REVIEW.

Evening Star, Issue 2970, 26 August 1872, Page 2

REVIEW.

Spangles and Sawdust. By E. P. Whitworth. MacphailandCo., Collins street, Melbourne; Joseph Braithwaite, High street and Arcade, Dunedin. This is a new work by a gentleman for some time resident in Dunedin and connected with the Tress. It has already reached a

fourth edition, and seems well worthy of perusal. Mr Whitworth has had long Colonial experience, and has studied Colonial life in its various phases. The pan of this pleasant little work is not new. Old as the “Arabian Nights,” or perhaps ages before Eastern story-tellers wrote down their extravagancies, interest has been created by gathering a number of persons together to narrate their experiences. Geoffry Chaucer adopted the plan as suitable to develop individuality of character; many others have followed in his wake. The story, told hy au “intelligent, quick, and observant '’ young fellow, suggests the title. The writer represents himself as connected with the law, and engaged professionally in au “arbitration case ” at Brisbane. During a leisure walk he meets with “ one of a party of circus performers,” who tells him that “spangles” moans good business and full houses in the language of the circus, and “sawdust” bad. By “Spangles and Sawdust,” therefore, must be understand the ups and downs of Colonial life. There are stories of adventures in Queensland, in New Zealand, in South Australia, in New South Wales, told in Mr Whitworth’s peculiarly happy style. Occasionally, when the narrative admits of it, there are powerfully-written descriptions of scenery. One extract will interest. It is a sketch in Queensland : There is no wind, except now and then a faint puff that raises a low sleepy rustle in the thick belt of bush between us and the road, and sends a shivering ripple over the glassy face of the broad river that flows at our feet. Behind us the dark scrub, dense with gnarled sard twisted ti-tree, stringy bark, swamp oalt mangrove, and the thick undergrowth of bright groan fern bushes, and delicate, scarlet-streaked peppermint. Before us. and stretching away in a mighty reach from right to loft, the vast river, silently flowing on to the sea, ami reflecting the ’blue firmament and the few fleecy olouds that imperceptibly float across its face to the eastward. Far beyond, the land sloping up from the river to the limit of vision, the line of a range of low downs to the southward, land here and there covered with patches ol primeval bush, but for the most part cleared, and under cultivation. Plantation after plantation sketching along the river bank for miles —graceful banana trees, drooping with the heavy golden winter crop, grove after grove of huge sombre-looking mulberry trees, relieved by clumps of birch-like China poaches laden with their wealth of delicate early blossoms, daik patches of pine apples, guavas, Cape gooseberries, and the thousand and one other fruits that flourish in rank luxuriance almost all the year round in this favoured clime ; and, nestling amidst the trellised vines and passion flowers, o»d the sweet-smalhng verbenas. He scattered here and there the white homesteads of the river-side settlers. Not a sound to break the profound calm, save the low murmur of a little creek that falls from the hills at the back, and the occasional babble, and not unmusical laugh of a party of blacks, two men and a woman, spearing fish a little lower down the river, and whose lithe forms and agile movements we have been watching, as with a quick dart and a doft movement of the wrist, they strike their prey, and throw him, glittering as he quivers in the snn, like burnished silver, on the points of their rude weapons.