LITERATURE AND ART.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 11544, 1 December 1900, Page 4 (Supplement)

LITERATURE AND ART.

We are to have a book on the Jew in London, consisting of two essays, one written by an outsider and one by an insider. Mr. Bryce writes a preface and Canon Barnett an introduction.

A romance of early Australia, by Mr. Herbert Compton, entitled " The Inimitable Mrs. Massingham," is announced among Messrs. Chatto and Windus' new books. Also a story by an Australian writer, Mrs. Campbell Praed, called "A Watch in the Night,"

Messrs. Hutchinson and Co. have in the press, and will publish immediately, a book entitled "The Kight Hon. Joseph Chamberlain : The Man and the Statesman," by N. Murrell Marris. It will include a condensed history of much of the political life of England during the last thirty years. Mr. Chamberlain has lately given a special sitting for the portrait which is to appear in the volume, and also his permission to photograph " Highbury" and the many interesting mementoes it contains.

Messrs. Watts and Co. announce' an authorised English translation of Professor Ernst Haeckel'a " Die Weltrathsel," under the title of " The Riddle of the Universe at the Close of the Nineteenth Century." Professor Haeckel has been called " the Darwin of Germany," and the forthcoming volume i contains the ripened conclusions based on j his arduous life-work. In its original form | four editions of the work have been cxI hausted in less than six months, and, in adi dition to the present translation, translations have been arranged for in France and Italy. Lord Monboddo was a distinguished Scottish judge, and a prominent if not the central member of a brilliant literary cirole in ' Britain during the eighteenth century. As t a lawyer he is chiefly remembered in connection with the famous Douglas cause, which involved the succession to vast estates iin Scotland. He was a great student of ! Plato and Aristotle, and in anthropological ! science he anticipated Darwin's theory of i the descent of man. Among his friends were David Hume, Adam Smith-Ferguson (the poet), and many other noted men. Mr. Murray is about to publish a book entitled " Lord Monboddo and Some of His Contem- ! poraries," from the pen of Professor Knight, of St. Andrew's. " The Testament of our Lord Jesus I Christ," now first translated from the Syria* I into English, with introduction and notes j by the Rev. James Cooper, D.D., Professor j of Ecclesiastical History in the University of I Glasgow, and the Rev. Arthur John MacI lean, M.A., Canon of Cumbrae and Rector I of St. John's Church, Selkirk, is a work ] based on a Syriac MSS. found in the Metro- | politan Library at Mosul on the Tigris. j This MSS. is of immense interest and value I on account of the light thrown by it on I questions of early ecclesiology and liturgies. i The MSS. has already been translated into i Latin by the Patriarch of Antioch, Ingai tius Ephraem Rahmani. It will be pub- ; lished next year.

j Mrs. Arthur Severn unveiled the Buskin i memorial lately at Friars' Crag, Keswick. i The ceremony was simple. Choirs of child- [ ren sang Canon Rawnsley's memorial hymn. j Mrs. Severn then unveiled a monument

i which consists of a monolithic block of BorI rowdale stone, rough and unhewn as it came j from the quarry. On one side is <:nt a > simple Chi-Rho, enclosed in a circle, with • the following inscription beneath from I "Deucalion," Lecture xii., par. 40: —"The j spirit of God is around you in the air you I breathe—His glory in the light you see, and j in the fruitfulness of the earth and the joy j of His creatures. He has written for jou j dav by day His revelation, and He has granted | you day by day your daily bread." On the j other side of the" monolith, facing the lake, ! is a medallion in bronze, representing RusI kin in his prime. The head is in profile, a ! crown of olive is seen in the background, | and Ruskin's favourite motto, To-day.'' is ; introduced among the olive leaves. Above ; the portrait is the name, "John Ruskin," j and the dates MDCCOXIX. to MDCCCC i beneath.