NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 102, 1 May 1909, Page 13

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

"Stranleigh's Millions."' By Robert Barr, author of "Jekla," "The Triumph of Eugene Valmont," etc. , London: George Bell and Sons. (Whitcombe and Tombs.) The reader who has the advantage of acquaintance with Mr. Barr's earlier book, "Young Lord Stranleigh," will' have been already introduced to that nobleman, as well as to his friend Peter Mackellar, the engineer, and the Hon. John Hazel. The languid and dandified Stranleigh of Wychwood betrayed a curious and intuitive genius in finance, and brought to naught a conspiracy to rob a company that owned a goldfield of preternatural richness. When the story closed the nobleman, after some exciting adventures, had averted a great commercial panic, much to his own profit, and had fifteen or twenty millions in bullion in "safe deposit." That is to say, it lay unsuspected at the bottom of a shaft of a deep copper-mine in Cornwall, in the form of hundred-pound ingots. At this point the thread of the story is resumed, and the resourceful nobleman turns some of his millions to account. He is very faithful to old friends, and does some big things to help them in their difficulties. And, of course, a man with so much ready cash at hand, with an alert brain, can do big things. The book, which consists of six separate episodes, would make delightful reading for the imaginative man to whom it is a rare experience to have a five-pound, note to spend just as he pleases. Lord Stranleigh, for instance, finding an old acquaintance remorselessly squeezed by the proprietor of an octopus-like department store, reverses the order of things by secretly buying up all the business places in the district and underselling the captain of industry till he capitulates and takes a position subordinate to the man he tried to ruin. Similarly, when a railway company cuts off access by rail to a seaside town over which it holds heavy mortgages, in order that it may foreclose at its leisure — which would incidentally have ruined Mackellar, who has now a charming wife — Lord Stranleigh, by the expenditure of a good many millions, buys up all the railway shares, which " boom " wonderfully at once, and puts a new complexion on the whole affair. Stranleigh seems to have " caught on," and bids fair to become, like Captain Kettle and other recent worthies of fiction, the centre of a story cycle. When we have him in love, and when some day his v?edding-bells are rung, we may infer that the cycle is about complete. Not till then. "The Buckiumper." By Nat Gould. London : John Long. (Whitcombe and Tombs.) It is not necessary to do more than note the appearance of a new story by this popular author. There are those who have iormed the Nat Gould habit, and would not miss the books on any account as they appear. To some who have not yet developed the habit, the striking picture on tlie cover, in which the buckjumper's rider comes a terrible "cropper," may prove an irresistible at traction. "With Uncle Sam and his Family : About People and Things American." By Mr. and Mrs. Grattan Grey. Australasian edition. Melbourne : George Robertson Proprietary. This is a bulky book of nearly seven hundred pagees. The greater part seems to be compiled from yearbooks, guidebooks, etc., an old and very unilluniinating book on the Mormons supplying material for two chapters besides a worn-out stereotype fancy picture of the Mountain Meadows massacre. The volluina contains also impressions of travel and anecdotes of no particular significance, trivialities such as the information that a grand-niece of Paul Kruger is an opera-singer in San Francisco, and that there is an alleged remote connection between the families of Washington and General Lee. These are disquisitions on protection, the colour question, national defence,/ etc., specially addressed to Australians, who are lectured on their domestic politics, always with the special moral that Uncle Sam Odlin is the Friend — not John Bull Short. For Mr. Grey is an Anglophobe of the extreme type — so extreme that one wonders even that he uses the language of the Sassenach. For one -thing British only has he a good word — the London press, and, as he is is journalist, he is presumably qualified to judge j but all eLse is anathema, even English women, who, he finds, are "cold, indifferent, and depressing." Mr. Grey does not seem to have met 01 sought to meet a single representative American. His reputation as an Anglophobe had preceded him, he was received at San Francisco by a deputation of the "Transvaal Committee" consisting of a Spaniard, an Irishman, and a Hollander, and he seems to have had no desire to meet any but unassimilated aliens. For instance, he records that a Hibernian league and a German league have joined forces in an anti-British movement, and he thinks and hopes that this combination wilJ dominate American politics. In the iuture control of the Pacific he gives Britain no place. One wonders, in reading this book, where the Americans come in. Of the spirit of America — its patriotism, its pride in the British tradition, its literary and scientific life, and the spiritual forces which constitute the life of a nation, we learn nothing. Mrs. Grey contributes a number of photographs ; the other "illustrations" are old and miscellaneous stock blocks. The second issue of the Navy League Annual, edited by Mr. Alan H. Burgoyne, has reached us. It is admirably printed and illustrated, and contains an. extraordinary mass of information conI cerning the world's navies, corrected up [to 10th October, 1908. It is a very cheap half-crownsworth to any purchaser interested in the subject. Among the special articles by experts, oiie by Mr. Maurice Prendergast raises afresh the discussion of future battleship type. Accompanying the annual are the shilling Navy League map, in reduced form', folded for the pocket, and an eighteenpenny handbook to the map ("Britain on and Beyond the Sea.") The annual is published by the Navy League; the map and handbook by W. and A. K. Johnston, Limited, Edinburgh and London. Mr. Kipling's new book is to be called "With the Night Mail." With the main story, which is vivid and brilliant as anything he has yet published, magazine readers are of course familiar. It is a realistic forecast of an airship journey, with many technicalities. But much additional matter — advertisements of airships, rules of the air, etc., supposed to be from contemporary newspapers and magazines, has been added. "Marianne Farningham" (Miss Hearn), well known to readers of the Christian World, is dead. She had lived to celebrate her literary jubilee. Highly appreciative notices of her life and work appear in the Home papers to hand by this week's mail. English exchanges record the death at Brighton of Mr. George Washington Moon, a notable grammarian, aged 86. In 1864 or thereabouts he came into general notice by his keen criticism of Dean Alford's lecture on "The Queen's English," bis strictures appearing under

the title of " The Dean's English," and a lively but, on the whole, good-humour-ed controversy ensued. A number of similar works followed, one of them being a merciless exposure of the grammatical defects of the Revised Version. He was a scholar and philologist, and the chief charge alleged against him was that of over-scrupulosity. He was one of the modern critics who assign a very high antiquity to the Book of Job. He was not distinguished in imaginative literature, probably being of too accurate an order of mind ; but he wrote an epic poem entitled "Elijah the Prophet." He was a man of deep religious convictions, and some of his little books, especially " The Soul's Inquiries Answered in the Words of Scripture," had a very large circulation. For many years he was employed by publishing houses to read proofs, and a more careful and laborious proof-reader cannot be imagined. In fact, that particular Erie of work was the one of all others for which by natural gift and diligent training, he was best qualified. The Pall Mall Magazine for April is largely a Jeanne Dare number. It would 6eem that somewhat belated canonisation is not honour enough for the memory of the Maid, For an anonymous Italian chronicle of the eighteenth century is quoted to establish the theory that "'Gianna, insigne guierriera" was descended on the maternal side from a noble Italian house. This theory, if accepted, should account for much that has hitherto been mysterious. It reminds the reader of a recent hypothesis that the unknown author of Shakespero's plays could only have been one of gentle birth. 'Mrs. Humphry Ward's serial, ";Marriage a la Mode," develops dramatic situations, and the minor fiction is varied and of high quality. The first article is a very interesting appreciation of a distinguished journalist, Sir Douglas Straight, who retired in March from the editorship of the Pall Mall Gazette. It is illustrated with excellent portraits, and pictures of the office, representing the different departments of the staff at work. "England's Oldest Industry," is an instructive article by Frank Ormerod, who shows "how national supremacy in wool is being maintained." Verse and illustrations are usually strong features of this magazine, and the present issue is no exception. "The Geology of the Queenstown Subdivision, Western Otago 'Division," by James Park, F.G.S., is the seventh bulletin of, the iNew Zealand Geological Survey, of which 'Mr. J. M. Bell is director. It ie uniform with its predecessore, large quarto size, and contains 102 pages with full index and extras, including thirty-eight photo-etchings (one of them, the frontispiece, a large folding panorama of Queenstown), some thirty diagrams (geological sections, eta), and seventeen maps and sheets of sections, the larger ones in a pocket attached *o the cover. Some of the illustrations of glacier action, including remarkable "erratics," largo and small, are as interesting to the general reader as to the geologist. "The Sea" is the title of a new song of which we have received a copy; the words by W. W. Boyes, author of "New Zealand 'Sons," music by Frank Wolfgang. No publisher's name appears on the title-page. The verses are irregular and partly rimed ; the music pleasing and expressive. Key D, compass moderate, D to iF. "Larks : Two Shillings a Dozen," was the title of a brief article quoted in our columns from the Westminster Gazette. In connection with this subject, the widow of Robert Leighton, the poet, who has survived her husband by nearly forty years, and who is in her ninetieth year, sends the Gazette an appropriate poem, which Leighton published in 1860. "But," she says, "strings of larks are still sold at poulterer's shops." We print the poem in another column. Reviewing a book on American education by Miss Burstall, M.A., headmistress of the Manchester High School for Girls, the Spectator sets down the first "broad contrast" shown between English and American methods. "Americans educate the mass, while we havo always educated tho leaders. In England — democracy assenting to the method — we make a point of specially encouraging the promising pupils. It has been the immemorial practice of England to train leaders for the nation. Americans rather concentrate their attention on the ruck. The exceptional boy or girl, it is thought, will rise in any case ; the important thing to do is to advance the average of education." Miss Burstall is quoted as follows : — "Nothing is more remarkable or more puzzling to ail English teacher than the good discipline and the absence of any elaborate system of rules and penalties in an American school. But at present we lack in England what is the real sanction and stimulus in the American school — the force of public opinion. It is because America believes in education, while England fundamentally does not, that the American boy and girl need no prizes and no punishments; and ours might idle and riot without such sanctions. However, this may not be the only cause.'' The reviewer adds :—": — " 'America believes in education ' — that phrase explains much, indeed everything, when it is understood in the sense that there is in America a national desire to achieve mental ability, whereas there is in England a desire (unhappily not national, but perfectly distinct all the same) to build up character. England falls short, as Professor M. E. .Sadler has said in effect, of the precision of Germany and the verve and the experimental spirit of America, but both Germany and America lack our ethical tradition." OFFICIAL PUBLICATIONS. New Zealand (Registrar-General's Office). — Statistics of the Dominion of New Zealand for the Year 1908. Part I. : Blue Book. Commonwealth of Australia (Bureau of Census and Statistics). — Population and Vital Statistics Bulletin No. 12 : Vital Statistics of the Commonwealth for the Quarter ended 31st December, 1908. Production Bulletin No. 2. Summary of Commonwealth Production Statistics, 1901-1907. By G. H. Knibbs, F.S.S., Commonwealth Statistician. The Desirability of Improved Statistics of Government Railways in Australia : Report by the Commonwealth Statistician to the Hon. Hugh Mahon, M.P., Minister for Home Affairs. New South Wales (John B. Trivett, F.R.A.S., F.S.S., Government Statistician). — New South Wales Statistical Register for 1907 and previous years. Parts VIII., Primary Production; IX., Local Government; X., Miscellaneous; XI., Private Finance. (Department of Public Instruction). — Report upon the Physical Condition of Children attending Public Schools in New South Wales, with special reference to height, weight, and vision, based upon statistics obtained as a result of the introduction of a scheme of medical inspection of public school children, 1907-1908 : with Anthropometric Tables and Diagrams. Issued by direction of the Hon. J. A. Hogue, M.L.A., Minister of Public Instruction.

The self-mado man was in a caustic mood. "These schools, ye know," he said, "they're no good. Don't give a boy no practical knowledge ; see what I mean? Now, my son, he's supposed to be learning Greek, an' Latin, an' Algebra. An' the other day I asked him to tell me the Algebra for fried potatoes, an' 0 coukhi't,'--