Gisborne Library.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume I, Issue 17, 21 July 1887, Page 2

Gisborne Library.

A BUNDLE OF NEW BOOKS. “ The love of reading enables a man to exchange the weary hours which come to everyone, for hours of delight.”—Montesquieu, What more pleasant pastime, is there than reaaiug; what more inexpensive, more productive of real quiet enjoyment than all the business of so called pleasure.? .Who floes not enjoji a good book ; especially if it te a new coiner, and what a special delight is that of the reader who finds in a bundle of new books," fresh fields and pastures new" to browse upon ? In our busy colonial life, where all is struggle and competition, and where the cares of business are daily increasing, what can compare with a quiet dip into the pages of a new book ? And how cheaply the enjoyment can be obtained. Subscribe but a guinea a year and you have provided tor you a rich harvest of literature, a whole host of books to suit divers minds ana varied tastes. lam moved to these considerations by the announcement, delightful to subscribers to the Library, that a bundle of new books have arrived. Let us a look at some of them. Of the 230 volumes just received some there are to suit the sober-sided minds who turn up their noses at a novel and seek sustenance only in the more serious paths of biography, science and travels. As Longfellow justly says “ Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us, Footprints on the sands of time.” Here for instance are two bulky tomes, wherein are set forth the doughty deeds of that great American who will “ live to liberty lovers dear," and, for many years to come, be celebrated as the giant of the fratricidal but resultful struggle of the American Civil War-General Grant. Garfield’s life was full of lessons, so was Grant’s, and these memoirs of a man who fought Lard for the liberty of all against the tyranny of the few should find many ardent readers in a demo eratio colony like our own. Men of a different stamp, whose deeds Were done on the torrid plains of India, who fought for Britain's prestige and British rule, were Sir Richard Temple and Major General Edwards. Both were more than mere soldiers contributing to what a recent historian contemptuously entitled the " drum and trumpet chronicle" of the age. Both were high minded, enlightened, firm, and dignified rulers of an alien race, and from the lives of both as found in this bundle of books can lessons, many and profitable, be elicited. Chatty gossip and court scandal, mingled with pithy and satirical comment on men and things are to be found in the three volumes of the Greville Memoirs and the Remin l icences of Sir Francis Hastings Doyle. When tie history of the Victorian era comes to ba written these are books which will give food for thought and reflection on the social and political every day life of the time, as do the Pepys Diary and Evelyn’s Memoirs to the chronicles of the days of the Stuarts. In “Our Chancellor” Dr. Moritz Busch gives a series of vivid word pictures of Germany’s great Prime Minister, the Man of Blood and Iron Count, Bismarck, whilst to travel as wide asunder as the poles, we can dip into the life of Lord Shaftesbury, and there contemplate with pleasure the record of that blameless, helpful life of one who gave both money, time and trouble to working for the London poor. Very different to Lord Shaftesbury are most of the English noblemen depicted in Count Vasil’s “ World of London ” which caused an immense sensation in London Society when first published. It is a veritable chroni<iue scandaleuse, a hard hitting, yet, it is said, alas, too truthful resume of the useless, pleasure Bee King, vicious existence of the British aristocracy. Comparisons are odious, or I would recommend a perusal of “ Stepniak’a Russia under the Czars ” as a counterdose to Count Vasili's indictment of modern London society. Truly an awful picture of the rottenness of Russian rule, of the horrors of a corrupt bureaueaoy, and the sufferings of a downtrodden people, is this book of “ Stepniak.” He is no mean authority, for the nom de plume he adopts is well known to cover the name of a man who shared the horrors of the prison of St Peter and St Paul and the mines of Siberia with some of the earlier detected Nihilists. Stepniak (Professor Dragooman) was a professor at the University ofKieo where first he imbibe the dangerous doctrines of anarchy from Prince Krapotkine. Both suffered, and both have written their sufferings. To-day. the Prince is dead, but his co .djutor “ Stepniak” surtlves to record for English readers the horrors of the knout and the dungeon, and the villanous misgovernment which is possible under a corrupt autocratic rule.. In " Seven years at Eton ” Mr Brinsley Richards' discourses of his early days’ friendship with Gladstone, Arthur Hallam, and many more men of note when they were boys together in the playing fields and on the backwaters of Father Thames It is a cheery book, full of life, which every old public school boy could take up for an hour or so. Baker’s “ Ismailia " deals with Equatorial Egypt, which, annexed by Baker for Ismail Pasha, was destined to prove the long last home of many an Englishman in the later days of Gordon. "In the Far Interior” by Montague Kerr takes us once more into the charmed regions of the Zambesi, with many a true story or legend (for travellers are persistent romancers from Baron Munchausen’s days downwards) of big shooting and adventures with n:.my a wild tribe or savage animal. From the Zambesi to the Lands End, the pleasant coves of Devon, and the wild tors of the “ West Countree " is a far ory, but Mr Hussey’s chronicle of a four-in-hand trip from London to Penzance is an unaffected account of a plcusan. and cheerful journey. Now for the novela. Avaunt ye captious critics, ye puritanical scoffers at the joys and troubles of fictitious heroes and heroines, and at the trivialities of romance. Scoff as ye may, immaoulaje purists, the novel is popular. We cannot always be reading" Blair on the Pentateuch,” or "Chitty on Torts," or even Sir Robert Stout on ” Consistency.” The mind must have a rest, and it gets it in a good novel. Has not Judge Hawkins of Tichborne Trial fame confessed that he esteemed “ Tom Sawyer ” by Mark Twain, a confessedly trivial book, to all others as a restorative after a long day in court, and is it not Bismarck advertised as a chief patron of Gaboriau's French detective stories. Long live the novelists, then say I, and let us see what we have in our bundle. in this line. Here we have two by a tried favourite, William Black. We don’t get a “ Princuss of Thule ” every day, but still his “White Wings” takes us back to. the old happy hunting grounds of yachting and flirtations, the Western Hebrides. “ Shandon Bells ” is a real good, old-fashioned love story, with some lively glimpses at London literary and artistic life; whilst in “ Judith Shakespere” Mr Black constructs a pretty, though at times rather dull, romance of Shakespere’s only daughter Judith, and her loves and trials. Those who like the misquotations, and the semi-veiled indecencies of Ouida can find garbage to their taste in “ Princess Napraxine” and who shall say them nay. Chacun a son gout! The veteran romancer Miss Braddon is again to the fore with “ An Open Verdict; ” whilst in the “ Maid of Athens ” Mr|Justin McCarthy, M.P., shows that his versatility is not exhausted by his Home Rule campaign and his history writing. Miss Lyall made a big hit with “ Donovan; a modern Englishman,” and her “ Won by Waiting,” in the bundle here, is said to be equal to it. Two writers are deservedly popular now-a-days, Messrs Walter Besant and Marion Crawford. “AUin a Garden Fair,” by the former, is as pretty a story as one could wish for, and deals too with some of the sterner problems of Englisfi life. But Mr Crawford in “ Zoroaster ” makes a great hit. To those who wondered at “ Mr Isaacs,” and laughed over “Dr. Claudius” or dwelt upon the love story of a “Roman Singer,” this weird beautiful story of Eastern mysticism, of Persian fire worship, and of the court of Darius the Great, will come as a genuine surprise. Rider Haggard’s “ She ” has been so much talked of that there is sure to be a run upon it, and I foresee long rows of subscribers harassing our courteous librarian to have an early acquaintance with the mystic African Princess. There are oceans more books in the bundle, but time, andan editor’s patience, are both short, and I already dread the editorial snip of the scissors, and the dreary exile of the waste paper basket. All things must have an end, and so must this rambling gossip about a “ Bund'e of new Books.” C.W.