REVIEWS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 9452, 24 August 1889, Page 1 (Supplement)

REVIEWS.

"My Dccats and My Daughter,"' by Hay Hunter and Walter Whyte. Published by Frank Murray, Edinburgh. The work gives some graphic pictures ol busy life. It depicts all the humours of a Scottish borough election, besides illustrating some excellent political writing. The characters are sketched with great vigour and fidelity, and some of the situations are skilfully worked out. The political chapters are characterised by good-humoured satire, and if not a journalist, the author is, at least, tolerably well acquainted with the newspaper world.

'• New Zealand : Its Present Position and Future Prospects." By Captain William Ashby. Published by Riorden, Poland-street, London.—This is a little brochure which the author has published for private circulation, and has been written from notes taken while travelling through Now Zealand in January ana February of the present year. He says in the preface : —" Fresh from the experiences of an exhaustive tour of inspection, not only of all the most important centres of the colony, but in some cases a considerable distance up country, I feel it is due to j those interested, as so many are, in the Queen of the Southern Hemisphere, that my experiences should take the form they do, so that the truth may thus be ascertained from one who, a perfectly independent and ■ unpaid witness, has just returned from that country." As the result of his tour, he recommends New Zealand, " as the land in which those who emigrate will most assuredly find health, wealth, and happiness." The little work, is pleasantly and chattily written. It is illustrated by Irving Montagu, and the illustrations are the most unsatisfactory part of the work. All of them are so, as giving any idea of the centres of population in , the colony. Auckland is especially so, as are also the sketches of native architecture, the noble savage, the belle of the kainga, or of the typical moa. Captain Ashby is himself dissatisfied with the view of Auckland, and is substituting another in a new edition. Why he should in this year of grace 1889 have picked on a view of "Auckland in 1870" for an Emigration Guide Book is a mystery. The principal feature in the view is a terrace of dwellings in Pitt-street which no longer exist ; the Northern Club, at the top of Princes-street, is surrounded by a howling wilderness, and the spars of two or three vessels are to bo seen over the houses lying alongside some jetty or other ! " Tales From Blackwood." —We have to hand another volume of tales (third series) from Blackwood. The contents are " A French Speculation," "Rufus Hickman of St. Botolph's," " The Puerto de Medina," " Hans Preller : ..A Legend of the Rhine Falls," and " Jack Miliary." Perhaps the best of the stories is "The Puerto de Medina," although they are all interesting and entertaining. "Kophetua this Thirteenth." By Julian Corbett. Published by Macmillian and Co., London.This is a light story or romance, founded upon the old and wellknown ballad of " King Kophetua and the Beggar Maid." The lines at the head of the several chapters are verses taken from the ballad. The introductory chapter is a mere brick of authorship to introduce the story. The book is not written with an object further than to amuse the reader. It is a work similar to Sir Thomas More's " Utopia." Kophetua is represented as a student of Rousseau's political work, and the Marquis Tricotrin as an emigre from the French Revolution, which brings his time down, as we may say, to our own. His subjects traded with the Canaries, and yet were never heard of till the writer published the book. The story is extremely well written, and the various incidents fit artistically into each other. The eulogiums passed upon the author's other works by the Times, Athemeum, and others are equally applicable to this. The ballad itself may most probably be found among some of the collections in the Free Public Library. Gpvernment by party is somewhat sarcastically glanced at; it affects no further political object. Whatever moral sentiments are expressed are wholesome and common sense, which latter epithet may be applied to the finale of the story, which ends differently from the ballad.