GIFT -BOOKS.
ILLUSTRATED BOOKS AND REPRINTS.
LADY WOLSELEY, " citizen and gardener of London," as she styles herself on her title-page, has compiled a delightful volume, The Countryman's Log-Book (P. Leo Warner and Jonathan Cape, 15s. net), in which she goes the round of the year month by month, and records especially those sayings and doings of the countryfolk that bear upon the land." Something of the kind was done in that storehouse of old custom and anecdote, Chambers's Book of Days, but Lady Wolseley's collection is more compact and varied. Open it where you will and you find something of curious interest. Thus we are told, to illustrate the meaning of " heriot," that the lord of the manor of Wickes, in Essex, claimed Sir Thomas Bunbury's famous racehorse Savernake as the " best beast " of his tenant by copyhold. Again, the Pitt diamond was pledged to a pawnbroker who unluckily had a copyhold in Westmoreland ; when he died, the lord of the manor seized the diamond as a heriot. The first Sir Robert Peel was so apprehensive lest his Rubens portrait of a girl, now in the National Gallery—the so-called " Chapeau de Faille "—should be seized as a heriot that he bought the manor of which he was a copy holder. Lady Wolseley has brought together a great number of proverbs, rhymes and customs, and woven them into a most agreeable book. It is illustrated from old miniatures and prints.
In Tyltyl (Methuen, 21s. net) Mr. Teixeira de Mattos has retold in prose for children M. Macterlinek's play, The Betrothal, which was the sequel to The Blue Bird. It makes a pleasant story ; it is well printed and is illustrated with elaborate coloured designs by Mr. Herbert Paus.—A neat reprint of Stevenson's
irginibus Puerisgue (Chatto and Windus, 25s. net) is illus- trated with some strange coloured pictures by Mr. Norman Wilkinson.—A handsome reissue of The Roadmender, by Michael Fairlessthat is the late Miss Margaret Fairless Barber —is very appropriately illustrated with photographs, by Mr. Will F. Taylor, of • the Central Sussex that the author knew so well and described so lovingly (Duckworth. 21s. net).—Good reprints of David Copperfield and Jane Eyre come from Messrs. Harrap (12s. 6d. net each). Miss Gertrude Hammond's coloured illustrations for Dickens's book are excellent.—From the same publishers, too, we have a capital reprint, in large type, of Longfellow's Courtship of Miles Standish (10s. 6d. net). Mr. N. C. Wyeth's coloured illustrations arc spirited, especially the famous scene suggested by the line, Said in a tremulous voice. ' Why don't you speak for yourself, John ? ' "—Mr. Wyeth has also illustrated a lively new version of Robin Hood, retold by Mr. J. W. McSpadden and Mr. C. Wilson (Harrap. 12s. 6d. net).
We are glad to see a reissue in one well printed and well illustrated volume of Judge Parry's Kafateampus, Its Treatment and Qtzte, and The First Book of Krab (Manchester : Sherratt and Hughes. lee. 6d. net). Of all who have followed in the footsteps of Lewis Carroll Judge Parry is easily the most original and the most amusing. He drops into verse and drops out again with uncommon facility, and he has the art—which all children love—of investing familiar things, such as the blackbeetles in the kitchen, with an air of comic romance. The chapter about " The Clock work Child "—the pattern of excellence—is masterly. He has been well served by his illus- trators, Mr. Archie Macgregor and Miss Cynthia Moon, who
translate his humour with unfailing sympathy. The frontispiece shows the white bear singing his love-song to Krab.
In Stories from French History (Harrap, 66. net) Miss Eleanor C. Price has related with much skill and taste a number of typical episodes from the long and dramatic history of France. St. Louis, Etienne Marcel, St. Joan of Arc, Jacques Coeur, the Chevalier Bayard, Henry IV. and Sully, Richelieu before La Rochelle, the .Roi Soleil at Versailles with Jean Bart, Louis XVL assailed there by the mob, Napoleon crowning himself—these and other famous characters flit across Miss Price's pages. The book has some well-chosen illustrations, including several views of old Paris.—The Child's Book of France, by Sidney Dark (Chapman and Hall, 10s. 6d. net), is a pleasant sketch of French history from Caesar's day to our own. There is a capital chapter at the end, entitled " The Truth about the French," in which Mr. Dark does justice to the sobriety and simplicity of French family life and describes in outline the French system of government.
The late Mr. T. Francis Bumpus dealt with The Cathedrals of England and Wales in three pleasant volumes, which have now been reissued as a single volume (Werner Laurie. 21s. net). Mrs. E. M. Lang has revised the text and added a short account of the old parish church at Chelmsford, which is now styled a cathedral. Coventry has unfortunately been omitted, although it is one of the noblest churches in the country ; for Bradford and St. Edmundsbury we look in vain. To the older cathedrals, however, the book is a readable guide, and it is well illustrated.
Mr. C. E. Tyndale-Biscoe, who has for many years conducted an admirable Church Missionary Society school at Srinagar and has succeeded in imbuing the Kashmiri youth with the English public-school spirit, has written an excellent book on Kashmir in Sunlight and Shade (Seeley, Service. 12s. 6d. net). Ho describes the country, the towns and the people with sympathy and humour, and devotes three chapters to a trip over the mountain-passes into Ladakh, on the edge of Tibet. Mr. Tyndale- Biscoe knows Kashmir too well to generalize a bout its inhabitants. There are good men and bad men in Kashmir as in every other country. He tells an interesting story about a Sadhu or holy man who wanted his son to enter the mission school. The author declined to admit the boy so long as his father was living an idle life on the charity of others. A year later the Sadhu reappeared in the dress of a native clerk ; he had gone back to muler life and was earning an honest living, in order that Mr. Tyndale-Biscoe might be induced to take the boy into his school. The Sadhu's son did well at school, went to college and then entered the police, where he is now serving. The author at the close of the book gives some account of his famous school, where he teaches young Brahmans and others to swim, to row and even to box. Thirty years ago his Brahman pupils thought that only a man of low caste should touch an oar. Now they are all eager to take part in the rowing practice and the regattas. India needs many such men as Mr. Tyndale- Biseoe.
Mr. Oliver Baker has written a large and curiously interesting volume, finely printed and lavishly illustrated by the author, on Black Jacks and Leather Bottells (Cheltenham. Privately printed by E. J Burrow for W. J. Ficldhouse. £3 3s. net). It is not commonly realized that our mediaeval ancestors, finding earthenware scarce and dear, used drinking utensils of leather and wood, as well as of pewter. Liquor was kept in leather bottells, shaped like a cheap modern hot-water bottle and holding several gallons ; it was drunk out of a leather jug, generically termed a " black jack " as early as the Tudor ago and usually shaped like a Toby jug. Mr. Baker has collected a mass of information on the subject and describes many existing examples which he has drawn or photographed. He says that one of the old inmates of the Hospital of St. Cross in 1897 could remember in his youth to have seen four black jacks made for Winchester College. Messrs. Merryweather, the fire-engine builders at Greenwich, manufactured black jacks down to about 1850, and still possess the wooden moulds on which the leather was shaped. Mr. Baker is an enthusiast, but he is also a competent antiquary and a pleasant writer. His book will long be the standard authority on this attractive subject.
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