LITERMY AND PERSONAL NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1852, 20 May 1887, Page 28

LITERMY AND PERSONAL NOTES.

On an average 30,000 bpoks a year are now published. „ , The success of Mr Edwin Hodder's " Life of ' Lord Shaftesbury" has led to the materials for ' the life of another philanthropist, the late Mr Samuel Morley, being placed in his hands, and unless his son, Mr Arnold Morley, had undertaken 'the task, no more suitable biographer could have been found. A correspondent from Vienna writes that Johann, Strauss leads, with, his third wife, a simple,, ideal life. When he receives guests the piano is never opened, and only for his most intimate friends does the composer play a new composition. He watches with a peculiar nervousness the expression of his listeners to 'see whether his melodies go to the heart, and if he finds that they do not he throws the music into a forgotten comer. There is something pathetic in the "announcement that M. Paul Bert has left behind him a work on Annam and Tonquin. Only out there for a shmt time, and as it proved, to die, the statesman's eager nature at once strove to adapt itself to its altered circumstances, and the result will have a melancholy interest, apart from its ethnologic and scientific value.

Native journalism in India is a happy-go-lucky sort of business. If the editor can't get the paper out at the right date, he gets it out when he can, and everybody is satisfied. The editor of Deshi-Mitra, of Surat, recently explained to his readers that the usual funny cartoons did not appear because he had been busy conducting the marriage ceremonies of his son.

The State of California has been offered the unique diary formed by Mr Hubert Howe Bancroft for the sum 250,000d01. Mr Bancroft collected this library as the foundation for his series of works on the Pacific States and territories. The value placed upon it is less than the outlay incurred by Mr Bancroft, who for 25 years was collecting works through special agents in all parts of the world. The library contains the fullest collection of documents, records, and printed books ever brought together in connection with the State of California. It includes a mass of invaluable manuscript records obtained directly from the old pioneers, and it also embraces full collections relating to every Pacific Coasb State, to Mexico and Central America. Among them are masses of original manuscripts, rare old works (some of them probably unique), maps and charts, ecclesiastical arid state archives, and historical material of every conceivable character. The New York papers call upon the State of California to, secure the library, as to permit such a treasure to be dispersed in the auctioneer's rooms would be to perpetrate a vandalism which must permanently discredit the state. — St. James' Gazette. '