Turbans and Tails. By Alfred J. Bamford. (Sampson Low and
Co.)—In the preface to this volume, dealing with Hindostan and China, under somewhat affected titles—for the alternatives to " Turbans " and " Tails " are "The Mild Hindu" and "The Man of Han "—Mr. Bamford disarms hypercriticism by speaking of his work as, in effect, "a few chapters of selected reminiscence of residence in well-known cities and travel along well-beaten tracks." The Baboo and the nautch-girl, the mandarin and the coolie, have, from the merely literary point of view, been very well done, if not, indeed, overdone, of late ; and as Mr. Bamford's mind is evidently of the receptive rather than of the Socratic kind, he makes no excursions into the field either of psychological analysis or of the philosophy of history. He contents himself with reproducing the impressions made upon him by the persons and places he has seen, in the sprightliest—occasionally too sprightly—English he can command. At the same time, Mr. Bamford's dissertations on the Baboo in his various relations of life, and his chapter on "The Mundane Celestial," prove that he has read a good deal both on Hindostan and on China, and has assimilated what he has read. He is not a man of prejudices or even of strong opinions, as his by no means effusive description of a nautch dance, and his disparagement of the filial piety of the Chinese, will serve to show. Indeed, his animal spirits are too high to allow him to entertain any very strong dislikes. Mr. Bamford is perhaps seen at his best in his secondary and less ambitious sketches. Thus, his comic and yet pathetic story of Go Hang, the wretched chair-bearing, opium-eating coolie who comes to grief while transporting a tipsy sailor, is remarkably well told. Mr. Bamford very frequently makes a happy hit with a phrase, as when he describes the life of the musk-rat as one of "eager explanations." We have not of late come across a better account than Mr. Bamford's of Bangkok as "The City of the White Elephant." What he says on Shanghai, from the China- man's point of view, also deserves attention. Altogether, a livelier or more readable book than Mr. Bamford's has not of late been published on either Hindostan or China.
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