WITH PAPER-KNIFE AND PEN.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1206, 12 April 1895, Page 13

WITH PAPER-KNIFE AND PEN.

: The Works of Henbt Kingsley—" Ravenshoe" and " Th« Hillyars and the Burtons;" edited by Clement Shorter. (London and Melbourne: Ward, Lock, ' and Bowden, Ltd ; Wellington : H. and J. . :; " Baillie. ■ Two ! more volumes are before us of the tastefully bound and admirably printed •■•■' edition which Messrs Ward, Lock, and Bow- ■ ■": den are nOw publishing of Henry Kingsley's wprks. :«> Ravenshoe "■ we hold to be Henry : v Kingsley's masterpiece. It is full of vigour, of vivacity, replete with a flow of a hearty, ; wholesome humour which is essentially /English, and in its character sketches it is ;far and away ahead of all its author's other -bopksw We yield to no one in admiration of Dickens, but " The Master" himself never ■did much better work than can be found in chapters of " Ravensboe." As for its long gallery of portraits in such varying ranks of .life, where shall" we better Lady Ascot, and that cynically-spoken but kind-hearted nobleman, Lord Saltire, where find a ; 4»6re manly, generous-hearted hero than CharleY Bavenshoe 1 Father Mackworth, /toQ," the clever scheming priest, and •thejovial Father Tiernay; Lord Ascot, blackguard, with one touch of honour in him, so .lorig lyipg joerdw, but which crops up at the Cright; moment ; Ellen arid Lady Adelaide— read "Ravenshoe," for he who once Ixeads it takes it up again arid again. And vthe little newsboy who played fives with a 'brass button-—why he's a genuine Dickens creation, and nothing short of that. There's mpre human nature, more vigour, more interest, more wholesome entertainment in ;*• Bayenshoe, xv than in a score Of our latterday novels, and those—oh, lacky ones, we //envy y6ti—who have not yet made Henry Kingsley's acquaintance, we would strongly iirge to do so without delay. "■'.(-. Ill'"'The" Hillyars and the Burtons " the scene is cast alternately in England, mainly Jh quaint old Chelsea, and in Australia. , Both families, for the book is the I'fe story of. two families whose histories are very skilfully interwoven, have their black sheep, -both their true and noble heroes, and the -. -reader must be hard to please who does not •follow the story with the keenest interest and .pleasure. Not so bri liant a book maybe as *• liaveushoe," not quite eo much local Austra Jiau colour about it n* "Geoffrey Haralyn,'* i but a tine story. with a strain of uianiy Christian " spirit run Ming throughout, which makes its moralisings never smack of sanctimonious■ness, never strike a jai-ririqr chord. Healthier, heartier, better fiction was never penned. . To "The Hillyars and the Burtons"' Mr Clement Shorter contributes an. interesting note on old Chelsea Church, and Mr Herbert Railton some graceful iliustrauioiii*.' " Raven,»bofe ,x hasfor a frontispiece a vigorous sketch 'by Mr Caton Woodville. B jtu books should bein every library, public or private, in the colony.

"The God in the Cab," by Anthony Hope. Methuen's Colonial Library. (Melbourne : ' "-'Q-'. Bobertaon and Co.; Wellington: H. ' . and J. Baillie. Mr Anthony Hope is comparatively a new writer, who is best known to colonial readers by his "Prisoner of Zenda," a romance which is somewhat in the Weyman strain. ••The God in the Car," which comes to us as a volume of Messrs Methuen's Colonial Library (and very well printed and got up this series is) deals with London life of today. The dominant note of the book is, indeed, its modernity. The hero, the "God in the Car," is a Mr Kuston, an able, ambitious raan-wh© " exploits" a South African territory known as Omafaga, and Mr Hope's story relates how a number of more or less fashionable people, shareholders in Huston's company, have their lives moulded, their hopes realised or shattered, by him whom, on account of his callous indifference to ought save the interests of his scheme, one of the characters has nicknamed Juggernaut, the " God in the Cari" The story centres almost entirely round Ruston and the wife of one of his co-directors. The woman is beset by a guilty passion for the company promoter, and is just stopped short of complete moral ruin

by Ruston receiving a telegram announcing an unforeseen obstacle to his scheme, and having to leave her. For the old fashioned novel reader the story ends badly. The strength of the book, however, lies in its brilliancy of dialogue. Mr Hope's characters are no puppets; they have a reality which is most fascinating, and there is not a failure in the book. most successful character sketch is that of an old German financier, but a witty lady of fashion, Lady Adela Ferrers, the good angel of the story, is an exceptionally pleasant personage to meet with in fiction. The , Omafaga Company, with its " police " who are, so Ruston admits, are mere freebooters, with its " concessions " from the Government, and the way those concessions are obtained, reminds one of some of Mr Cecil Rhodes' enterprises, and to this resemblance no doubt may be attributed no srhall share of the success " The God in the Car " has achieved at Home.

" Mabtin Hewitt, . Investigator ;" by Arthur Morrison. London : Ward, Lock and Bowden, Ltd. Wellington : H. and J. Baillie.

Sherlock Holmes having departed this life —Dr Conan Doyle made him disappear down an Alpine crevasse, did he not ?-—it became necessary, such is the avidity of the public appetite for " detective " stories, that he should have a successor whose marvellous exploits and adventures in the foiling or discovery of crime shall be related by a convenient literary friend. Martin Hewitt, Investigator, is so clearly an outcome of Sherlock Holmes, private detective, that Mr Morrison must be prepared to find his stories compared with those of Dr Doyle. The comparison, so we have decided after a careful perusal of the dozen or so tales contained in the handsome little volume before us, is not always to Mr Morrison's disadvantage.- Like Holmes, Martin Hewitt has a literary friend who acts as his Boswell, and although the stories are a little uneven as to merit of plot and sensation of incident the style of the narrative is uniformly good. " The Case of Mr Foggatt" is quite equal to Sherlock Holmes' best work, and " The Stanway Cameo Mystery" completely baffled us as to its probable denouement. The book is well printed and attractively bound, and contains a number of very good illustrations by Mr Sydney Paget. ~"

" Jewel Robberies I E[ave Known," by Max Pember'ton. (London : Ward, Lock and Bowden, Ltd, Wellington: H. and J. Baillie.) Yetanother collection of detective stories —not openly so, for the narrator of the various short stories contained in "Jewel Robberies I Have Known" is not a member of the Lecocq or even Sherlock Holmes tribe, but a West End jeweller; also, he is his own Boswell, which is a pleasant change, for it enables the reader to get at the kernel of the story more quickly and without the unnecessary moralising of a third party. Mr Pemberton's stories are, like those of Mr Morrison mentioned above, singularly uneven. The opening story, " The Opal of Carmalovitch," strikes the key of genuine romance, ending in a some-? what painful tragedy. Others, however, are rather weak, but there is both humour and clever invention in "The Comedy of the Jewelled Links," and "The Treasure of the White Creek" is really a capital short story. The book is admirably illustrated by Messrs R. Caton Woodville and Fred Bar"-; nard, two names which are in themselves a guarantee of good work.

"The Bondman," by Eiall Caine. Heinneman's Colonial Library. (London : Wra. Heinneman.)

We are always glad to notice the now familiar stout and scarlet backs of Mr Heinneman's Colonial Library amongst the contents of our book parcels, for. the good reason that in the whole series there has not as yet appeared any trash, which is more than can be truthfully asserted of all the various series now offered for? the delectation of colonial readers of : fiction. And we are specially glad to see that Mr Heinnemah is including the majority of Mr Hall Came's stories in this series. "The Manxman" and "The Scapegoat" have already appeared, and now we have "The Bondman"- —"a new saga," as the author entitles it. The story has already been criticised at some length in these columns, and it is not necessary for us to add much to what has already appeared. " Vengeance is Mine —T will repay "is the. keynote Mr Hall Caine provides on the title-page, and he gives us a story which, for the brilliance of its delineations of the most powerful human passions, has hardly been excelled in English fiction. "The Bondman," too, derives much of its interest from the novelty of the background against which the characters are seen. The scene is cast in Iceland, at the beginning of the century, but Mr Caine has used a novelist's license and utilised in his book many old customs and laws of the interesting little island which were then, in truth, a little out of date. The language in which the book is written is graphic and forceful, and the dramatic power Of some of the scenes is almost painfully intense. "A prose epic" it was called by one leading London journal when it appeared—certainly it seems an injustice to the book to dub it a novel. In its present cheap and attractive form, "The Bondman" should enjoy a large sale in the colonies.

"A Sunless Hbabt." London: Ward, Lock and Bowden, Ltd. Wellington, H. and J. Baillie. This is one of the "New Woman " books over whish Mr Stead gushed with such exceedingly fervour a few months ago, perhaps because an unusually unsavoury——even for a " New Woman " novel —incident is one of the chief features in a very disagreeable and morbid story. It was with difficulty that we waded through the 279 pages of literary hysteria and neurotics of which " A Sunless Heart" is composed, and it was with a feeling of the most profound relief that we reached the end of a

most wearisome task. A fair sample of the whole is the following passage :—"To face the world is hell. To suffer the roughness of these coarse grained natures is torture. But for his sake, oh ! for his sweet sake, I will lick the dust from their feet; and to earn money for him I will give them my body to spurn. But I shall hate them, and never think them else than the mud that he and I should walk on had we our right. The italics are the author's. There is an irritating surplusage of italics and mysterious points and asterisks in " A Sunless Heart," and a morbid love of dwelling upon the uglier, baser side of life that becomes positively nauseous. There may be some, however, who like this sort ot literary dish, but we warn off the ordinary and more wholesome minded reader. C.W.

BOOKS RECEIVED. The following books have also been received, and will be noticed as soon as space will permit: —" Round the Red Lamp," by Dr Conan Doyle (Methuen s Colonial Library); " Euancondit," by Henry Goldsmith (Melbourne, George Robertson and Co.); "Doreen," by Edna Lyall (Longman's Colonial Library) ; "Helen's Ordeal," by Mrs Russell Barringtqn (Bell's Colonial Library) ; Sutherland's " History of Australia and New Zealand" (Melbourne, George Robertson and Co.); "TheDarleys of Dingo-Dingo," by C. J. MacCartie (London, Gay and Bird); "My Happy Half-Century," by Frances E. Willard (London, Ward, Lock and Bowden).