Govinda &manta ; or, the History of a Bengal Rdiyat.
By the Rev. -Lail Behan Day. 2 vols. (Macmillan.)—Unfortunately for the literary success of this book, the hero of the tale is not the real hero. We have, indeed, the whole of his history from his birth to his death (he dies at the relief works at Burdwan during the famine of 1873), but he is a quite colourless and characterless personage. His father and his uncle, on the contrary, are distinctly and forcibly drawn, and it would have been far better if the story could have been made altogether to centre in them. Still we must be content with what we get, the more so as the author thus gets the opportunity of describing in interesting detail the childhood, the school life, the marriage, and the after-life of the
subject of his biography. Among these items nothing is more curious than the school. It would have been well for the benefit of English readers, who are notoriously ignorant of Indian affairs. if we had been expressly told which of the troubles that poor Govinda Stiroanta under- went at the hands of his oppressors still press upon the Bengal riiyats ; whether, for instance, the "press-gang" system of the indigo-planters is still in force, or Zaroinchirs can exercise the extortion which is here described. We cannot quite make out the author's nationality, but his English is certainly very good. He writes with simplicity and force, and certainly has contrived to produce a book of unusual merit
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