Back to the Mines. By Fisher Vane. (Hutchinson and Co.
6s.)—Mr. Vane tells us in this volume his experiences as a miner in South Africa. They seem to have been not a little diversified; but he is much more communicative about his failures than about his successes. "One of the many syndicates in which I interested myself from time to time was less a failure than the rest." This is about the best that he can say about his ventures, and unless it is an almost singular instance of the figure of speech which the grammarians call meiosis—a rhetorical minimising—mining can- not be considered a good business. As for the book, it would have been much improved by a stern pruning of luxuriant description. The personal hardships of bad food, bad lodging, &c., might have been described once for all, and then left alone. Still, we carry away a distinct impression of the life and work of the worker at the mines. Mr. Vane holds the balance between Boer and Outlander with commendable fairness. He has a good word to say for Krager, the Krager, i.e., of the Transvaal; not the Kreger of Brussels ; and he is emphatic in condemnation of the Hollander proper, the political and commercial adventurer who imported himself from Holland.
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