The Working Man's Companion is, in fact, a very well
com- piled and amusing children's book : we do not see how it will fall in 'with the tastes and wants of the " working man," whose reliefs are seldom of a literary or scientific cast. After labour long and sustained, come food and sleep. The intellectual wants of the labourer are few ; if on Sundays or holidays his barked brain puts forth any intellectual buds, the subject lies within his daily experience—as to who is the ablest ploughman, who has got the finest team, who has applied to the overseer, and what is the character of the clergyman or magistrate. It is. in vain to interest such men in the physiology of ant's , eggs, or the biography of BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. If such men --
.read, it is the newspaper
not because they require any mental food, but because they expect to be told where the shoe pinches. They fancy they are seeking relief, and hope to hear of means of procuring higher wages, or news of the prospect of better times. Nevertheless, for those who will or can read, the Working Man's Companion will be found an amusing little compilation, and " adapted to the meanest capacity."
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