In response to Miss Carpenter’s appeal, upon her return to England, the English Government founded several schools for women in India, and a few ‘Mary Carpenter Scholarships’ were endowed by benevolent persons.  These schools were open to women of every caste; but while they have undoubtedly been of use, they have not realised the hopes of their founders, chiefly through the impossibility of keeping caste rules in them.  Ramabai, in a very eloquent chapter, proposes to solve the problem in a different way.  Her suggestion is that houses should be opened for the young and high-caste child-widows, where they can take shelter without the fear of losing their caste, or of being disturbed in their religious belief, and where they may have entire freedom of action as regards caste rules.  The whole account given by the Pundita of the life of the high-caste Hindu lady is full of suggestion for the social reformer and the student of progress, and her book, which is wonderfully well written, is likely to produce a radical change in the educational schemes that at present prevail in India.

(1) Venetia Victrix.  By Caroline Fitz Gerald. (Macmillan and Co.)

(2) Darwinism and Politics.  By David Ritchie, Jesus College, Oxford.  (Swan Sonnenschein and Co.)

(3) The High-Caste Hindu Woman.  By the Pandita Ramabai Sarasvati. (Bell and Sons.)

OUIDA’S NEW NOVEL

(Pall Mall Gazette, May 17, 1889.)

Ouida is the last of the romantics.  She belongs to the school of Bulwer Lytton and George Sand, though she may lack the learning of the one and the sincerity of the other.  She tries to make passion, imagination, and poetry part of fiction.  She still believes in heroes and in heroines.  She is florid and fervent and fanciful.  Yet even she, the high priestess of the impossible, is affected by her age.  Her last book, Guilderoy as she calls it, is an elaborate psychological study of modern temperaments.  For her, it is realistic, and she has certainly caught much of the tone and temper of the society of our day.  Her people move with ease and grace and indolence.  The book may be described as a study of the peerage from a poetical point of view.  Those who are tired of mediocre young curates who have doubts, of serious young ladies who have missions, and of the ordinary figureheads of most of the English fiction of our time, might turn with pleasure, if not with profit, to this amazing romance.  It is a resplendent picture of our aristocracy.  No expense has been spared in gilding.  For the comparatively small sum of 1 pound, 11s. 6d. one is introduced to the best society.  The central figures are exaggerated, but the background is admirable.  In spite of everything, it gives one a sense of something like life.