BOOK NOTICES.

Otago Witness, Volume 11, Issue 2280, 11 November 1897, Page 60

BOOK NOTICES.

By Hbadon Hill.

BEACON FIRES.

Ward, Lock, and Co:'s Colonial Library. Dtinedin : Jogepti Braithwaite. It is becoming more and more the custom for authors to collect the stories which they have written and which have appeared in ephemeral form' in the magazines in order to publish them in book form. We suppose it pays to do so, or the practice would not be persevered in, Of course, we must not judge the prudence of it from colonial experience. In the colonies tbe reading public ia not only intrinsically buc relatively small. But in the United Kingdom there is a large reading public, and if an author has made a hit with one or more stories in the magazines apparently he can rely on a remunerative sale for a collection. Of such a nature is " Beacon Fireß." The author has saturated himself with traditional Btories of the southern of England, and in rich profusion tells of smugglers, privateers, pirates, coastguard?, and press gangs. Truth to tell, their proximity to the sea in the stirring times, when as now all national dangers cime seaward, made the maritime population almost amphibious. Women as well as' men could handle a weapon or a boat, and there was nursed that patriotic spirit which fed the belief that a Briton was equal to any number of foreign enemies. Especially does Mr Hill's book teem with instances where the representatives of Britain's hereditary foe have been humbled. Wo Frenchman, however artful, ever yet outwitted a sturdy Eoglish intelligence, bnt, on the contrary, every one either want back crestfallen— -tf he w*no back at all; — or remained a prisoner. Nor does Mr HiU lack the saving talt of humour, for his stories are told in *uch & sprightly way as to charm. ".Bsacon -Fires" is eminently a book for an idla hour or for a railway journey.