New-York tribune., 1903-07-24
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
Notes of TraDeI in Burntdh and
France.


ligious thought is a sympathetic observer and
writes with a long and intimate knowledge OF
the people He gives an openminded estimate
OF their real beliefs and mental attitudes. He
has founded his account Of the Buddhist re-
lgion as IL exists in Burmah, not on recorded
doctrine or any conventional observances. but
on the acts and habits of the believers He
makes an interesting distinction. for example.
between the teachings of Buddha in regard to
death and the accepted belief of the Burmese.
In the teachers sight there was no survival Of
personality after death. And though the peo-
pIe have accepted the doctrine as formal
tenet the logical conclusions were too harsh,
toa bitter. to stand unaffected. Like legls-
lative bill amended beyond recognition, the
Burmese villagers version Of the Buddhist doc
trine bears little relation to it's original He mas
returned to belief in the survival Of person
aIity by way of transmigration of souls. The
rebirth Of a soul may. in his experience often
be recognized 1t is a common thing for young
children to remember events places, persons
and implements connected with their former
life Just as we tell stories in the dusk OF
ghosts and second sight" writes the author
80 do they, when the days work is over gos-
sip of stories Of second birth only they believe
IN them far than we do in ghosts. MI
Hall tells of his conversations with number
Of children who We're accepted as the reincar-
natad spsrits Of peopIe well known in the
neighborhood One boy complained that though
formerly he could remember details of his for
mer life readily, the vision grew duller as ne
grew older The lawsuit in a local court Oh
Upper BurrnAh over hunted deer which was
thought by a woman 10 harbor the soul OF her
dead SOD bore testimony to the seriousness OF
the belief late as 1888
II Is very easy TO laugh at such bellefs; noun
ing is indeed easier than to be witty at the ea eH
pense of any belief 1t is also very easy 70 say
that it is all self-deception. that the ctuI f,o
merely imagine that they remember theil % - 49,
lives or are citing conversation OF IhelT eiueto
How this may be, do not know What Is 'lIe
explanation of this, perhaps the ohiy oeIleL - VI
,TStcb we have anv knowledge which is at once
q living belief to-day and was so as Tar pfch 90
We can get 1 do not pretend to say For trans
1oierafton is no theory of Buddhism at all but
was leading tenet in the far older 1alth Oh
Brahmanism, of which Buddhism was Oul On
offshoot as Christianity of judaism
The author does not ascribe the kindness Of
The Burmese to animals in any great degree 10
t1nis belief but rather TO the general teachings
of compassion He points out that the theory
onens the way for maltreatment by the easy
En,uposit1on that the animal is inhabited by the
soul Of an evildoer who deserves punishment
The book throughout. while showing TINS mae
pendence of individual and careful judgment
enters understandingIy into the emotional i'm
pulses and mental postulates of childlsh put
high minded and gentle people.
Toliffe. in the book of travel notes in merid-
fonal France TO which Maxwell Sommervllle
gives that name Orexel Biddle) turns out to
be a gypsy's horse. 1t takes some reaolng
through the somewhat inconsequent but not in
formal course of the reflective narrative to dis
cover that Adelia, the fortune teller, mas a
horse of singular intelligence. of which she is
uncommonly fond The gypsies and Joliffe re-
appear from time to time the author moves
on from Crasse to Laghetto At her first ap-
pearance she tells the story of her religious in
terest stirred by the minstrations of priest and
Protestant nurse in the hospital. to which
fall from Joliffe's back had confined her for
some months II is her ambition and her later
achievement to reach the shrine Of Laghetto
and be cured of her ameness. At the grotto
Joliffe is tied to iron ring in the wall, and
this in their absence. he proceeds to pull out
disclosing a walled in box. which proves to
hold number of interesting records of the
shrine. The documents are given in an ap-
pendix
Faith the faith that makes the gypsy whole,
and which manfests itself in the little incidents
Of the journey and the larger events of the day
in the outer world. is the theme of the book.
The nnoralizing which through the old
fashioned and sedate style of the narrative,
while rarely obtrusive is not particularly al
Turing.
Slightly more than half of Caxton's Knight
of the Tower is reproduced in illustrated
reprint. edited. with notes and a glossary, by
Gertrude Burford Rawlings THE Booke of
Thenseygnementes and Techynge that .the
Knight of the Towre Made to his Daughters by
the Chevalier Geoffroy de la Tour Landry" Qm-
ported by Charles Scribner's Sons. The French
book was written in 1371-'72 by the chevalier
for the instruction of his daughters in reading.
and in the ways in which young women should
behave. Though there many French
copies, to judge from the number of surviving
manuscripts. only two English versions
known. William Caxton published his transa-
tion Independently of the earlier one, of which
he probably not aware, in 1854 This
the first time the book published in print;
nine years later there was a German edition,
and twenty-one years after that a French one.
Except for the reprinting of the earlier English
version by the Early English Text Society in
1888 in which the lacuna We're supplied by
quotation from Caxton's this book has not be-
fore been reproduced The reprint is made from
Of the two copies in the British Museum.
The text has not been corrected except in the
of obvious misprints, The archaic type
and spelling. rubricated initials, and illustra-
lions after the manner Of old time graved
plate, carry out the quaint tone of precept and
enforced example. Worth quoting as character
istic is the chapter How Yonge Maydens
Ought Not TO Torne Their Heedes Lyghtely Here
ne There:
ne semblable the tortuse ne to the Crane, whiche
torne their visage and the heede aboue their
sholders. and wynde their hede here and there
as q Vane. But haue you're regarde and manere
stedfast. lyke the hare hath, which is a
beest. that seeth alvey to fore hym, even right
forth withoute tornying of his hede here ne
that ha in