RIVER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 91, 19 April 1933, Page 16

RIVER.

(By Rutli Tark, 129, Symonds Street, Auckland; aged 15.) I think, after careful consideration, that my favourite book is "The King of the Golden River," by John lluskin. It is only a child's fantasy, "written for a very young lady," but for pure beauty of thought and stateliness of language I have never yet read a-book by-which it may be surpassed. It is the story of three brothers, which has been looked upon as, an allegory, but whether the author intended it that way or not, I do not know. The older brothers are harsh, forbidding men, who hoard their gold and ill-treat their labourers, but the youngest has the most beautiful and yet natural character that even John lluskin could create. How Gluck entertained the North Wind in his brothers' absence is one of the most vivid pieces of description in literature, and the destruction of Treasure Valley and the resulting poverty of the elder brothers a fit retribution for their impoljtness to the airy monarch. Gluck finds in his mug, which he is forced to melt down for gold, the King of the Golden River, a most complete little personage, with the reddest Hose imaginable and hair and beard of curling gold. He gives Gluck directions to turn into gold the river which formerly watered Treasure Valley, which information is greedily followed out by first one and then the other of Gluck's brothers. In telling of the climb up the mountain and across the glacier, Ruskin wields his pen with the genius for which he is famous. We can see the mountains standing starkly black against the sky, hear the groaning and tortured creaking of the ice river, as it splits in gaping chasms and crevices under its own great pressure. We can see the Golden River at sunset, the waves tossing their red-lit manes, and thundering over the cliff in a golden torrent, to crash in leaping foaming ruin at its base And the eerieness of the whole incident is culminated "in the words which end the chapter, <f and the moaning of the river rose wildly into the night, as it gushed over the two black stones," which were once the brothers of little Gluck. How Gluck found that the King of Golden River's words were to be taken both literally and metaphorically, and how he found happiness in goodness, constitutes the rest of the story, which to me, is one of the finest examples of tranquil beauty and clarity of thought which may be found in the English language.