EXTRACTS FROM NEW BOOKS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1945, 4 June 1891, Page 36

EXTRACTS FROM NEW BOOKS.

An Artificial Country. What sorb of a country Holland i 9 has been told by many in fewwords. ,

Napoleon said that it was an alluvion of French rivers — the Rhine, the Scheldt, and the Meuse. With, this pretext he added it to the empire. One writer has defined it as a sort of transition between laud and sea. Another, as an immense crust of. earth floating on the water. Others, an annex of the old continent, the China of Europe, the end of 'the earth and the beginning of the ocean, a measureless raft of mud and sand ; and Philip II called it the country nearest to hell.

Bat they all agreed upon one point, and all expressed it in the same words : — Holland id a conquest made by man over the sea; it is an aitificial country; the Hollanders made it ; it exists because the Hollanders preserve it ; it will vanish whenever the Hollanders shall abandon it.

To comprehend this truch, we must imagine Holland as it was wh n first inhabited bjj the .first German tribes that wandered away in search of a country. • It was almost uninhabitable. There were vast tempestuous lakes, like seas, touching one another; morass beside morass; one tract covered with brushwood after another ; immense forests of pines, oaks, and alders, traversed by herds of wild horses ; and so thick were these forests that tradition says one could travel leagues passing from tree to tree without ever putting foot to the ground. The deep bays and gulfs carried into the heart of the country the fury of the. northern tempests. Some provinces disappeared once every year under the waters of the sea, and were nothing but muddy tracts, neither land nor water, where it was impossible either to walk or to^ sail. The large rivers, without* sufficient inclination to descend to the sea, wandered here and there, uncertain of their way, and slept in monstrous pools and ponds among the sands of the coasts. It was a sinister place, swept by furious winds, beaten by obstiuate rains, veiled in a perpetual fog, ,where nothing was heard but the roar of the sea and the voices of wild beasts and birds of the ocean. The first people who had the courage to plant their tenrs there had to raise with their own hands dykes of earth to keep out the rivers and the sea, and lived within them like shipwrecked men upon desolate islands, venturing forth at the subsidence of the waters in quest of food in the shape of fish and game, and gathering the eggs of marine birds upon the sand. . . , Now, if we remember Lhat such a' region has become one of the mott fertile, wealthiest, and best regulated countries of the world, we shall understand the justiufj of the saying that Holland is a conquest made by man. But, it must be j added, Uie conquest goes on for ever. — " Holland and Its People," by Edmondo de Amiois. Fatry Life. We have found Fairyland very human in its organisation. Its inhabitants marry, s >metiines among themselves, sometimes into mankind. They have children born to them ; and they require at such times female assistance. They steal children from men, and leave their own miserable brats in exchange ; they steal women, and. some-

times leave in their stead blocks of wood, animated by magical art, or sometimes one of themselves. In the formes case, the animation does not usually last very long, and the woman is then supposed to die. """'Their females sometimes in tarn become captive to men. Unions thus formed are, however, not lasting, until the husband has followed the wife to her own home, and conquered his right to her afresh by some great adventure. This if> not always in the story; presumably, therefore, Hot always possible. On the other hand, he who enters Fairyland and partakes of fairy food is spell-bound; he cannot return — at least for many years, perhaps for ever — to the land of men. Fairies are grateful to men for benefits conferred, and resentful for injuries. They never fail to reward those who do them a kindness ; buttheir gift 3 usually have conditions attached, which detract from their value, and sometimes become'a source of loss and misery. Nor do th«iy forget to revenge themselves on those who offend them ; and to watch them, when they do not desire to be manifested, is a mortal offence. Their chief distinction fromjmen is in their unbounded magical powers, whereof we have had several illustrations. Theymako things seem other than they are ; they appear and disappear at will; they make long time 3eem short, or short time long ; they cast spells over mortals, and keep them spell-bound for ages.—" The Philosophy of Fiction in Literature," by Daniel Gbbenlbab 1 Thompson.

The Power of Sympathy. Mr A. Mounteney Jephson's sketch of " Our March with a Starving Column," with which the current number of Scribner'a opens, will enable readers to realise the dire distress to which both Europeans and natives were subjected from the inadequacy of the resources obtainable by foraging in the tractless regions through which tho company had ttf force their way. The writer, while frankly acknowledging the faults common to them with all untaught negroes, bears this testimony as to the Zan- •■ zibaris : — " There : was something childlike and simple about these Zanzibaris which always appealed strongly to our sympathy. At work you may be severe as you please ; you may flog him when he does wrong, so long as when work is done you relax, and gossip and talk with him. His quaint - remarks upon people and things are always entertaining and often instructive. You listen to his stories about his^ wife or mother, his sister or frierifr, about his home in Zan- .-■ zibar, and his little plot of land— in fact, you make him feel that though you will force him to do his full shara of work, at the~same time^you sympathise with him in his troubled and are really his friend. If you do this this he will work for you and follow you with a Wog-like fidelity. ... If punished justly, this child of nature never bears ' malice ; but injustice, want of aympathy, or oruelty will transform him into a sullen, mutinous devil, with whom nothing can be done." May not this experience have a lesson as to the mode of dealing with those who are regarded as intractable savages nearer home 7

In a' Dutch Tavern.

A. stranger dining for the first; time in a Dutch tavern sees a few novelties. First of all he is struck by the great; size and thickness of the plates, proportionate to the national appetite; and in many places he' will find a napkin of fine white paper, folded in a three-cornered shape, and stamped with ■ a border of flowers, a little landscape in the corner, and the name of the hotel or cafe, with a tyn appetif in large blue letters. The stranger, to be sure of his facts, will order roast beef, and they will bring him. half a dozen slices, as large as cabbage leaves ; or a beefsteak, and he is presented with a sort of cushion of bleeding meat — enough to satisfy a family ; or fish, and there appears a marine animal as long as the table ; and with each of these come a mountain of boiled potatoes and a pot of vigorous mustard. Of bread, a little thjn slice about as big as a dollar, most displeasing to us Latins, whose habit it is to devour bread in quantities; so that in a Dutch tavern one must be constantly asking for more, to- the great' amusement of the waiters. With any one of these three dishes, and a glass of Bavarian or Amsterdam beer, an honest man may be said to have dined. As for wine, whoever has the cramp hi his*" purse will not talk of wine in Holland, since it is extremely dear ; bat as parses here are pretty generally robust, almost all middleclass Dutchmen and their betters -drink it ; and there are cerjainly few countries where bo great a variety and abundance of foreign wines are found as in Holland, French and Rhine wines especially. — f 1 Holland and its People."