By CHARLES A. SHERRING, M.A., F.R.G.S.,
Indian Civil Service; Deputy Commissioner of Almora.
Royal 8vo. With Illustrations, Maps and Sketches. 21s. net.
During the last few years Tibet, wrapped through the centuries in mystery, has been effectively ‘opened up’ to the gaze of the Western world, and already the reader has at his disposal an enormous mass of information on the country and its inhabitants. But there is in Western Tibet a region which is still comparatively little known, which is especially sacred to the Hindu and Buddhist, and in which curious myths and still more curious manners abound; and it is of this portion of the British Borderland, its government, and the religion and customs of its peoples, that Mr. Sherring writes.
The book contains a thrilling account by Dr. T. G. Longstaff, M.B., F.R.G.S., of an attempt to climb Gurla Mandhata, the highest mountain in Western Tibet, with two Swiss guides.
LETTERS OF GEORGE BIRKBECK HILL, D.C.L., LL.D., Hon. Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford.
Arranged by his Daughter, LUCY CRUMP.
Demy 8vo. With Portraits. 12s. 6d. net.
Dr. Birkbeck Hill’s ‘Letters’ form, with a few connecting links written by his daughter, an autobiography whose charm lies in its intimate portrayal of a character which was, in its curious intensity, at once learned, tender, and humorous. He wrote as he talked, and his talk was famous for its fund of anecdote, of humour, of deep poetic feeling, of vigorous literary criticism, and no less vigorous political sentiment. As an Oxford undergraduate, he was one of the founders, together with Mr. Swinburne, Prof. A. V. Dicey, and Mr. James Bryce, of the Old Mortality Club. He was intimately connected also with the Pre-Raphaelites. At college, at home, on the Continent, or in America, everywhere he writes with the pen of one who observes everything, and who could fit all he saw that was new into his vast knowledge of the past. His editions of ‘Boswell’s Johnson,’ of ‘Johnson’s Letters,’ and ‘The Lives of the Poets’ have passed into classical works. But that his writings were not exclusively Johnsonian is abundantly shown by such books as the Letters of Hume, Swift, General Gordon, and Rossetti, as well as by his ‘Life of Sir Rowland Hill,’ his ‘History of Harvard University,’ and various collections of essays.