LITERATURE AND ART.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 10413, 10 April 1897, Page 4 (Supplement)

LITERATURE AND ART.

JlB. E. Seale announces for early publication a work entitled " Systematic Betting : Its Use and Abuse." Messrs. George Bell and Sons have nearly ready a new book by General Sir Evelyn Wood, V.C., entitled "Achievements in Cavalry," illustrated with maps and plans. The work is principally based on a series of articles on cavalry which this distinguished soldier contributed some years ago to the United Service Magazine. These have been considerably revised and added to; and a new chapter written on Mounted Infantry. Mr. Raymond Blatbwayt, at a meeting of the Women Journalists' Society, gave an interesting address on " The Arc of Interviewing," in which he stated that an interviewer's life was uot all beer and skittles, and extraordinarily ill-natured things were said about him. In America, where the interview had been invented, ib had been so degraded as to be a national curse, and the interviewer was guilty of conducb that would disgrace an English convict) prison. One wondered the people did not rise in wrath and kick the interviewer into the Atlantic Ocean, whence it would be better he should never be extricated. In England interviewing very rarely exceeded the bounds of good taste. A copy of Carlyle's first book, his translation Of Legendre's " Elements of Geometry and Trigonometry," appears in a secondhand bookseller's catalogue just issued, marked "very scarce," and in the price a due reflection of the translator's subsequent fame. This translation, which was published in 1824, although only a " pot-boiler," was well done; and prefixed to it is an original essay on " Proportion," which is eaid to have been highly commended by so eminent an authority as the late Professor Ue Morgan. Carlyle himself, who received £50 for the book, seems to have looked on his essay with some complacency, as in his " Reminiscences" we find him referring to it as "a complete doctrine of proportion .... complete and really lucid," and adding, " I havo never seen it since, but still feel as if it were right enough and felicitous in its kind." " Diner Out" in the Queen is responsible for the following interesting bit of gossip about the late Mr. Du Maurier:-"! am told that Harper Brothers only accepted ' Trilby' after a family council, carried in its favour by a single vote. The editor of their magazine, Mr. >H. M. Alden, one of the best of judges, saw its saleable qualities, but the firm has always been identified with the Wesloyan connection in the United States, and its millions have been tnnde out of literature concerning or suited to Wesleyans. But the younger members of the firm, who are said, like so many wealthy young Americans of Nonconformist families, to have become Episcopalians, carried the day by a single vote, The success of the book was prodigious. They had bought the copyright from Mr. Du Maurier, but when they had sold a certain number—a hundred thousand, I believe—thoy decided to pay him a royalty on all tho (quantities of) copies which have since been sold." Egyptologists are continually bringing fresh data to light; and Professor Flinders Petrie has recently communicated to tho Society of Biblical Archeology some of the results of an examination of the latest discoveries as to the date of the Exodus. It is now almost certain that this event took place under the reign of Merenptah, son of Knmeses 11. That would date it 11928.C., with a possible variation of some five years before or later. It appears that such a date harmonises with the intimations given in the priestly genealogies of 1 Chron. vi. Assuming, what is more than probable, that the Book of Judges is a collection of the histories of three separate and independent districts, its indications of time also can be interpreted without arbitrariness in favour of Dr. Petrie's conclusion. On the whole, therefore, until the excavations in Egypt yield further evidence, the chronology of the festivals, in accord alike with the priestly genealogies, and with the right interpretation of Judges, brings tho generation of tho Exodus down to the abovementioned date, or four generations later than the time hitherto commonly accepted, and three centuries later than the date in the margin of tho Authorised Version. The determination of a few fixed dates like this will not only be a great advantage in itself, but will havo a very important bearing upon critical processes aud conclusions.