CURRENT LITERATURE.
—4---
Cape Coast to Coomassie. (Illustrated London News Otfice.)—Here we have in a connected form accounts of the Ashantee War which have appeared from week to week in the Illustrated London News, illustrated with some excellent sketches drawn by the special artist of that journal The idea of thus selecting from the mass of ephemeral news all that concerns some great subject of permanent interest is an excellent one It is a demand upon'house-room greater than the ordinary citizen can meet, to find space for the bound volumes of a journal of folio size, in which indeed is mach that one does not care to preserve. But it would be a great pity if so excellent a story of the campaign, as told not only by the pen, but also by the pencil, were to perish or be forgotten. Both. letter-press and sketches are good. The former gives a succinct history of past wars, as well as of that concluded; the latter are spirited and carefully worked out. It is a marvel that they should have been. drawn under such circumstances, and scarcely less a marvel that they should have been got ready for publication with such celerity. "A Fac-simile Sketch" is one of the most interesting things in the whole, creditable alike to the sketcher in the bush and to the artist who interprets him to the public at home. A portrait of Sir Garnet Wolseley forms the frontispiece, and many interesting repredentations of men and things in Ashantee and elsewhere follow it. Among these we may mention- " Summoning Bearers to Cape Coast Castle," in which we see our good allies, the Fantee-women, looking as like the mediteval devil as can be imagined; "Fixing Telegraph Wires on the Road to the Prah," and "Ashantee Ambassadors Crossing the Prah."
Previous page
