Literature.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2167, 29 May 1886, Page 6 (Supplement)

Literature.

— Mr Matthew Arnold is, it ia said, now at Zurich, inquiring into the system of education, which obtain* there. —The Oxford branch of the Society for Paychioal Research has decided to dissolve itself. — The fourth and fifth volume* of Mr Spencer Walpole's " History of England from ISIS," are now in the press, and will conclude the work. They deal with the period 1841-58. — Mr Joel Chandler Harris may well write '• Unole Remns " sketches if as an American journal say*, he is an American, born on the Went Coast of the D<irk Continent, while his parents were on missionary service there — Mr Hugh H. Romilly has given some of his experiences as Deputy Commissioner for tho West Pacific, and Special Commissioner for New Guinea, in a little volume which will shortly be issued. Amongst the most remarkable of these is the account of a cannibal feast, of which he was an eye-witness. — During tho past year the Newspaper Press Fund has made thirty-two grants to members and the relatives of deceased members, amounting to £1,144, and seventeen grauts to non-members' relatives, amounting to £89. Tho total icceipts for the year were £2683, and the expenditure £\7b'y. —Referring to the statutes which have allowed the substitution of modern languages for (ireek, and natural philosophy in certain examinations at Cambridge, The Spectator remarks, " Why not be logical, and abolish compulsory everything? With that provision for complete ignorance Universities will be per* feet." — The following variation of the schoolboy's ''Steal not this book for fear of shame " is said to be at present adorning the notice-board of a certain Oxford college:—"Mr , having lont a volume of Jowett's Plato to some one, and being unable to remember to whom he ha 9 lent it, ventures to point out to the unknown borrower that, under the unusual circumstances of the case, he would be quite justified in returning the book to its owner without waiting for a more direct invitation." —It is said that Mr Justin McCarthy's " History of our own Times " has brought the author about £6000, and further, that Messrs Harper, who sent him an occasional instalment of a few hundred pounds on account of its sale in the United States, have assured him that if the work could have been copyrighted there, they could have afforded to give £10,000 for exclusive right of publication. — A course of lectures ia being delivered at the Indian Institute At Oxford, which include* "Brahmanism and Buddhism," and "The Origin of Buddhism," by Sir Momer Williams; "Tho Language and Races of British India," by Mr R M. Cuat ; and •• The Poetry of Southern India," by the Rev. Dr. Pope. Sir M. Williams has given it as his opinion in a paper read before the Royal Asiatic Society that the annexation of Upper Burmah will give ao impetus to the study of Buddhism. —The Christian Union, New York, is responsible for the statement that Sir R. N. Fowler writes so atrocious a hand that a peutence which he intended to read as follows, "I regard the conduct of the Government in this matter as absolutely inhuman," was, owing to the inability of a printer to decipher what was meant, transformed in type into " I rarely can compass a tale. My grandmother is the best narrator of amusing inoidenta."