Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/186

 1 62 Reviews.

eating, but the representatives of the conquering races that got hold of India. In the Licchavis and the Mallians he sees non- Aryan ruling races. He next proceeds to discuss the Ascetics, the king, the ofificials of the court, the court-chaplain, brahmans, guilds of artizans and merchants, callings that do not depend on caste, and the despised castes ; on all of which he adduces evidence now for the first time collected.

The essay is by no means comparative. The author does not enter into the question of the origin of castes, which would have been important from our point of view ; he even omits to cite the parallels from Greece of yivos and <ppa-pia, with their communal meal and certain restrictions which resemble caste rules not a little. Of magic, sorcery, tree-worship, and the relics of aboriginal cults he says little or nothing. In fact the book is one for orien- talists rather than students of folklore ; but for those it will prove a valuable and reliable handbook.

We have noted one misprint (cropLcr-cu for (xoficrTat, p. 41).

Travels in West Africa : Congo Francais, Corisco, and Cameroons. By MaryH. Kingslev. London : Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1897.

Probably it is a defect in the reviewer's mental constitution ; but if there be one kind of book duller to him than another it is a book of travels. And some of the books which have won the greatest reputation during the last twenty years are to him the dullest and stupidest of all. Not infrequently they are much more; they are absolutely repulsive. The details of petty squabbles with petty chiefs or refractory followers, the solemn narratives of big-game-hunts are tedious enough. But when the writer comes to gloating over his slaughter and enumerating the tusks, or the horns, or the skins, then he becomes nothing less than loathsome in the waste of life and the torture he inflicts for the purpose of gratifying his savage love of " sport " and his cupidity. This kind of traveller, however, is dear to the British public. Crowds hang upon his lips ; his truculent record is among the best-thumbed bundles of printing-ink and paper in the circulating libraries ; and, if qualified by a sufficient ignorance of the political aspirations of