.
The author of this work has made choice of a
most momentous theme, and he has treated his im-
portant subject in a manner so comprehensive, and
at the same time so comprehensible, that his book

is already in a third edition. We cannot give
better idea of the plan and purpose of his undertak-
ing than by quoting from his own introductory re-
marks. " The object of this work," he says, "is
twofold--

First, it is proposed to give a popular account of the phe-
nomena which indicate presence of that mysterious, sus-
taining force, we denominate Life, or Vitality, and of the
laws which appear to govern their manifestation; secondly,
will be considered those Spiritual, or Emotional and Intel-
lectual States, which collectively constitute the essential his-
tory of our tempral lives, rendering existence either pleasur-
able or painful. So extensive an inquiry will involve the con-
sideration of the most interesting subjects alike of physio-
logy and psychology. The constitution and functions of the
bodies in which we dwell, the delights which attend the
exercise of the intellect and the affections ; the glory and
loveliness of the works of God,—will all come under notice,
and receive their fitting meed of illustration. Especially
will the practical value and interest of life be pointed out ;
the unity and tine symmetry of the True, the Beautiful,
and the Goad ; the poetry of "common things," and the
intimate dependence of the whole upon Him in whom " we
live, and move, and have our being."

In this latter portion of his task Mr. Grindon has
occasionally clothed his thoughts of high philosophy
in most poetic language. His analysis of the moral
sentiments, the emotional joys and sufferings of
humanity, is singularly felicitous, and will be found,
here, very beautifully defined. As an evidence of
the practical pod sense which distinguishes the
majority of his opinions, the following will be seen
to comprise within it some very significant ad-
vice on