Our Tour in Southern India. By Mrs. J. C. Murray-Aynsley.
(F. V. White.)—We must begin by thanking the writer for the unusual brevity of her introduction. She does not begin with a description of Southampton Water, or of the horrors of the Channel passage. On the contrary, we get as far as Venice on the first page, make a very short sojourn at Suez and Djeddah, and actually reach Bombay on page 7. Arrived in India, we have, it is true, a good many digres- sions, but they are not digressions of which there is any good reason to complain. At Vellore, for instance, we have an interesting account by one of the chief sufferers—an account now published for the first time—of the mutiny of the Sepoys in 1806. Then we bear much about Hyder All and Tippoo Sahib. There are not many readers, we fancy, who will be any the worse for having their memories of these personages and their doings refreshed. From Mysore the travellers paid a visit to Coorg, of which there is a particularly in- teresting account. Bangalore, Cochin, Travancore, Madura, Trichino- poly, are successively visited. Here, of course, the history of the past efforts to Christianise the population, and the account of the present religious condition of the people, supply an important subject, on which Mrs. Murray-Aynaley has carefully informed herself, and about which she writes in a moderate and sensible way. The fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of the book are devoted to Ceylon, and in the last the author returns to Calcutta. There is nothing brilliant or remark- able in any way about the volume ; but it is free from bad taste, does not torment its readers with the forced fun which is so inexpressibly tiresome, and is generally sensible and well written.
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