LITERATURE AND ART.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 8354, 6 September 1890, Page 4 (Supplement)

LITERATURE AND ART.

A VOLUME of Manx Folk-Stories, by Mrs. J. W. Russell, entitled " Shadow-land in Elian Vannin," is announced by Mr. Elliot Stock for early publication. . It is reported that Mr. W. T. Stead is engaged in arranging for the publication of a new sixpenny religious magazine. _ It is said to be on entirely new lines, and it will have an attractive name. The Lost Explorer," a romantic story of Australian life and adventure, by Mr. J. F. Hogan, the author of several works on colonial subjects, will shortly be issued by Messrs. Ward and Downey. Mr. T. Fisher Unwin announces a reprint of Mary Wollstonecraft's "Rights of Women," the original edition of which was issued nearly a hundred years ago. Mrs. Fawcett has contributed a critical introduction to tho now edition, in which she discusses the social condition of women then and now. . Mr. Stanley has been giving sittings at Buckingham Palace to Angeli, who has como over expressly to paint this portrait for Her Majesty. It is certainly not flatterin" to British artists that England's palaces should bo filled with tho productions of foreigners, especially as they aro undoubtedly inferior to what could be done here. Perhaps our artists are themselves somewhat to blame in opening their mouths too wide when the question of prico is asked. Mr. M. Jephson's book, which will appear almost immediately after the publication of Mr. Stanley's great work, is, we hear, of absorbing interest, Mr. Jephson is tho master of a cultivated and graphic style, and his nine months' residence with Emin provided him with abundance of material for a picturesque narrative. Mr. Jephson speaks in tho highest terms of JSmin, of whose character and relations with his motley following he had, of course, exceptional means of forming a judgment. Wo believe that Mr. Jephson received a very handsome offer from the Times for the manuscript of his book, to bo published as a series of articles, but lie preferred that ib should be kept perfectly fresh for the public in book form. The three additional volumes of M. Kossuth's " Memoir," which aro shortly to appear, will contain, amongst other things, his remarks upon the policy of Napoleon 111. towards tho Vienna Court, and upon the endeavours ci the Pope to retain his secular power, in addition to an interesting interview between Prince Bismarck and the French Ambassador, Comte do Saint Vallier. The volumes will also reproduce several letters addressed by the late Count Julius Andrassy to Kossuth, during Count Andrassy's exile; a letter from Richard Cobden to Kossuth at tho time of the Crimean War ; and reminiscences of eminent Hungarian statesmen, like Count. Stephen Szechenyi and Baron Nicolaus Weszelenyi, besides many other interesting records. At the close of his preface K <suth states that the Hungarian deputy, M. Ignaz Helfy, has revised tho work, as lie himself was painfully conscious of the fact that, after his 41 years of exile, he had not kept up with the advance of tho Hungarian tongue. The memory of some curious facts is revived in a lately published work entitled " Annuals of Scottish Printing from the Introduction of tho Art in 1507 to the Beginning of the Seventeenth Century," by Robert"Dickson, L.R.C.S.E, and John Phillip Edmond (Cambridge, Macmillan and Bewes). For instance, it is related how the Bassandync Bible was forced by Act of Parliament on all " substantious houshalderis," in Scotland. The same "substantious houshalderis" attempted to evade the law by passing one Bible about among themselves, but the provost and baillies checkmated them by ordaining that " for eschewing of all fraude, they should bring their bybillies and psalm buikis to hafe their names written and subscryuet be the clerk." Even this did not settle the difficulties of selling the book; the " redare of the burgh'," Jhone Cairnis, having gob his Bible " bund in blak lether," refused to pay the printer Arbuthnet for the binding, arguing that a Bible meant a bound Bible. The matter was ultimately decided by a lawsuit in which the reader was discomfited. The same work recalls the fact that Napier, the inventor of logarithms, published a book foretelling the end of the world. It was entitled A Plaine Discouery of the whole Reuclation of Saint John," Ac. Napiercalculated that the last day would arrive between 1688 and 1700.