AMONG THE BOOKS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 14868, 20 December 1911, Page 11

AMONG THE BOOKS.

li' a man makes himself a worm he must not complain when trodden on.—Kant.

1 think the three impressions one must form of Russia are: Its space, its solitude, and its sadness.Admiral Sir E. H. Seymour.

Educated opinion exists hero as in France but in France tho Academy serves as a sort of centre and rallying-point to it, and gives it a force it has not got here.— Matthew Arnold.

The; principal villain of " Treasure Island "•-that .very, finished ruffian John Silverwas drawn, we are, told, from the maimed strength and masterfulness" of the poet Henley.Academy.

More hard to bear even than the troubles, the pains, the aches, tho longings of life, are its blanks and its wants. Outer darkness with the tormenting fires and the companion devils is. not the outer darkness that has overwhelmed strong hearts with terror and apprehension. No words, no response, silence, abandonmentto us weak, loving, longing human creatures, that is the worst fate of all.—Miss Thackeray (Lady Ritchie). ,

In her childhood and girlhood the Korean woman was and is the abject slave of her parents, in wifehood of. her husbahd, in widowhood a pariah; and throughout all her life a soul-destroying, monotonous imprisonment was only relieved by a.very few hours' liberty in the streets .when night had.fallen,. and, as far as men were concerned, the pleasures and work of the day were ever.—From " The Story of Korea," by J. H. Longford.

'The Turk has some great qualities, courage, sobriety, and enthusiasm for his religion, for instance but, say what you may for him, Mahomed 11. took Constantinople in 1453, but in four and a-half centuries they have never added to* tho arts or sciences of the world, or joined the European family. A Turk is, in my experience, usually a gentleman, but seems best suited- to the days of the Arabian Nights.—Admiral Sir E. H. Seymour.

'Hie European mind received a jarring shock when it heard that a South Sea monarch had decided to divorce; his wife in a court of law. Such civilisation appals the civilised world, the notion iis too bizarre, it grates; we would far sooner he had remained true to our preconceived notions of his picturesque but drastic and convincing good old way. A blow or two with a stone chopper, a hasty but decorous burial quickly followed by a joyful wedding feast, that is our idea of how a South Sea monarch should behave; and this other way, which suggests asparagus tongs,' rouge, and'; incubators, .ruffles our sense of the' fitness of ■ things, and we resent anything;.incongruous.—World..' ''-"