T most guilty and horrible of all

THIS frightful war, certainly the

the wars of our day, perhaps of all wars upon record, has, among its countless minor evils, baffled many an intending tourist and spoilt many a hard-earned holiday. Atrocious culprits, lying under sentence of death in our jails for foul murder, are in comparison almost as innocent babes compared with the conspirators against human happiness who are deluging wide regions with wholesale butchery. It is almost maddening to think of the glorious Rhineland, with its treasures of the vintage and the wheat harvest, with its glorious river sweeping past many a fortressed rock and many a pleasant hamlet, where on summer evenings I have strayed through peaceful villages, and have witnessed harvest festivities with their simple homeless joys, should be given up to the dogs of war, to havoc and destruction, and all the hellish inventions of wholesale murder. The very thought of the war is awful and appalling, and makes us long. that God's curse may alight upon the man, whoever he may be, who is responsible in His sight for all this carnage and misery. The Emperor truly said some years ago that any war in Europe must be civil war; but civil war has never produced-not even in France itself, her special seat-such immorality, lust of conquest, and vile passions as this internecine war which France has declared against Prussia.*

We had been accumulating a collection of this season's books of travel, and making our annotations thereon, with the intention of seeing how we could best utilize them. A book of travels is always the best help for an intending tourist. But now many people, instead of going

*These paragraphs were written at the commencement of the month of August, and are retained as embodying the common expectations respecting the war.

abroad, will be content to sit at home and read books of travel instead. A great stream of continental tourists is turning backwards, and the tourist is diverted from all his customary haunts. In two directions this altered condition of things will be perceptibly felt. Some persons will restrict, but others will enlarge their travels. Home travel will be extended, and enterprising travel will also be extended. We cannot tell whether the seat of war may not be enlarged. Belgium and Holland may soon cease to give us a free passage to the Continent, and even the neutrality of Switzerland may not be respected. But it may reasonably be expected that the watering-places that fringe our own island will be crowded, and that the foolish people who have hitherto neglected our own lakes and mountains will this season be content to investigate them thoroughly. The Continent has no monopoly of fine scenery, and the perfection of beautiful scenery may be seen in this country. Those who have lounged their holidays away in capital cities, and have traversed no wilder country than the Black Forest, will now perhaps take a wider sweep of vision, and follow the example of royalty in extending their tours to India and America. Let them discard their conventionality, and indulge both curiosity and courage. They will not perhaps do much on the Continent; but there are other continents to travel in, and the stream of enterprising tourists, who were beginning to calculate at what expense of time or money they could go round the world, will be largely augmented.

As we look on this season's library of travel, we begin to think there is no country so distant but it will receive some additional travellers, and each favourite English spot will welcome an increased horde of

tourists. The other night we 'assisted' at a conference at a clerical friend's, where he was mapping himself out a journey through India, embracing a cursory view of China and Japan. It is hardly necessary to say that he had already done the Rocky Mountains; and there will now be an intensified rush along the Union Pacific Railway. It would be interesting to make out a catalogue of the number of books which this railway has produced. The spectacle is so wonderful that we can well understand the production of any number of books on the subject. Those rods of iron on the ground, with the wires overhead, have changed the whole continent. The railway is the true pioneer of civilization. In America it is in the van instead of in the rear of civilization. As it advances, first the village, then the township, then the city springs up. The boundless prairie stretches away as the sea; and passing strange is the sensation as day after day you steam along. You may have the excitement of warfare with the Indians, or you may hunt the antelope on the Rocky Mountains. We will not, however, group these travel-books together for discussion, as their number is large, and doubtless the friendly reader has somewhere made his selection. It is to be regretted that the literature of travel as respects our own colonies is, in comparison, very defective. In America everything is on that grand scale which strikes the imagination, especially the imagination of the philosophical Radical. We believe, however, that on such a subject as emigration, such a colony as the Canadian province of Ontario offers advantages with which no American state can compete; and such a book as Miss Frere's gives a pleasanter account of Australian life than the Far West can display. We sincerely trust that, now the Continent is partially closed, the tourists will visit our colonies and give them abundant illustration with pen and pencil.

By-and-by we shall have a shoal of volumes on the war. The Abyssinian war produced a little library; indeed the books were so numerous

that, with every desire to do justice to Lord Napier's matchless strategy -and Lord Napier is one of England's best hopes in a future warwe gave them up at last. All the discarded correspondents who have been turned out of camp, will nevertheless chronicle their experiences and opinions in that forcible-feeble style for which newspaper corre spondents are so justly celebrated. They are, however, a necessity, and they have developed a peculiar style of their own. While we are waiting for the future books of special correspondents, we will take a glance at those which they have written, and their way of writing.

Dr. Chalmers, when a young man, was very anxious to learn French. He wondered how he could best acquire the language, and he ultimately resolved that he would teach it. Accordingly, he formed a class for French. Every evening a lesson was given, and every morning the lecture was duly crammed up by the lecturer. At the end of a time the lecturer handed over the pupils to a Frenchman, who remarked that the grammar was good, but the pronunciation was simply diabolical. Now it is precisely in this way that books of foreign travel are often written. There is some clever man who knows little or nothing about a country. He forthwith determines to write a book about it, with the object of acquiring some information on the subject. I once knew something of such a man. Every year he used to visit some fresh country, and write a book about it which paid him his expenses. There was, of course, something that was well done about it, but the pronunciation -or what is equivalent to pronunciation was simply diabolical.

Mr. Edward Dicey reminds us of such an individual. But it is all perfectly plain sailing about Mr. Dicey. He went out to the East for an express purpose, and he has accomplished his purpose quite satisfactorily. We will look at his work, although the Eastern question is for the present overshadowed, assuredly to emerge again. He has a keen and trained eye for observation, and shares in that gift of expression

which is so largely poured forth on every side. He went out as Special Correspondent for the Daily Telegraph,' and had to do special talk about the Empress and the Khedive, the Suez Canal and M. Lesseps, besides all the stock talk about Constantinople, Cairo, and Jerusalem. A writer in a daily paper must be content to produce only a most fugitive effect. He must be content to gain in diffusion what he loses in force and concentration. His efforts die in their birth, and their first breath is their last. He is read by many thousand people, but perhaps does not permanently affect the mind of half a dozen. Still we are not sorry that the writings of so intelligent and fair-minded a man as Mr. Dicey should be gathered into a permanent form. He has given us his first impressions, which are often more true than second or third impressions. His portrait of M. Lesseps is very vivid, and so, in fact, are all his impressions; but of course they must be taken at their worth, as hastily and imperfectly done. Mr. Dicey writes essentially from a Daily Telegraph' point of view. One sees an amazing instance of this. Of course, after Jerusalem and Bethany, he went to see something of the Wilderness of the Holy Land. The readers of the Daily Telegraph' are all familiar with the political reference to the Cave of Adullam. He therefore sets out for a visit to the cave-which is, of course, a great hit-and gives an interesting account of a whole labyrinth of caverns, in which any number of David's discontented friends could have found accommodation. The journey into the wilderness is essentially cockneyish. He has a French iron bedstead beneath a marquee, writing-table, wasbing apparatus, and for dinner soup, fish, two courses of meat, sweets, fruit, and coffee. He gives a good description of the Jews' wailing ground, where the despised Hebrews hide their faces in the crevices of the wall, which they bedew with tears and kisses; and he is keenly alive to every thing scenic in the Holy City and the Holy Land.

He well exposes the hypocrisies, the lying legends, the backsheesh of the place; but he only faintly reproduces the feelings which have always made Jerusalem the centre of the world's spiritual life, and have given it such a predominant interest for the keenest-minded men. He has not a word to say of that Palestine exploration which is concentrating modern investigation on the historical problems which the city presents. We believe that Mr. Dicey's confrère of the D. T.,' Mr. Edwin Arnold, would have done this part of the work infinitely better, though not even the 'great' Sala himself could much have surpassed Mr. Dicey.

Mr. Hepworth Dixon's Free Russia "* is going through the customary number of editions which falls to the almost annual work of travels issued by this voluminous writer. The book has been very severely handled, but we question whether it has received full justice. Mr. Dixon, like Mr. Dicey, only writes superficially, and he is, of course, obnoxious to severe criticism from those who know the subject thoroughly. An acute P. M. G.' critic, of the kind of which the late Lord Strangford was an eminent example, can find it tolerably easy to point out a long list of blunders. The general controversy shows clearly enough that Mr. Dixon's somewhat rash style of writing has led him into a large amount of error, and unwary readers are liable to be impressed with erroneous ideas. But if they will just put Mr. Dixon's book into the same category as Mr. Dicey's, and read it as the vivid, life-like impressions of a clever man who has made immense journeys, and has tried to do a great deal in a little time, they cannot fail to spend a few hours very agreeably, and to get a rough general idea of the present condition of things in Russia. It is not too much to say that, previous to the appearance of this work, people had only a very vague idea of the vast organic revolution which has been accomplishing

*Free Russia.' By W. Hepworth Dixon. Two vols. Hurst and Blackett,

itself since the accession of the present ruler. The change of serfs into freemen, the vast results of the Crimean war, the leading aspects of the Russian church, the statistics of law, government, and territorial distinctions, are graphically sketched by Mr. Dixon, in a style which, we confess, is unpleasant to us, but which, nevertheless, has the effect of winning and retaining readers. We can very well conceive that a much better book than Free Russia' might be written; but until this better book appears, we shall think Mr. Dixon has issued what is, perhaps, the most important of his works.

Brittany may almost be called home travel now. For those who delight in the contemplation of stilllife and enjoy picturesque uneventful travel, there is nothing pleasanter than to work up the Breton district; and probably no

war

inspired fears would extend thither. Brittany has evidently a great charm for many men, and is a district that grows upon one. There is always some new book, or new magazine article about it. We may mention Mr. Musgrave's new work on the subject, and 'The Pardon of Guincamp,' by a more thorough and careful writer, Mr. de Quetteville.* The reader is probably also acquainted with Mrs. Bury Palliser's work on Brittany. The intending tourist will of course read his book, which is quite one of general interest. No social life in France shows so unsophisticated and kind as in cheap, good, and simple Brittany. We perceive that another gentleman is putting in a strong claim for Lapland as a desirable place for summer resort.

But, taking a broader view of travels, we are extremely glad to give a hearty welcome to such travels as those of Mr. Arthur Adams. In a simple, hearty way, he is a most devoted naturalist, and,

*The Pardon of Guincamp; or, Poetry and Romance in Modern Brittany.' By the Rev. Philip W. de Quetteville. Chapman and Hall.

after the manner of his kind, he thinks no pains too great for the acquisition of curious knowledge. His ruling passion is the love of beetles. The scientific element, which chiefly lends a permanent value to a book of this kind, will be, we can readily conceive, rather teazing to the general reader. Sentences like the following are extremely common : 'When the madrepores were brought on board, I had them broken up with a hammer, when the shells fell out and were carefully collected; in this manner I obtained specimens of Jouannelia globosa, Parapholus quadrizonalis, and Leptoconchus, red-brown boring Lithophagi, gaping Gastrochænæ, besides parasitic Arks and other nestling bivalves.' Now this is all very well for the enthusiastic naturalist, but is rather beyond the average Britisher. Mr. Adams' personal experiences and his sketches of the country are full of interest. We quite shudder for him when he tells us how, when bathing, the gannets swooped on as to threaten his eyes, and he saw the dorsal fins of the sharks in the water. The Manchurians are like the old Tartars, of whom an old traveller said: "They never wash any clothes-nay, they beat such as wash, and take their garments from them.' The Japanese drama is rather peculiar. A play will last for several days, and several plays will go on in rotation.

Major Milligan's Wild Life among the Koords' is a book that merits distinctive mention. It is the best book on the subject since Xenophon wrote his Anabasis.' Major Milligan gives us extraordinarily strong and minute evidence on the perfect accuracy of Xenophon's narrative. He gives us an elaborate argument to demonstrate that the garden of Eden corresponded with the high plateau of America. He thinks that the Itinerary of the Ten Thousand affords an admirable example to all military men of the manner in which an officer ought to reconnoitre a country. He gives a very unfavourable character of the Koords, as inhospitable, cruel, and deceitful. Here is a singular kind of highway