BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 9491, 21 April 1894, Page 1 (Supplement)

BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

Rulers ok India : Hyder Ali and Tipoo Sultan. By B. Bowring, C.5.1., formerly Chief Commissioner of Mysore. Clarendon Press, Oxford. — The present volume is one of a well-known and interesting series. It is a sketch of the Mussulman usurpation in Mysore, presented in a popular form, giving the career of one or the most remarkable personages who have . played their parts on the stage of Indian history, together with that of his equally remarkable son—the first distinguished by tho energy, enterprise, and daring which enabled him to seize a throne, and the second by his bigotry, his hostility to tho English, and the fatuous obstinacy which cost him his crown and his life. It was a period of vital importance to the future supremacy of.the British in India, and the story of the vicissitudes of the Mysore Kingdom is graphically told by Mr. Bo wring:, as comprised in the 38 years of the usurpation by Hyder Ali and Tipoo Sultan. Mitchell's Newspaper Press Directory.—The forty-ninth issue of the Newspaper Directory and Advertisers' Guide, issued by C. Mitchell and Co., advertising contractors, 12 and 13, lied Lion Court, Fleet-street, London, E.C., has come to hand. The fact of it having continued so long is ample proof of the useful purpose it has served. On this occasion it appears with several useful additions, which experience has taught the proprietors to adopt. A list is given of all the newspapers and magazines which have been started in 1593, and another list of all the newspapers and magazines which have ceased publication within that period. Large changes have been noted in the colonial Press— Austrulasia, South Africa, and India. So far as the Indian Press is concerned, an effort has been made to give a correct list of the native papers and magazines in that greab country, which are far more numerous than the great bulk of people believe. The present issue contains all the valuable features of the previous issues, and the brief notices—political and commercial —given of each country and district dealt with, must be very useful to merchants and others consulting this volume. Considering the greab variety of newspapers in all countries of the world, it is surprising that such an amount of correctness could be obtained, and the ability shown in successfully grappling with such a mass of detail clearly indicate the clear-sighted business ability brought to bear upon the conduct of the advertising business ■ which Messrs. C. Mitchell and Co. have so long conducted. A perusal of the volume before us must be an enormous help bo business people who are bent upon pushing their several branches of trade in the markets of the world. As usual, ib is well gob up, well printed on good paper, and neatly and substantially bound. Manual of English Literature. —Under the somewhat pretentious title of " Manual of English Liberature," J. MacMillan Brown, M.A., Professor of English Literature ab the Canterbury College, has issued

through Messrs. Whitcombe and Tombs, of Christ-church, a book professing to cover the work seb by the Senate of . the New Zealand University for the Pass Degree in 1894 and 1895. The ground to be covered deals with the period between 1750 and 1850, which the author has called the " Era of Expansion." Professor Brown explains in his preface that he felt himself compelled to devote the long Vacation to the task of writing the Manual, as the addition of Anglo-Saxon and Early English to the syllabus for the degree only , leaves one hour per , week for him to devote to lectures upon literrture. At present Professor Brown has not completed his task, and the book as now issued contains only chapters on the characteristics and influences of the period and its poetry. The concluding chapter will be delivered as lectures during the period. In undertaking such a work as this, Professor Brown is rendering a great service to all the students of the New Zealand University, as a difficulty has always been experienced in obtaining text-books bearing upon the periods prescribed by the Senate of the University, and'furthermore the time the professors are able to devote to this subject in their lectures is too circumscribed to allow them to do justice bo it. The Manual is a book that will be of interest to the general reader as well as to the student, being written as ib is in a clear and pointed style, a little ponderous, perhaps, but still utterly devoid of technicalities. In dealing with the period in question, the author, who apparently has bhemoab intimate knowledge of his subject, might have profitably paused for a moment at the commencement of his task to give a definition of the term " literature," or at least his conception of it as applied to the curriculum of the University. Remarking upon the decentralisation of literature during the period, the author incidentally makes the following interesting observation :—" London tends to become again the natural centre of English literary life, the exchange and clearing-house of English imagination and ideas; thither have gathered again the great publishing houses and the literary ambition of the kingdom, and thence issue again the chief magazines and critical . journals. The facilities for travel that before 1850 had tended to scatter writers and literary influence are now acting in the opposite direction, and gathering the most critical audience and the most ambitious writers into the vast city, that again draws all leisured circles to ib as it did in the Queen Anne age."