The Sun.
London, England, 1857-06-01 00:00:00

1,989

LITERATURE.

Essays and Sketches. By the late W. P. Scargill.
Author of " The Usurer's Daughter," etc., etc.
Hard.wicke : Duke-street, Piccadilly.
Such a pleasant volume as Mr. Scargill's is not
often presented to the public in so cheap a form.
Considerable original power is displayed; blended
with easy and clever perspicuity, causing the reader
to hang over the pages with cheerful interest, and
imparting no mean "knowledge of the world"
by means of those popular agents—satire, sen-
timent, and sense. We avail ourselves of a short
extract, warmly commending the work to public
favour :
" The world owes much to labour, but what does it
not owe to wit E Is it labour alone that rears the com-
modious dwelling, that builds the lofty temple, that
poises the graceful dome, and spreads the everlasting
arch 1 Labour is all very well in its way, useful to in-
dividuals, beneficial to the community, conducive to
health, comfort, and good order. But what is labour
without wit 1 A pair of hands without a bead ; strength
without mind ; a solitary, silent, .painstaking thing,
moving through the dull earth, and blind as the earth in
which it works. Labour is a brute beast, which wit
harnesses and guides. Labour is wit's slave. By labour
a man may live, but it is only 'by wit that he cad live
well. By labour, food and clothing may be produced,
but by wit come life's ornaments and embellishments.
Labour grasps a handful of earth, wit compasses the
globe ; labour has but two hands, wit works with a
thousand ; labour digs, wit ploughs ; labour toilsheavily
at the oar, wit spreads the broad sail or imprisons the
struggling power of steam ; labour writes and slowly
multiplies the copies of its thoughts, wit prints, and its
wisdom flies through the world on a myriad of wings at
once; labour grinds wearily at the band-mill, wit catches
the vagrant winds, binds up the strength of the lazily
flowing stream, and makes them work its will; labour
has no legs but its own, wit appropriates the speed of
the horse, or lies unwearily on the wings of the wind ;
labour sits spinning at its solitary wheel, and slowly
produces its fruits, while wit sets a thousand wheels at
work at once, and the fable of Briareus ceases to be
a romance ; labour is man's humiliation, that brings
him and binds him down to the earth, sensualising
his mind, and making him feel as though the very
end of his being were but mere existence • labour
asks no questions, has no doubts, no thoughts, no
aspirations, no intellectual ambition ; it sees nothing
in nature but night and day, darkness and light—the
night to sleep in and the day to work in ; and so it
moves its melancholy, monotonous round, till it sinks
to the dust and sleeps in a forgotten grave: But by
wit man lives to all that is around him, above him,
beneath him. It ie the übiquity of the mind that
converses at once with the course of the planets and
the customs of the antipodes. It is ever busy in seek-
ing to solve the great riddle of being. It is the living
principle of life, and is that whereby man feels that
he is. It is the exercise that strengthens but wearies
not. It is the activity of intellect that finds as much
pleasure in the arising of new doubts as in the solution
of its old ones. It is the muscle and nerve of the
soul, that longs for difficulties to wrestle • with, and
has an appetite for mental conflict. Labour, if it thinks
at all, thinks only of and for itself ; wit, though it
thinks for itself, thinks of others ; it makes universal
acquaintance with universal nature, it reads human
thoughts, and sympathises with human interests. La-
bour is selfish even in its generosity ; wit is generous in
its selfishness. Labour bas but one object, simply to
be; wit has a thousand objects, and a thousand ways
to each of them. By labour life grows wearisome, the
senses dull and obtuse ; by wit the monotony of being
is sweetly broken, and modulated into a thousand bar.
monious combinations."

The Reason Why. Houlston and Wright.
Paternoster-row.

Many of us become "beat scholars" and re-
gular" walking dictionaries," and, yet, are curiously
ignorant of the most simple phenomena of nature
constantly surrounding us. This volume is offered
as an interpreter of things which are more fre-
quently seen than understood by the mass of man-
kind : and to those anxious to learn while they
wonder, and admire while they oberve, it will
constitute a compact and valuable book of refe-
rence. The information is necessarily very con-
centrated, but the subjects are myriad, and the
interrogatory style attractive.