The Sun.
London, England, 1862-12-26 00:00:00

LI7 E.RAI U.RE.

Our Last Years in India. By Mrs. John B. Speid.
London : Smith, Elder, and Co.
___ _

We have had many books on India, and it would
be hard to discover any aspect of that large subject
which has not been touched upon. Mrs. Speid
travels over ground already surveyed by military
and political writers, and devotes a large part of
her volume to topics already handled at length by
missionaries. But although she is but a gleaner in
fields that have been reaped, she has contrived to
pick up numberless subjects of interest which were
either overlooked or rejected by her predecessors;
and whatever may be said of the subjects them-
selves, no reader of this book will deny that her
treatment of them is in the highest degree original,
The voyage from Southampton is painted in the
most variegated colours, and is decidedly the plea-
santest description of a sea voyage we have read for
a long time. Mrs. Speid has a keen eye for the
humorous side of things, and hits it off effectively,
but she sneers at no one, and amidst all the gay
shafts she launches at the peculiarities and eccen-
tricities of her fellow voyagers there is not one

tipped with malice. The many contrivances for
rendering life tolerable under the parching sun of
India are all known to Mrs. Speid, and are here
fully explained and illustrated for the benefit of all
future Griffins and Griffinesses. Nor is it the means
of living comfortably only that our author expounds,
she warns new corners of the dangers that beset them
on every side, from the roguery of the native deal-
ers, and the perfidy of the servants, which Euro •
peens are obliged to employ in great numbers.

There is a good deal of clever comment upon
Hindoo traditions, and upon the reciprocal in-
fluence of Hindoo and Mohammedan religious cus-
toms. Our grim acquaintances the Thugs are
described as being chiefly Mohammedans, though
the horrible sect is of Hindoo origin. The murders
committed were originally sacrifices to the goddess
Kali, but the religious idea seems to have been
lost in the course of time, and both Mohammedan
and Hindoo Thugs are now merely plain cut-
throats, whose love of blood and plunder is easily
or 3lva, or some
otherrtet flattered
vrbeu redt yhideousl awithbi
u tihdeolidiesaptllleaatse ltd 'il
wi'ith their proceed-
ings, t whose pleasure or displeasure they
calittle on the whole. Debt, we are told, is
universal among Europeans. Nor can we wonder
at it, if our author's account of the pay and ex -
pences of officers be correct. An infantry captain,
with a company, receives about £534 per annum.
On his marriage he is obliged to pay £165 to the
military fund. His subscriptions to the same fund,
to the band and mess amount to £2 15s. a month.
He has also to pay to the military fund £2B on the
birth of each daughter. Then the children must
be sent home to be educated, and the enormous ex-
penses attendant on the removal of corps have to
be met. So that, taking income and expenditure,
it is almost impossible for a married officer in India
to avoid debt; and when he has once put his foot
into that adhesive slime he is seldom able to with-
draw it until the whole body is drawn in and stifled.
The only thing that can be suggested as a remedy
is to advise the officers not to marry and eschew
brandy, pawnee, horse-racing, and ecarte, The
closing chapters of the work are given to the mil-
gions of India, including the Vedas and ancient re-
ligion, an exposition of supplementary Vedic works,
and an account of
the modern system of the Hin-
doos. The baseless fabrications of roguish priests
are described, and their analogies, sometimes rather
remote, with other systems of fraud and priestcraft.
We have in this volume one of the best and fullest
accounts that has
yet appeared of the Caves of
Ellora, with an acute inquiry into their origin. It
would promote the administration of justiee in
India were the oaths administered according to
the native ideas.
The Hindoo will swear falsely
upon Bible, Shastra, Koran, or the Rig Vida. No
gesture you can prescribe to him will restrain him
from false swearing; but ask him to swear upon a
cow's tail, or on water with purple basil in it, or on
the peepul tree, and Mrs. Speid intimates that his
falsehood will go out of him, and it he say anything
it will be the truth. The volume is of a very mis-
cellaneous character, and without any classification.
We have the origin of the Mohurrum, mixed up
with the adventures of a brown bear, and reflec-
tions on Charlotte Bronte ; but it is a lively and a
witty volume, which always pleases, and never
wearies the reader.

Sisterhoods of the Church of England. By Margaret

Goodman. Smith, Elder, and Co.

A short time since Miss Goodman published an
unpretending little book, in which she gave a nar-
rative of her life in-doors and out-of-doors, as an
English sister of mercy, and which very strikingly
illustrated the best and the worst features of the
system of religious seclusion which has latterly
sprung up in connection with the Church of Eng-
land. The present volume contains some further
illustrations of the working of the system fur-
nished to the author by ladies who, like herself,
have been inmates of religious sisterhoods. We are
told by the writer that " it is possible for a young
girl to be kept secretly in strict seclusion in a con-
vent professedly connected with the Church of Eng-
land, not only against her own inclinations, but
against the wishes of her parents and friends, and
even in despite of their efforts to remove or com-
municate with her." If this be so, the management
and control of these sisterhoods become subjects of
grave importance, and any light which can be
thrown upon these establishments will be found
opinion,
proportionately welcome. The author is of opinion,
and many of tthoe
warrant
tentthat
statements
which
h e
that th
adduces
these
woula
sisterhoodsappear are, in some instances at least, perverted
from their right use and proper purpose, and
are certainly not in accordance with the law of
England, or the scope and purpose of the English
Church.

England under God.
mith, By the Venerable
Co. Archdeacon Evans,
S Elder, and

In this work it is the object of the author to present a sug-
gestion rather than a narrative, of the history of his country,
and the book appeals to such an acquaintance, with the
details of the history of a country as can be found in a peo-
ple whose " self respect has raised in their hearts a patriotic
curiosity concerning the course of eveuts which has brought