17 AUGUST 1895, Page 26

The Flower of Forgiveness. By Flora Annie Steel. (Macmillan and

Co.)—These stories of Indian life are, for the most part, tinged with a sombre hue. Touching as they do, more or less directly, on the various relations between the ruling race of India and their subjects or dependents, they are full of that somewhat hopeless spirit with which many close observers of things Indian are dominated. Would not this people have been happier, we sometimes wonder, if we had left them alone, un- touched by our civilisation and our religion ? The subjects of the tales—there are sixteen of them—are various, but they have something of a common character, and they all display a literary power of no common kind.