BOOKS.

MR. KIPLING'S NEW BOOK.* Moan than once in these columns we have called Mr. Kipling the interpreter to the English-speaking race. Nothing of his writing, has ever justified the name better than the volume before us. Here we have Mr. Kipling interpreting for us some of the chief phases of English history, and making us understand by the arts of the storyteller the manner of life and thought of the men who of old time dwelt in these islands, tilled our fields, fought, loved, and feasted, and of the women who turned their wheels beside an English fire. We like all the stories, but chiefly those which tell how a Sussex manor passed to a Norman Lord, and how a Roman Briton served on the Wall of Hadrian. In these delightful liftings of the veil of history the story's • heart beats. against its side, and moves us as we are moved by the recital of some poignant entry in Domesday Book, or by the actual sight of some vestige of the Roman occupa- tion, by the Roman Wall flung in graceful line or long trailing curve- across the Northumberland fells, or by touching with our hands.one of the very milestones that marked the steady tramp of the legions,—an Imperial pedestrian tour that possibly began in. Egypt or Palmyra to end in Cheaters or Borcovicum. There is a Roman tombstone found on the Wall, and preserved in Northumberland, erected to a Roman officer's wife, who is described as a Palmyrene. Besides the Latin inscription it -contains one in the Palmyrene language and script,—a kind of primitive Arabic.

• Puck of Pock's 11,11. By Budyard Kipling. London Macmillan and Co. [fe.]

But we are moving too fast. We must explain the mechanism of Mr. Kipling's interpretation of English history. Mr. Kipling tells his own children, and so all the children of the English-speaking world, the story of the land we love.

Just as Scott and Dickens wrote the history of Scotland and England for sons and daughters, so he, after his own method, calls up in turn Roman, Saxon, Norman, and mediaeval Jew in

their habit as they lived, to testify to the part each played in our island story. The children escape from lessons to the fields, and there enters to them Puck, the authentic English spirit, —the spirit who was too old and wise, too much a part of the soil, to leave the island with the fairies. They were " of the old profession," and left in disgust when the Abbeys fell; but he was of a still older order, and remained to find, as ever, his living and delight in our woods and fields. Puck, having bound the children, boy and girl, "by oak and ash and thorn," not to reveal his mysteries, calls before them first a Norman

lord of the manor. He is no conventional oppressor of the poor Saxon churl, but a very perfect, gentle knight. We have all learned in the text-books how Norman and English soon settled down, and how rapidly the conquered assimilated the conquerors. To most of us, however, this statement has remained a dead thing. Mr. Kipling, by the genius of his imagination, gives it life, and shows what actually happened, and how it happened,—what was the living process under which Norman and Englishman awoke to find themselves one people. His "Young Men at the Manor" recounts how a young Norman soldier is given a manor to hold of a great Norman Over-Lord, and how he and his friend, the son of • the old owner, work together to keep it in peace and quiet. It is a charming tale, with the prettiest of love motives inter- woven. We will cite one passage of extraordinary insight, in which the Norman tells how he "ran" his manor :—

" I kept the roof on the hall and the thatch on the barn, but . . . the English are a bold people. His Saxons would laugh and jest with Hugh [Hugh was the Norman's Saxon allure], and Hugh with them, and—this was marvellous to me—if even the meanest of them said that such and such a thing was the Custom of the Manor, then straightway would Hugh and such old men of the Manor as might be near forsake everything else to debate the matter—I have seen them stop the mill with the corn half ground—and if the custom or usage were proven to be as it was said, why, that was the end of it, even though it were flat against Hugh, his wish and command.

Wonderful ! Aye,' said Puck, breaking in for the first time. The Custom of Old England was here before your Norman knights came, and it outlasted them, though they fought against it cruel.'—'Not I,' said Sir Richard. 'I let the Saxons go their stubborn way, but when my own men-at-arms, Normans not six months in England, stood up and told me what was the custom of the country, then I was angry. Ah, good days ! Ali, wonderful people ! And I loved them all."

There is the whole history of the Conquest in that passage for those who will take the trouble to understand it.

The Roman stories show an equal insight, though Mr.

Kipling, and still more his illustrator, very greatly exaggerate the height of the Roman Wall. That Mr. Kipling has given us a true picture of the great stations on the Wall we do not doubt for a moment. It is most convincing, as is also the picture of the Pictish chief who takes the young officers out shooting in the Picts' country and sells them ponies. Here is the account of how a young British officer just appointed to his legion took his company up-country to the Wall :—

" We went out fully armed,' said Parnesins, sitting down ; but as soon as the road entered the Great Forest, my men expected the pack-horses to hang their shields on. "Ko !" I said ; "you can dress like women in Anderida, but while you're with me you will carry your own weapons and armour."—" But it's hot," said one of them, "and we haven't a doctor. Suppose we get sun- stroke, or a fever ?"—" Then die," I said, " and a good riddance to Rome ! Up shield—up spears, and 'tighten your foot-wear ! "— " Don't think yourself Emperor of Britain already," a fellow shouted. I knocked him over with the butt of my spear, and explained to these Roman-born Romans that, if there were any further trouble, we should go on with one man short. And, by the Light of the Sun, I meant it too ! My raw Gauls at Clausen- tam had never treated me so. Then, quietly as a cloud, Maximus rode out of the fern (my Father behind him), and reined up across the road. He wore the Purple, as though he were already Emperor ; his leggings were of white buckskin laced with gold. My men dropped like—like partridges. He said nothing for some time, only looked, with his eyes puckered. Then he crooked his forefinger, and my men walked—crawled, I mean—to one side. "Stand in the sun, children," he said, and they formed up on the hard road. " What would you have done? " he said to me, "'if I had not been here "—"-I -should have- killed that man," I answered.—" Kill him now," he said. "He will -not move a limb."-1Y No," I said. ,1' You've taken my men •out. of my

command. I should only be your butcher if I killed him• now." Do you see what I meant ? ' Parnesius turned to Dan. = Yes: said Dan. It wouldn't have been fair, somehow.'—' That was what I thought,' said Parnesins. 'But Maximus frowned. "You'll never be an Emperor," he said. "Not even a General will you be." I was silent, but my Father seemed pleased. "I came here to see the last of you," he said. "You have seen it," said Maximus. "I shall never need your son any more. He will live and he will die an officer of a Legion—and he might have been Prefect of one of my Provinces. Now eat and drink with us," he said. "Your men will wait till you have finished." My miserable thirty stood like wine-skins glistening in the hot sun, and Maximus led us to where his people had set a meal. Himself he mixed the wine.'"

We must leave Mr. Kipling's enchanting book—there is no other word for It—but before we do so we must mention the poems which are sandwiched between the tales. Most of them illustrate what follows or precedes ; but one, with delicious irrelevance, is a smuggler's song of rare quality. This we will quote in full as the Envoi to our notice of a book which will delight every boy and girl lucky enough to get it as a Christ- mas present, and will be devoured with a true thrill of pleasure by the " grown-ups " before it is slid—never an easy task—into the narrow black or brown stocking :-

"If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse's feet, Don't go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street, Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie. Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by !

Five and twenty ponies,

Trotting through the dark—

Brandy for the Parson, 'Batty for the Clerk; Laces for a lady ; letters for a spy, And watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by !

Running round the woodlump if you chance to find Little barrels, roped and tarred, all full of brandy-wine ; Don't you shout to come and look, nor take 'em for your play ; Put the brishwood back again,—and they'll be gone next day !

If you see the stableyard setting open wide ;

If you see a tired horse lying down inside;

If your mother mends a coat cut about and tore ; If the lining's wet and warm—don't you ask no more!

If you meet King George's men, dressed in blue and red, You be careful what you say, and mindful what is said. If they call you 'pretty maid,' and chuck you 'neath the chin, Don't you tell where no one is, nor yet where no one's been !

Knocks and footsteps round the house—whistles after dark— You've no call for running out till the house-dogs bark. Trusty's' here, and ' Pincher's' here, and see how dumb they lie— They don't fret to follow when the Gentlemen go by !

If you do as you've been told, 'likely there's a chance, You'll be give a dainty doll, all the way from France, With a cap of Valenciennes, and a velvet hood— A present from the Gentlemen, along o' being good!

Five and twenty ponies,

Trotting through the dark—

Brandy for the Parson, 'Batty for the Clerk.

Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie—

Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by !"