NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 19972, 5 July 1930, Page 15

NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

THE ENGLISH HERITAGE. (1) Cricket. By Neville Cartas. (11) The English Constitution. By Sir Maurice Awog. (Ill) The English Inn. By Thomas Burke. The Bigllsh Heritage Series: liOngmttas, Green and Co. (3s Gd net each.) Singly and together, the three new volumes in the English Heritage series are admirable. oeyen being now issued, the series begins handsomely to justify itself by its growing scope, by the quality of its members and by the support they give each other, and by the comeliness of the lengthening row of green and gold backs. Wild Life, Humour, the Public Schools, Shakespeare; now Cricket, tha Constitution, and the Inn; next to come. Waterways and Roads (Mr. Belloe, of course), the Face of England (Mr Blun« den, a choice not to bo bettered), tho Monarchy, and the Bible; this is very artful roving among the "character, custom, and beauty, the mental and material possessions" which are "summed up in the word 'England.'" But to return to tho three titles under particular notice, each of them deserves high approval. Mr Cardus, Of course, stands acknowledged as the best all-round writer on cricket. Others may equal or excel him in knowledge and judgment; nobody touches him, except occasionally Mr Lucas, in description of plav and players, and in the imaginative recapture or historic feats and figures. Mr Cardus is an artist whose theme is oricket; most other writers on the game have their heads full of it, but can only spill and slop it over inelegantly on to paper. In this book Mr Cnrdus's art, afi graceful as his beloved ft. H. Spoonor, as magical tie the batting of his winard Ranjitsinhji. ranges from the early lore and legend of cricket to the heroes and the doings of yesterdav and to-day; but he knows wh«*o tho springs of freshness and youth in cricket are—among the boys, on the village green, in the hearts of its Innominate, obwmr« lovers. Perhaps the • best thing in tho book is his study of "W.G."; perhaps it is his touching Aild beautiful sketch of old William; but there (s no "perhaps" about tfc*» strong sense and the justice of some of his remarks about "the spirit of the tramo"—a subject on wh?ch, play inn Dr. JohnSoh, he sharply osclaims "clear your mind of cant. Sir,"—and about Australian cricket. What ho says here, in tribute to the stern spirit of the Australians, and in rebuke or those who betrftv both their Wrmt and their misunderstanding of it, deserves to be quoted, at least in part: Absence of cant from Australian cricket eon be very refreshing in a land where at timet we no doubt incline towards senti* mentality in. cricket. The Australians are not in the habit of excusing themselves after defeat. When, at Brisbane, in December, 1938, Australia were beaten by 675 runs--the most pronounced success by runs in th* history of Test matches—Australia, as we hate seen, lost half-way through the engagement the services of Gregory and Kelleway. But these accidents were stoically taken as all In the day's work by the Australians. It was different when, in 19241825, England lost the rubber in Australia. The Injury to Tate's toe-nail waa bewailod, throughout the Empire. In 1906 Darling's team lost the rubber, and England in every Test match won the toss. The Australian captain did not aa a consequence suggest that tossing for Innings should be abolished. But In 1024*1025, when Gilllgan lost the toss four times in five matches—and the rubber easily—the newspapers in this country wept tears, and announced the tidings of 'Gllllgun's bad luck" until moat Englishmen must have fait ashamed. Fortunately our cricket* era are not a* bad as our Press would have ua imagine.

Sir Maurice Amos'e book on tlie English Constitution is a model of Clarity and of compression, without which, within 200 pages, he must either hare been superficial or else fragmentary. He is also refreshingly witty, as when, for instance, describing the functions of the Lord Chancellor, he mentions that he has statutory responsibilities in respect of the Land Registry, the Public Trustee's ond lunatics, "from whom he receives a considerable correspondence"; but for mingled—and sustained—wit and wisdom the preliminary "Conversation" between F., a foreigner, and N., a native, must bear the palm. These pages are a general disouwion and commentary on the matter of the book, as shrewd as agreeable: and they close with this excellent passage t F.t Ton tall in* that politic! have too much to do with legislation! N.: Just that. P.: You mean to say—it is certainly very different from anything I had imagined—that your laws are made at the dictation of sinister influences? ft.: Good gracious, no; nothing of that sort. Our laws are made from the most elevated motive*, by the most inoorruptible and public-spirited men. But nobody thinkai that they are very well made. Legislation is a fine art, like engineering or surgery; but it ie an art which has little opportunity of development in England. Our only working machinery for making laws is monopolised by the necessities of party government and the convenience of the administrative departmerits. It should be much easier than it is to carry through Acts which are of no party advantage. Only to can there be any hope of bringing some order into the jungle of the Statute Book, and correcting the vagaries of the Common Law. , . , Mr Burke's book is to be mentioned last, only because it can be most briefly commended. A tremendous amount of sham romance and rapture oan be beaten up about Ye Olde Innes: Mr Burke hates it, and says so, and loves the truth, and tells it. Thia book has the comfort of good, material entertainment, old style or modern, and of the healthy spirit which knows how to offer and how to receive it. (Travellers to Enpland- should take this book with them: it is a euide-booli of a special and precious kind.)

ART. A Mlaifttare History of SnropMU Art. Bv n H Wlleneki. o*fo-d University Press, London: Humphrey SSUford. (4s 64 art.) To do justice to this little book it would be necessary to write a review of many columns. Although it was begun in response to a suggestion from the' editor of the "Eadio Times" (to whom it is dedicated) that a "potted" history of art should be prepared which would "answer the curiosity of the average intelligent man," it has been written so well that it will take its place at once among the essays on art which really throw the kind of light that the average man lacks, "If you go to Les Eyzies, near Perigueux," Mr Wilenski begins by Baying, "and climb the side of a mountain you will find an old woman in front of a hole in the rock. The old woman will lead you down a tunnel that seems a quarter of a mile long. Yon can touch the rock on both sides and above your head; at times the passage grows wider and higher; at others, it gets narrower and lower; at one point you have to wriggle, bent double, through a hole. The old woman, holding an electric inspection lamp in her hand, will show you faint carved outlines of bisons on the walls and traces of red-ochre colouring. These bisons, and the similar pictures of bisons and reindeer incised and painted by prehistoric men i#i other caves and tunnels in the Dordogne and in the North of Spain, are the beginning of art as we know it to-day." Mr Wilenski is anything but an old woman, but his essay is the electric lamp which shows us what men for 30,000 years have been trying to carve and draw and paint. He has not selected works for mention because he person* ally Ukee them, or attempted to say what is right in art and what wrongHis book is not a criticism, or even a bet aipßljr § «£ £g

facts as he sees them in his aerial survey. He does, however, allow himself the liberty of a point of view. Instead of regarding the history of art as a record of the various phases of man's adjustment to his environment, he keeps constantly in his mind the fact that the occasions when a generation has been adjusted to its environment have been more frequent than the Occasions when it had achieved the process for itself. The history of art, looked at from a sufficient height, will be found, he says, to be to a large extent "the history of the use of artists by powerful individuals or organisations as instruments in the task of imposing some particular form of adjustment upon their generation." It is only as the centuries advance almost to our own times that we find the artist recording his personal adjustments, and when our own times are finally reached, art has become again a part of the intellectual activity of the age, and the artist a person whom all sorts of people exploit for material ends. Composition and Expression In Xuidscape Pointing. By B. jr. Olmu, A.M.C., L.I.F.A. The Hew Art Library: Seeley, Service and Co. (IBs net.) This latest volume in the series of excellent handbooks comprising the New Art Library seems a departure from the general policy of the editors. The earlier volumes, notably "The Art of Etching" by E. S. Lumsden, "Water Colour Painting" by Alfred W. Rich, and "Landscape Painting" by Adrian Stokes, are the work of artists of distinction who have consented to become teachers for the time being, and we feel we are given valuable "inside" information and authoritative comment. In "Composition and Expression in Landscape Painting" the author writes as one addicted to art teaching, and becoming confirmed in the habit; and the chapters dealing with methods and materials are more convincing than that headed "The Aim of the Artist." In the author's own words, "The aim of this book is to plaoe before the student, whether he is practising or merely endeavouring to understand landscape art, a few simple rules upon which he may I base his enquiries, and a few standards by which to estimate the quality of the work." For pupils and teachers taking landscape painting as part of a general educational course, with a limited time to devote to the subject, Mr Glass has provided an excellent textbook, the subjects dealt with being clearly and simply stated and pertinently illustrated. The determined landscape student, however, would do better to fare forth with Hogarth's blunt "Composition is the art of varying well," and try to learn from Nature what that genius meant, The set of pictures reproduced for analytical consideration are carefully selected, and include some fine landscapes, seldom met with, notably "A Little Town in Provence," by Sir David Cameron; "La Place des Molards," by Bonington, as well as examples by Arnesby Brown, George Clausen, and several of the earlier English Masters.

PHILOSOPHY. The Intelligible World. By W. M. Tftten. Allen and Unwin. (16s net.) If most novelists oould write English as this philosopher writes it, we would be better men. He ia a classicist living amidst disintegration and perpetual challenge. All the fine find important minds oi the past have been lu essence above tue battles that raged around them, and Professor Urbau's mind is of the same permanent quality, nis thesis is the old one: that an intelligible .world is a necessity for thought, and that the omy intelligible world is one in which existence and value are ultimately inseparable, in those days, when intellectuality ie so prone to obscure an underlying dearth of intelligence, all old theses must be stated anew. As one sees it, the docadence of music and art in the 19th and 20th oenturiee has been paralleled by a similar chaotic unrest in philo£o» nhy itself. Science, alone, goes confidently, but its confidence is the naivete of a child. Nietzsche, the great protagonist of Modernism, feeling the tic of his age, stepped icopo-t-lastioally back, the better, aa he said, to leap forward; but the leap was into chaos. And now the world is delivered over to the pan-fictionism of Vaihinger and the pan-nihilism of Gaultier. Professor Urban begins with Henry Jones's remark: "It is a positive achievement for a philosopher to be orthodox, provided his orthodoxy is philosophic.' This text carries him through his criticism of Modernism to the core of his protest in a closelyreasoned chapter on Metaphysics and Value Theory. Part two (the return to philosophia perennis) opens with an utteranoe of nostalgia, a grief for the Greeks, as noble and clear lined as their own statues, which one is tempted to quote even as a fragment. In the end, an "ens, unum, verum, bonum" (and beautiful, too), is struck out of the formless marble or thoughts This is the way back to Hegel, to Kant, to St. An'selm, and St ; Thomas, till at last one's eyes are bright with the glory of those twin sons, Aristotle and Plato. The book end# with these words: "Philosophy is intelligible discourse about the world, and the metanhysical idiom of the Great Tradition is the only language that is really intelligible." With that the book is complete.

PIANO TECHNIQUE, The Levinakaya System of Pianoforte Technique and Tone-Colour. By Marls Lortnskaya. jr. X. Dent and Boat, Xtd. (10s 6d net.) Madams Maria Levinskaya's book is divided into three parts, the first being an historical survey of the evolution of pianoforte technique, with excellent quotations of such famous teachers and virtuosi as J. 8. Bach, Clara Schumann, Leschetizky, Bafonoff, Phillip, Townsend, and Matthay. Part two Is devoted to the underlying principles of different and opposing schools, from a physiological ana psychological standpoint. Part three deals with the value of musie as a means to development of culture—physical, mental, and aesthetic. In the course of her musical life Madame Levinskaya, who is now a prominent pianist and teacher in London, has had wide experience of the world's greatest teachers ard pianists, as is evidenced by the list which she presents, Safonoff, Godowsky, Phillip, Matthay, and many pianists, notable and less than notable. With experience of such different methods she u qualified to criticise the virtues and failings of each, and to build up out of her discoveries a method of her own. This she claims to do; specifically, to combine the merits of the very useful modern relaxation and weight with the elarity of articulation of the old style of playing. She comments very wisely in the historical survey on the remarks of J. S. Bach in relation to the use of the arm, pointing out .that it is not perhaps such a modern discovery as might be supposed. She attacks the Matthay sys* tem for its over-emphasis of relaxation and rotation and the tendency of its teachers to regard it as an end instead of only one of many means to an end. Madame Leviuskaya has found, too, that the prevalence of so much waste energy in indiscriminate arm movement, With resultant monotony of touch and tone, and slovenly finger work, can be traced to the same source. She deplore* the modern tendency to discount the merits of the old style of high finger action, elaiming that many beauties of this technical tradition are being lost. There are many interesting charts illustrating her own and other technical methods. A valuable chapter is also given with illuminating diagrams on wMioaß *ysea (Pffl

, ■ ' ... ; . . ■ muscles and movements of arm em--ployed in them; and this makes clear one of the chief aims of the Levinskayp system, conscious mental control pf tbiif muscles Df finger, hand, and arm Itf every branch of technique. . -+i THE THIRSTY REVOLUTION.^ Drink Vp, Gentleman! Br '• B. Sfctttnl Ofcapm*n and Sail. A satirically entertaining glance into a future England—4te yean when "two titled adventurer*" control the whole Press, and publie-houses at* abolished to help & German Jew make" money out of tea-shops* Happily a ie? volution ends this reign Of. frightftilnoss. Mr Morton has Tela bumottr aid less wit and leas inventive gusto than Mr Chesterton—who has a« muehf—buV it is no small praise to say that this book is not shamed by comparUonwk "The Flying Inn." 1 " - : :!& ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. Here's Luck. By L. W. Lower. Angus notation, Sydney. An Australian comedy, quite sprightly, in which "Dad and Stanley Gudgeon,'* being left to bach while the ladies 6t the household take a holiday, "join it#' grass widowers of Sydney." '-*■ . ■>«! The Blond Ace. By WutDM "JftWrfW-. Mills and Booa. From flMde «td JE4Dougall. -Or A love story, the bustling style _ ,<&• which is kept up to the last pas£ There, from the neighbourhood of he* hero's bosom, the heroine giirgiee| "Doesn't that seem just a 'wee Ulf hustling, Cloud Man?" fie thinks iflStS Naval Disarmament. By H. tf&Mn Harris. Allen and Vntftn. (81 it net) Mr Wilson Harris is an autfcorific whose argument ii as sane as his facts are unimpeachable. Nobody :whi» wishes to study the antecedents of the recent London Conference aijd the issues there discussed and to estimAt* future possibilities can" Safely ignore this little work. ,f

Primrose Jolly. By BopfciA O&U, MBUs &n£ Boon. From Ban<U Mil Me&ottg*U. Primrose Folly it not a fcObse or i& estate, but the heroine of s novel, iijtt of well-studied ddJUestie indldent ana character, by a novelist irlfo has achieved some popularity, ut deserve* it. ■ s

At the Bwsk o' B«yond. Mtf IfctM*fn-tu-es of CanMn By BltluN. Benwant. CfcsaMta. . Eight jprodigipns adventqfta of 1 tain Reginald Ryprington ill tfce jungSa. Of Burma, the Terai* the .Weeterb '' in Malabar, Ceylon, and the ArvanaWt which are all isfssted with kitter*; njaa' and beast, ,% A Common-seas* CtaM* te HiMlriil' 1 By J. T. Ttk&. Oka**** W Ipi (5s net.) sjs. This is a workmanlike, sensible set of cautions and inatruetioii* tt vSg novice in public' speakiiig. Mir. Kuffa emphasises the wiflfi r obVioaSf:l)ttt"Oftejt neglected maxim that "jslorotifin" WfllJ; not do by itself. , * 1 i «r* • , k c m . CtMriflgfor tilt Younf. AfcMAr Uacitm. TTwerusr L*urle, tM. This is a collection of recipes:-, \ "children from two to fifteett'yeari ' of age," but it will W found c widely useful than that. The wrlteri* a Medallist of the Universal Oeokinj and Food Association. < r- _ *

Btnart. (fi* edaSt,) "X'iAv A popular edition of- a. lino«a treatise on physics and raigkm. Jf£t for everybody, but far flM'w.m in sympathy with' the Auttua?? Jjn tM to serenity and .strength.' -J- i " We have received Gordon and Qotch a copy of "Wi}don?i Children's Fashion* for 'pSifi- eiro|f||? ins four patterns for •:cTijldran-jo&fwfc one to twelve years; as well as i "G«fw Housekeeping" for May/. • 282 pages, containing m .addition w som© soo4 stories, a* bride, recipes, ana .an aril el©- by & M.Sc., FJ.CJ M .-< on Colonel H. P. Moulton&arxett t&fc protested against the way in which." tfck names of members of his fctfftfly- hun* been used in recent books relating to the lives of Robert Browning-and Eli#beth Barrett Browning. He aajs thai he and other grand-children of Mr Mont; ton-Barrett object to tfceir grandparents, parents, unelee, and aunts ,84pieted in imaginary situation*, andowjjd with sentiments which artf to our knowledge «f and ited- with conversations whi«*., #» wholly fifititlons."* f* Messrs Georg«. ft. HaW»|pf;aiid tfej Jjtd., in conjunction with tfe' AtlMWi Monthly* Press and Messrs. and 00., of Boston, UJEUL, wto thtf ftflr lowing announcement:' weeks' deliberation the of tha Great Atlantic prize novel competition have regretfully deoided that ao single one of the nine hundred tnannaeripy svftmiitted ia in their opinion Mdbl#Bm qualified for publication as a prim fcovel. They have therefore felt compelled, cording to the provision in the originfl announcement, to close the and they are' returning all ""Wi to their respective authors. *

INTERESTING m .. I. I I II »v.-; . * - "Elfrida and .the Mad Busman." >'&&*§,- are quite a number of persons in this Stpty. First and foremost there is Bffrida, might be described astlwj-!Wp«xen U> 4k» Case"; then there la lira Melroodwith Wsy. attendant vestal Sarah; Mrs 'Jndd, .of raary lane, a policeman, a frigfctensd bus conductor, a stout gentleman—but jou eatrreaA whole gtory la the "ABQuSY" HagaiinJi, for June—now on sale at is 4d_v Slevea noted writers contribute.. to this ;lssua. , To get stories from the pens at such noteC writers as E. F. Oppenheiiq, A. Cona'n Doyti, Leonard Merrick, etc., without riconrso circulating library is a. Mriicnitr advantage attached to the purchase of the VGRANIP' Magasine, and in the July iattto there ire contributions from these as wetf as a aftiabs* of other flrst>r»te writers—oovastafc '-ISO pages, and at Js 4d it is exoeyUenuljr buying. * for sheer*amaring adventure, nothing, quite so startling .bat been published in recent : yean*, as "The Sound." Bead how a weird aossa terrorised the earth for several deySv.ntMri, dening the populace and lending cOlour to the suggestion that the end of the IWrld had come. "The Bound" appears In "PEARSON'S" Kagasise tot May. Your aswsagwrt can supplr you (or Is 84. —*