CURRENT LITERATURE.
The Adventures of Nevil Brooke; or, How India was IlTon for England. By C. J. Riethmiiller. 3 vols. (Bell and Sons.)—This is one of the old-fashioned sort of historical novels. The Adventures of Nevil Brooke are, in fact, the history of Robert Clive, to whom we are introduced when he was eating out his heart over ledgers in the factory at Madras, and whose career we follow till it reached its crowning-point in the vic- tory of Plessey. And this story is well told. The famous march on Arcot, and the stand which Clive made there, with his little force of Europeans and Sepoys, is described with special force. The hero him- self and the other characters of the story are, as is usual with books of this kind, of a conventional sort. They are figures well known to us, —the loving mother, the avaricious- uncle, the beantif al heroine, the stern Jesuit priest, who does his best to hinder her marriage with a heretic. These are necessary to fill in the canvas andthere is not much more to be said about them. When Mr. Riethmiiller comes across real personages, he is more successful. The sketches of Dupleix and his wife, for instance, are good. On the whole, this is a well- written book, dealing not unworthily with a great subject.
Two Months with Tchernaieff in &rcia. By Philip H. B. Sainsbury, (Chapman and Hall.)—Lieutenant Sainsbury, thinking, after the manner of young Englishmen, that it was the right thing to be whore fighting was going on, made his way into Servia in the late summer of last year, and stayed till the war was nearly over. He came on evil days ; and indeed the Servian side, except on moral grounds, was not the one on which it was pleasant for an amateur to fight. But he saw service, learnt more of his profession than be could have done in years of peace, and seems to have won golden opinions by his gallantry, though he is most modestly reserved about his own share in the fighting. His book is written without any pretence to style, but it presents a vivid picture of what was going on. The writer's impressions are much the same as those which have been previously given to the world. The Servians were not by any means uniformly brave, neither were they uniformly cowards. Probably they had to learn courage, as most men have to, learn it, as even Anglo-Saxons have to learn it. In the last battle of the war, they fought, according to Lieutenant Salusbury's account, with distinguished courage. The Montenegrins were furiously brave, but distinctly barbarous. For the Russians, the writer has no words of sufficient praise. Their gallantry was extraordinary. Deserted by their- Servian troops, they literally kept up the fight by themselves. And their courtesy and kindness were unvarying. Probably the volunteers in the Servian war were some of the best men in the army.
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