"Kasrems Wixoows: AN Antior's Nores 'OP TRAVEL. IN JAVAN, HOKKAIDO, Kona, Chima ax. ture Pututre yines."—By Elizabeth Keith, - With eleven, coloured" plates, London: Hutchinson & Ca. $46 Paternoster How." Price, one' guinea.
This is a book to be handled reverently. The pictures are dainty, so full of colour, so exquisitely drawn that a competent review should be written by an artist—not by an ignorant person! hat only knows that a picture is) that he must turn again and again to look at it not only paints, as an! artist, eyes "seo the Ahrough in a se Take this description of a Korean! welding and note how every detail of colour and pose impresses itself! on her retina, the Korean bowls were lovely. prey shone with a sivertike sheen: The, fen "mere exnute "Phar rightly coloured slothing. was fed can' from the. leoning" block. Some" of" the women's volumin hire were of house and. some
Yellow in'eilour, The women's heady ely, too, some lemons shale cmoftderd they" were More" glossy aa Diack. satin "an Trmamentel with "amber, Jade "oF silver" pins "There was" a) dainty bearlet, or vrimeon, Knot of violon flowing on every chest. Each woman frucat was as kind and helpful goodwill. So she secures subjects for the coloured plates that are the chief fascination of her book in si of its many curious anecdotes of strange people and their unfamiliar ways. There are eleven coloured plates in the book, most of them seven and a half by six inches in size. These have been reproduced from her drawings by woodcuts} made by Japanese craftsmen and] are remarkably good. She pays high tribute to the fidelity of the workmen who, she says, missed not a Tine—not even a faulty one—in her sketches. The frontispiece is a jure of an Ainu man. A. venerable old man with long hair and flowing beard. His face is striking. Jy intelligent and might be that of ancient sage. He looks gentleman.
The last picture that.of a Japanese tailor bent over! his work, oblivious of everything in the world but the garment he is fashioning. With spectacles on nose, wrinkled, bronze skin he might be one of the eighteen Lohan in a Buddhist temple. A street in Soochow is a riot of colour with vegetable seller in the foreground erying his wares, a sedan chair threading its way through the crowded, narrow, street, and gay shop-signs with the" characters reproduced so accurately that -they can be read with ease. An. old woman is holding a fish in one hand while the vendor—another old She was bea I tosca and dhe woman—grabbles in the tub, try tmonphere, all he tinie, was happy During all the turmoil and feasts 1 ikele @ central Ing to seize another wriggling} specimen, that will be more to the Viking of her wary customer. A night scene in Peking is very realistic and two Court musicians! had been poured' from grad erlay chal wat Fey Srnaments of silver and. coral guid powder and art mere. pondied ina 'Stod rove pasted Sight, not Took and, her' brightly:
fcibured lips fast cloved 40 that ake might not eat on hor wedding day.
round spots fo" Inaake "Shen was, a gute rather thaw a human being.
Ninety-nine out of a hundred foreign guests at such a ceremony, would only have seen a number of Sian a crowded room, eating otesquely dressed Koreans jum-
repulsive food and gabbli Snecasantly, ina strange langu Miss Keith persuaded venerable gentlemen to pose for her in what Shey considered the outworn cerejaonial robes of a past generation, imply because she showed in her etions—she could mot speak to Hiem—that she loved the antique that they, in. their hearts, rated, though it had wa:
a Was passing ava; Keith's. artist soul finds" Peking overpowering. She writes:— red for age and but T, bed not meant "of sue cofodees The plac trarpower mee Ihave en, ona tro'toe extitings. My emotions. and sleeps The' crowding impression pressions' are" aa eatatle.
Wibri to put them en paper are She visited the Lama temple and weeame friendly with the priests. in Korea, one playing a flute and the other a clavichord, are so lifelike that one would " certainly recognize the gentlemen were one! to meet them some day in Seoul.
The Soochow bridge would be recognized by a multitude of people in Shanghai who, at some time, have passed under it and a Moro Boy in a striped turban, voluminous gown of vivid blue and jet black, holding a beautiful pure white hen over his arm, is also an intriguing] picture. His' bare feet are in striking contrast to his handsome dress and the hen's leg is bound by a long red cord. Red must be the lucky colour in Moro land as it in China and one hopes the beauti ful bird is not on its last journey to the cook house. At a guinea, the book, which is printed on fine paper and beautifully bound in blue and white, is surely good value and will be a constant source of enjoyment to its purchasers.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.