Madras should indulge some measure of pride in having turned out a University graduate who can write the English language better than most Englishmen.  Ramakrishna’s “Life in an Indian Village” is a charming account of Dravidian homes and customs.  It is the work of a young man who has profited by Western enlightenment, and yet feels a kindly glow in his heart for all that belongs to the humblest folk in his native land.  His sympathy is beautiful, because it is devoid of any pretence or forced pathos.  His language is choice, yet simply constructed.  There is real literary flavour about this work, which has just been published by Fisher Unwin.  When will the Punjab give us a young man who can feel and think and write like this?—­Civil and Military Gazette (Lahore).

Mr. T. Ramakrishna, a graduate of the Madras University, may be congratulated on the success which seems likely to attend the publication of his well-written little book on “Indian Village Life.”  Judging by the comments that have appeared in the English papers, it is just the kind of book the public at home wants, not too statistical to be readable, and not too ambitious in design to be trustworthy, but just a simple, picturesque account of the particular part of India which the author really knows.—­London Correspondent of the Englishman (Calcutta).

The great virtue of Mr. Ramakrishna’s writing is the absence of pretence and fustian.  Space is not wasted on ambitious and worthless descriptions of scenery, or on vague disquisitions of a sentimental character.  Everywhere he is simple, straightforward, and effective....  Writing in excellent English, and in unexceptionable style, he tells plainly and simply what he has to say, and is the more successful because he is less ambitious....  It is to be hoped that Mr. Ramakrishna’s interesting sketches of Southern Indian village life will obtain a wide circulation in England.  He is to be congratulated on having produced a work of no little merit and originality.—­Madras Mail.

To doubters of the good results of Western education in this Presidency, better proof could hardly be given than is provided.