All Mr Helps's writings have been published anonymously; and it is
only within the last two years that he has become known, out of his
own circle, to be the author. His earliest publications were, _Essays
written in the Intervals of Business_, and _An Essay on the Duties of
the Employers to the Employed_, otherwise entitled _The Claims of
Labour_. He has also published a work in two volumes under the title
of _The Conquerors of the New World and their Bondsmen_; a historical
narrative of the principal events which led to negro slavery in the
West Indies and America. But the books from his pen with which we are
best acquainted, and which have obtained the largest measure of public
attention, are a series of essays intermixed with dialogues, called
_Friends in Council_, and a supplementary volume, somewhat different
in plan, which he calls _Companions of my Solitude_.[1] As the whole
of his characteristics as an essayist are displayed with a more
perfect effect in these two latter works than in the others, and as
they will afford us as much extract as we shall have space for, we
propose to confine our remarks to them exclusively.
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