" A COCKNEY IN ma COUNTRY " is how Mr.
Richard Church describes himself in this altogether persuasive book of essays. Born and bred in London, his home is now in the Weald of Kent, where he cultivates his garden, finds the natives surprisingly friendly, and generally enjoys the rural scene. For all his enjoyment of the countryside, however, and all his close participation in its daily round, he does not make the usual mistake of supposing that he has completed the transformation and gone back to the land : " the tovvnsman,7 he frankly admits, " is never quite natural in the country." And much of the charm of his essays is in this admission, made with humorous candour. In other words, Greet Tide is a bookman's book ; and if the reader does not learn much therein of the country, he does learn a great deal of the gracious, agile mind of the author. For the truth is that to the townsman in the country (though he rarely admits it) the rural scene is less interesting, for itself than for the ideas it provokes in the spectator. Mr. Church therefore sees, what no dyed-in-the-wool countryman ever, sees, sermons in stones and tongues in the running biooks. The slightest word of the native will flower, in his mind, with unsuipected blossoms of meditation. For such a mind, of course, the _essay is a perfect medium of expression ; and some of the examples- in this most companionable book are among the best of their kind: The book is' enhanced with a sheaf of Mr. Tuhnic.liffe's scraper-bbard drawings as delicate in execution as they are ingenious in invention.
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