The missionaries have not been as fortunate in their chroniclers as they deserve.  The tumid cant of Nicholas is grotesque enough to be more amusing than the tract-and-water style of Yate and Barret Marshall, or the childishness of Richard Taylor.  Much better in every way are Buller’s (Wesleyan) “Forty Years In New Zealand,” and Tucker’s “Life and Episcopate of George Augustus Selwyn.”

Among the descriptions of the country as it was when the colonists found it, Edward Shortland’s account of the whalers and Maoris of the South Island, Jerningham Wakefield’s of the founding of the New Zealand Company’s settlements, Dieffenbach’s travels, and Bidwill’s unpretending little pamphlet telling of his tramp to the volcanoes and hot lakes in 1842, seem to me at once to tell most and be easiest to read.

On the Maoris, their myths, legends, origin, manners, and customs, William Colenso is admittedly the chief living authority.  For his views it is necessary to go to pamphlets, and to search the Transactions of the New Zealand Institute, where much other good material will also reward the seeker.  To John White’s ill-jointed but invaluable compilation “The Ancient History of the Maori,” every student henceforth will have to turn.  The selections therein from the papers of Stack on the South Island Maoris, from Travers’ “Life of Te Rauparaha,” and Wilson’s “Story of Te Waharoa,” are less stony than the more genealogical portions.  Sir George Grey’s collection of the historical and legendary traditions of the race has not been superseded.  Messrs. Percy Smith and Edward Tregear edit the valuable journal of the Polynesian Association; the former has made a special study of the origin and wanderings of the Maori race, the latter has produced the Comparative Maori-Polynesian Dictionary.  General Robley has written the book on Maori tattooing; Mr. Hamilton is bringing out in parts what promises to be a very complete and worthily illustrated account of Maori art.

As narratives of the first twenty years of the Colony two books stand out from among many:  Thomson’s “Story of New Zealand,” and Attorney—­General Swainson’s “New Zealand and its Colonization.”  It would not be easy to find a completer contrast than the gossipy style of the chatty army medico and the dry, official manner of the precise lawyer, formerly and for upwards of fifteen years Her Majesty’s Attorney-General for New Zealand, as he is at pains to tell you on his title-page.  But Swainson’s is the fairest and most careful account of the time from the official, philo-Maori and anti-Company side, and may be taken as a safe antidote to Jerningham Wakefield, Sir W.T.  Power, Hursthouse, and others.  A comparison with Rusden, when the two are on the same ground, shows Swainson to be the better writer all round.  Of Rusden’s “History of New Zealand” no one doubts the honest intent.  The author, believing the Maori to be a noble, valiant, and persecuted race, befriended by the missionaries and those who took missionary advice, and robbed and cheated by almost all others, says so in three long, vehement, sincere, but not fascinating volumes, largely composed of extracts from public papers and speeches.  Sweeping condemnation of the Public Works policy, of Radical reforms, and recent Socialistic experiments, complete his tale.  The volumes have their use, but are not a history of New Zealand.