Untitled

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXIII, Issue 7563, 30 May 1885, Page 4

The New Zealand Times tells us that the Survey department is about to publish an illustrated guide-book or pictorial account of the Colony. From the same source, wo learn that the graphic part of the forthcoming book has been remarkably well done. We only hope this may be correct. But we confess that we tremble at the thought of the reality. It would be hard to condemn a publication unseen. But were we to judge this book by the experience of the past, we should groan for the notion of New Zealand scenery which it is to diffuse in the Mother Country. When Nature made New Zealand, she was in her brightest mood. But man has not returned the compliment in his attempts at reproducing lier efforts. There is a proverb which tells us what very different origins had food and cooks respectively. We are tempted to apply this to New Zealand pictorial art, and say that Heaven sent us scenery and the Devil coloured lithographs. Anything, too, less exhilarating than the average woodcut representing a view in New Zealand it has not been our ill fortune to meet. Such productions give a true notion of nothing except perhaps the prevailing depression, -which unluckily does hang just now over the Colony’s southern Provinces. Forty years ago, when the art of wood-cutting was. yet in its infancy, such things might have been tolerated even in England. But since the Americans showed Englishmen of what effects the wood-cut is capable, English taste and skill has made enonnous strides. The criterion in such matters is now much higher at Home than it was even ten years ago. We are informed that colour and photography have both been used in the adornment of the forthcoming “ Picturesque New Zealand,” or whatever it is to be called. We can but devoutly hope that it will show an immense advance on its predecessors, official or

unofficial. We only remember one* good illustrated book on the Colony,, and that was a German work. Do* our readers remember the notion of Christchurch afforded by the “New Zealand Handbook”? “But theses reminiscences are too painful.