The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-09 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Erenings at Home. By Dr. Aikin and Mrs. Bar-
bauld. One vol., pp. 212. Longman and Co.
Another delightful nursery clessic has here been
added to that series of charming story-hooks now
being published, in quarterly volurnettes, by the
Messrs. Longman, under the title, collectively, of
J. S. Laurie's Shilling Entertaining Library. Half
a dozen good reasons we have now had for praising
this most welcome collection of narratives—
" Beloved as fable and bolieved as truth :"
to wit, "Robinsrm Crusoe," " Gulliver's Travels,"
" Christmas Stories," " Sendford and Merton,"
"The History of the Plague of London," and now,
completing the half dozen, this welcome re-issue of
that celebrated " Juvenile Budget of Miscellanies,"
better known by its old lamiliar name of " Evenings
at Home." What Mr. and Mrs. Howitt were, not
so very many years back to ourselves when we
were children, what they still are to our own
children, while yet these are children, Dr. Aikin
and Mrs. Barbauld were to the children of an
earlier generation. The clever, simple-hearted,
fiction-weaving husband and wife of to-day,
in other words, have been but the re-
petition, in an entirely new way, of the clever,
simple-hearted, fiction-weaving brother and sister
of yesterday. As Mr. Thackeray says of Swift,
that he strode into the nursery with the step of an
Ogre, our fathers might have said, on the contrary,
of Dr. Aikin and Mrs. Barbauld, we ourselves
might say again, now-a-days, of William and
Mary Howitt, that they come hand in hand
among the little people like dear old friends—
friends, as they are, welcomed there, whenever they
cross the threshold, with childish prattle, and—
better than smiles—with peals of gleeful laughter.
They come there, this man and wife, this brother
and sister, like a sort of Gaffer and Gammer
Grethel—a couple to be made much of in the cosiest
of arm chairs, confronting each other in the snug-
gest of corners, upon the opposite sides of the nur-
sery hearth on a winter's night; to be clustered about
alternately, and listened to with breathless interest
by the bright-eyed boys and girls for whom they
ring out their merry rhymes, or tell in
clear and comprehensible prose the funniest tales
about Tom, Dick, or Harry, Kitty, Polly,
or Susan. As pretty a gathering together of these
same charming stories in prose and verse as any of
them ever yet jotted down upon paper, for the de-
light of the youngsters, is this very juvenile Budget
of Miscellanies yclepped the "Evenings at Home."
Such evenings! Oue while, for example, we are
laughing at " Tit for Tat," where the sagacious ele-
phant, having had a cocoa-nut cracked upon his skull
by his driver, another day, in his turn, cracks a cocoa-
nut upon the driver's (cracking skull and nut together,
as it happens) by way of retaliation ! Another
while, again, we are laughing at "Phatheon
junior" wildly careering with his gig and
tandem, halter - skelter, through the village
fair, among pigs, poultry, and apple-women,
until spilt, et the close of his disastrous escapade,
plump into the muddiest of ditches ! Linnet
and goldfinch, swallow and tortoise, lapdog
and monkey, dove and phoenix, eyes and no eyes,
flying and swimming, adventures of a cat, and story
of a little dog—these are among the subjects here
commented upon for our entertainment. And
even, we may say, many "children of a
larger growth" than such as are usually to
be found trotting about in knickerbockers,
or trundled along the streets in perambu-
lators, might lis'en with advantage to Dr. Aikin
end Mrs. Barbauld as they here, alternately, prattle
in prose and verse ! Certain of this—both young
and old—that from these storied pages of " Evenings
at Home" innocent sources of mirth and delightful
morsels of information are attainable by all who
list—literally—at pleasure ! Ye doubt whether
any prettier edition of this dear old book was ever
printed than the one now procurable from the
Great House in the Row, at the " ridiculously small
amount" of one shilling. A ccmpanion volume it is,
of course, in every way to its five predecessors
already enumerated, and already noticed by us, as
they deserved to be noticed, at the time of their pub-
lication, in the columns of our journal. Brit, in one
particular, there is observable, in regard to this
addition of a sixth volume, to Mr. Laurie's series of
illustrated story-books, a merit beyond that dis-
coverable, at any rate in so marked a way, in the
majority of its predecessors. Tce embellishments
here introduced by " S." into this fresher instal-
ment of the Entertaining Library possessing the
distinctive merit of peculiar animation. The
frontispiece affords a remarkable instance of this
with its pencilled memorial of jehu's destructive
slapdash, with his high-mettled, runaway ponies, in
among the jumbled herd of squealing pigs and
piglings. Capital, too, in its way, is the humorous
delineation of the upset of the carrier's cart, and
the indoor glimpse of that rascally tame Raven,
who coolly walked off, for the purpose of after-
wards as coolly walking into, the bag of meal be.
longing to Robinet, the peasant of Lorraine.

THE TIME-GUN.