6 AUGUST 1881, Page 21

CURRENT LITERATURE.

SCHOOL BOOKS.

Of books on geography, we notice several ; some designed for children of various ages, others to assist the memory of candidates for the Army and Navy examinations. To the latter class belongs a quite small book, which has reached a fourth edition, Text-Book of Historical and Geographical Terms, 4-c., by John Oswald (Galt and Co., Manchester ; Siinpkin and Co., London). It seems to be a useful and succinctly expressed as well as accurate handbook.—Geography, by W. M. Lupton (Longmans), is intended to serve a similar purpose, but on a much more extended scale. It seems a careful compilation of necessary facts, and the blacker printing of the names of places, to distinguish them from the descriptions attached to them, must be a great help to students who have many facts to master in a limited time. We are glad to sco in it, too, full information about our own colonies, a subject on which the ignorance of people generally is quite wonderful. There is also a capital index.--A. larger book, though meant for the junior classes of schools, is A Smaller Manual of Modern Geography, by John Richardson, M.A. (Murray.)—It is one of Dr. William Smith's " English Course," and seems exhaustive and most methodical ; bat we doubt the expediency, even with the help of differences in print, of adding notes upon the notes. It is sure to bo confusing to students of the ages which compose the junior classes of even public schools. The style of the language, too, is less simple than it should be, for though they might be quite able to understand the loftier language, it is desirable that lesson- books should set an example of clear simplicity to students, which even at an early age they might themselves be led to adopt.—An- other book of the same kind, but smaller, as it includes only the British Empire, is Geography, by L. B. Lang, edited by the Rev. J. M. Creighton. (Rivingtons.)—It has maps which are of necessity, very small, too small to be useful to the " beginners " for whom the book is intended, but they are clearly drawn. There are good ex- planations, too, of the meanings of the names of places, an interesting addition to the study for an intelligent pupil.—Of those suitable for smaller children still, we notice, first, Earth, Air, and Water, by C. A. Martineau (Routledge and Co.), which is intended to arouse their interest in geography and kindred matters ; and an immense amount of information is crowded into a quite small book, which is illustrated with pictures and diagrams, both fairly good.—But we find even more appropriate to very young children another slim little book, called Geography for Little Children, by Antonia Zimmern. It is so clearly and simply worded, the illustrations are so apt, that it is sure both to interest and instruct at the same time. It is one of the " London Geographical Series," published by Edward Stanford, Charing Cross, and is the nicest book of the kind we have yet seen.—Glimpses of the Globe, by J. R. Blakiston, M.A. (Griffith and Ferran), is also meant for young children, and is clearly and prettily written. The plan and picture, side by side, are capital helps to the understanding of maps, but a teacher who could follow out all the ingenious ideas suggested by Charlie, his sister, and uncle, must have much more time and much fewer subjects to take up than is the case with most teachers now-a-days.—Glimpses of the British Empire, by the same author (Griffith and Ferran), we like still better. The good-sense of these words from the preface ought to commend the book In the space allotted to each country, regard has been paid rather to its human interest, past or present, historical or com- mercial, than to its mere size." We also feel glad that a teacher should begin by supposing that lads have mastered first the geography of their own " neighbourhood, county, and country ;" and it surely must be a slip of the pen which gives us on one page the expression "connected to !" There are some greatly needed remarks on Indian pronunciation, and we congratulate the author on his con- clusion that it is " hopeless " to attempt to alter such words as "Ganges," for some Oriental scholars, in their zeal for correctness and perfect accuracy, have sorely puzzled ordinary readers. —Some more books for teachers of geography are published by the National Society, at its Westminster Depository. Geo- graphy Reading-books. Parts I. to III., adapted for Standards II. to IV.—They are very much interspersed with interesting pictures ; and well written, but we doubt much the advisability of mingling fact and fiction, as in the first few chapters. A bright, little boy of seven seemed to resent being questioned, after reading these chapters with great interest, on the ground that it was "only a story." Children pre- fer the plain facts, which are quite as wonderful as a fairy-tale, when they are first presented to a young mind which is really awake ; and will discuss with deep interest those of physical geography especi- ally. The third part of this Geography Reading-book gives a great deal of physical geography in a very interesting way, and the pictures are exceedingly good, giving a vivid impression of places which are well worth looking at in pictures, when one cannot visit them. It was a curious idea to adapt and abridge descriptions from some of our novelists, principally from Walter Scott ; but it is well carried

out.—Turning from these reading-books to an almost equally useful branch of study, we have a well-printed and arranged Handbook of English Dictation. (Edward Stanford.) — It con- sists of a series of numbered paragraphs, each about the length of one lesson, and carefully selected from the writings of some of our best-known authors. It is meant for the use of the can- didates in the civil and military examinations, but it might be used with advantage in schools. If young boys and girls were early trained to copy exactly, and then put through some such course as this, those of them who ever would spell correctly would do so long before the time here contemplated. We believe there are some people to whom no amount of training will give that certainty in spelling which seems to come naturally, as it were, to others ; but we know the plan we have indicated to be usually successful, and consider this kind of book a valuable help.—Before noticing more important works of the same kind, we wish to draw attention to a very useful little grammar, Bentrose's Standard Grammar, edited by Thomas Newton. (Bemrose and Sons.)—The writer and editor proceed grammatically on Morris's lines, but the special merit of the book lies in the clearness and sufficiency, with- out redundancy, of the definitions. Tho exercises and the diagrams in the part on " analysis " seem well adapted for the purposes intended.--We cannot say as much for a larger and fuller grammar, The Elements of Grammar, Taught in English. By Edward Thring, M.A. (Cassell, Petter, and Galpin.)—This is not the place to enter into the discussion of the principles of language with a well-known scholar, but we must mention one or two points of detail in which we cannot agree with him. He makes eight parts of speech, by giving the article the place commonly denied it by modern grammarian; and by leaving out the interjection. The definition of a preposition, too, on page 14, might be improved. The rhyming ex- amples are amongst the best things in the book, and give a liveliness which grammar lessons are much the better for. We are glad to see passages from the "Essays" of Elia given for analysis ; indeed, the passages chosen all through that part of the book are much better than the manner of helping the student, which strikes us as likely to confuse rather than clear the pupils' comprehension. But we speak with modesty on this point, since it needs a wide experience to judge of the suitability of certain methods to the infinitely varied minds of teachers and pupils.—History of the English Language, by David Campbell ( Laurie), one of the Kensington series. A very small book on a very large subject, but literally crammed with interesting facts, and illustrated by a very curious little chart of the progress of our mother- tongue. We must quote from one of the notes, page 16, some figures which have a special significance just now. The Bible of 1611 "uses 97 per cent. of Anglo-Saxon words," as compared with 89 per cent. in Tennyson's " In Memoriam," and 85 per cent. used by Shakespeare. The note on page 17 tells us that " the number of words or senses of words which have become obsolete since 1611 amounts to 388, or nearly one-fifteenth part of the whole number of words used in the Bible."—English Accidence, Parsing, Analysis of Sentences, and Syntax, and the History and Derivation of the English Language (National Society's Depository, Westminster), are two handsome volumes, by the Rev. Evan Daniel, M.A. The first contains Parts I. to IV. of the grammar and derivation, written by the Principal of the Battersea Training College, and the second is Part V. of the same work. They seem to contain everything that is essen- tial to a complete work of the kind ; and we notice particularly a most useful chapter on "punctuation" in the first and larger volume, and a capital index in the smaller. We see also that Mr. Daniel follows Morris in his enumeration of the parts of speech, a small point on which it seems a pity grammarians should differ, and that he acknowledges special obligation to a dictionary by Professor Skeet. He has also largely consulted and quoted from the Anglo- Saxon Gospels. We should imagine these old English quotations would prove the greatest difficulty to students; the pronunciation is anything but obvious, unless there is a key to it, which has escaped our notice. We wonder that this society should cover all its books with so evanescent and easily-soiled a colour as the light grey.