to drive away along the old road, recognizing cottages and trees; to come in sight of the house again, your friend’s conversation and the entire aspect of things bringing up many little remembrances of the past; to look out of your chamber window before dinner and to recognize a large beech or oak which you had often remembered when you were far away, and the field beyond, and the hills in the distance, and to know again even the pattern of the carpet and the bed curtains; to go down to dinner, and meet the old greeting; to recognize the taste of the claret; to find the children a little bigger, a little shy at first, but gradually acknowledging an old acquaintance; and then, when your friend and you are left by yourselves, to draw round the fire (such visits are generally in September), and enjoy the warm, hearty look of the crimson curtains hanging in the self-same folds as twenty-four months since, and talk over many old things.

We feel, in opening the new volumes of Friends in Council, as we should in going to pay a visit to an old friend living in the same pleasant home, and at the same pleasant autumnal season in which we visited him before.  We know what to expect.  We know that there may be little variations from what we have already found, little changes wrought by time; but, barring great accident or disappointment, we know what kind of thing the visit will be.  And we believe that to many who have read with delight the previous volumes of this work, there can hardly be any pleasanter anticipation than that of more of the same wise, kindly, interesting material which they remember.  A good many years have passed since the first volume of Friends in Council was published; a good many years even since the second:  for, the essays and discourses now given to the public form the third published portion of the work.  Continuations of successful works have proverbially proved failures; the author was his own too successful rival; and intelligent readers, trained to expect much, have generally declared that the new production was, if not inferior to its predecessor, at all events inferior to what its predecessor had taught them to look for.  But there is no falling off here.  The writing of essays and conversations, set in a framework of scenery and incident, and delineating character admirably though only incidentally, is the field of literature in which the author stands without a rival.  No one in modern days can discuss a grave subject in a style so attractive; no one can convey so much wisdom with so much playfulness and kindliness; no one can evince so much earnestness unalloyed by the least tinge of exaggeration.  The order of thought which is contained in Friends in Council, is quarried from its authors best vein.  Here, he has come upon what gold-diggers call a pocket:  and he appears to work it with little effort.  However difficult it might be for others to write an essay and discourse on it in the fashion of this book, we should judge that its author does so quite