He is never happier than when dealing with the problems that beset this growing community, whether they touch Anglo-Dutch relations or the growing self-consciousness of the native. Some of his pungent chapters deal with subjects which, less picturesquely treated, would appear forbidding—here they glow with life. In addition to pictures of Botha, Smuts, Hertzog, Tielman Roos, J. W. Jagger, Sir Thomas Smartt, Mr. Thomas Boydell, and other figures in the political arena, you have, we are told, delightful glimpses of the chief towns. There is tumultuous Johannesburg; quiet and intensely Scotch Durban; Cape Town rustling with political intrigue and captivating in its situation of sea and mountain, and with its wine-farms, suggesting a foretaste of Paradise; Pietermaritzburg sleeping on its illustrious past, still a school centre for growing South Africa; Ladysmith redolent of the siege—and a score of studies of the veld, of the gold mines and mission stations—or the varied appeal of this wonderful land.
GENERAL LITERATURE
SOMERSET NEIGHBOURS
By ALFRED PERCIVALL.
Demy 8vo. 8s. 6d. net.
A book about Somerset life and character, by a lover of Somerset and a resident of many years. The author knows Somerset well, and has written a most entertaining book, with its flashes of wit and humour, and its undeniable charm.
English writers have rarely succeeded in true portraiture of those belonging to the soil. We have had romance, which is assuredly largely false, realism which is ever falser, and humour which, too often, is not so very humorous, but it is hard to name any one work which is direct painting and shows in a medium of humour and pathos, endurance, and true realistic romance of life in the hidden villages of England. It is not too much to say of this book that, however unknown the author may now be, he is destined to no mean place among our best writers, for this book contains stories which are assuredly true genius. Those who can read of Jenny Rickman without tears or of the Squire of the Woods without feeling that they have made a discovery, can have little taste for literature. The author loved and worked for over thirty years among the people he describes with such loving care, and, without knowing it, has drawn a portrait of a true shepherd of his people which, had it been done consciously by another hand, might have stood beside Goldsmith's "VICAR OF WAKEFIELD" himself.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
By FRANK ILSLEY PARADISE.
With a Frontispiece. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.