BOOKS FOR TRAVELLERS.

[COMMUNICATED.]

WHEN going on a journey, especially if it be to a foreign country, one of our most difficult and important con- siderations is the choice of the books which are to bear us company. If, as is generally the case, our books have to be strictly limited to the number of ten, let us suppose, to provide food for every mood they would have to be diverse in their character and yet with one quality underlying all—the power of drawing sympathy from their reader. Perhaps for this reason they should be for the most part old friends, no' too lately read, but with the flavour of pleasant hours in the past about them to give a zest to our reading. If our traveller is a man of catholic tastes and no great authority on any one subject the choice of books for a journey should be an interesting occupation, though the process of elimination no easy task. Probably three or four of the ten books would be works which never left his bedside, and which were as much a part of him as his hat or coat. Even these would be diverse in their nature, and each express a side of their owner's character, dealing in all probability with different epochs of the world's history, with different countries and different manners : one would treat of the eighteenth century in France, another of the same century in England, and a third of the Italian Renaissance. Voltaire's " Candide," " Tristram Shandy," and the " Divina Commedia " would be a varied and satisfactory trio to have always ready to hand. Then one of the ten at least would have to be a book of travel, spirited and observant of out-of-the-way things, such as the Italian method of ploughing or the way the Turkish soldiers march, to give him an enthusiasm for his journey and to help him to laugh at temporary discomforts, or to think of them merely as amusing material for letters to his friends at home. Such a book might be, perhaps, Mr. Belloc's " Path to Rome " or Stevenson's " Essays of Travel," which express, with matchless wit and feeling, the sensations of a traveller, ready for all the impressions and experience the road can give him. Two more would be novels which would deal with his own country in a familiar way and give him food for thought about English manners and the problems of his own age. Here there is an unlimited choice, and dependent rather on the dominant interest at the moment than on any literary affection. " The Egoist " and one of Mr. Hardy's Tales of the West Country might suit some tastes. Of the four remaining books to choose, one at least would be poetry, possibly an anthology, such as the "Oxford Book of Verse," or the works of whosoever was our traveller's favourite poet. Swinburne is no bad camaracle de voyage, and Browning, whose poetry is so akin to philosophy, gives us thought to last many a long day. A philosophical work to suit the traveller's temper—for our part we favour Plato—a volume of Essays, and the Bible would complete a formidable array of books which would honour any man's shelves. Essays are easier of choice. Macaulay, Lamb, and Hazlitt are all good company on a journey—Hazlitt perhaps the best, for he is full of the very spirit of adventure, and his wit, which is always ready, never flags. With him we go back into another age, when literary warfare was keener than it is to-day and men were freer to speak their own minds. We relish the satire he pours on his literary opponents, and each success seems almost a personal triumph, so great is his sympathy. In one delightful

passage he tells of his enjoyment of books when on a journey

"At other times I might mention luxuriating in books, with a peculiar interest in this way, as I remember sitting up half the night to read Paul and Virginia,' which I picked up at an inn at Bridgwater, after being drenched in the rain all day; and at the same place I got through two volumes of Madame d'Arblay's ' Camilla.' It was on April 10th, MS, that I sat down to a volume of the New Eloise, at the inn at Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and a cold chicken. The letter I chose was that in which St. Preux describes his feelings as he first caught a glimpse from the heights of the Jura of the ' Pays de Vaud.' "

When we consider the times that reading has been the greatest joy to us we generally find that it has been so on those occasions when our mood has exactly suited the book we were reading, for the fitness of our mood affects our capacity for receiving impressions more than any literary distinction.

If we are out of sympathy with our author our attention begins to wander, the sentences do not seem to run well

together, our criticism becomes captious; but if in sympathy how felicitous his phrases seem, what observation he shows,

and what sensibility in appreciating that particular incident which appealed so much to ourselves !

In a foreign country, where at every turn we meet with new experiences, see strange people, and hear a strange tongue, the books which have the most homely associations make the best reading, for they seem to us like old and tried friends. They should be rather of a speculative than a didactic nature, putting forward no very strong opinions, but rather suggest- ing niceties of sentiment and observation, without too much action, and reflective. If the traveller were limited to one book alone " The Sentimental Journey " would be no bad com- panion, for it possesses all the qualities we have enumerated and is, if only from the point of view of form, a masterpiece. As we have hinted before, books to be fully appreciated should be read at the right moment, and at that moment only. Though the books which we have suggested for our traveller

are diverse in character and perhaps a suitable combination for a man of literary tastes, yet we should not necessarily choose any of them had we the opportunity of three quiet hours in front of a good fire and the run of a considerable library. Supposing our inclination ran towards romance, Scott or Balzac might satisfy us. We can conceive of few more delightful ways of passing an idle hour or two than fol- lowing the intrigues of Lucien de Rubempre and the Abbe Herera in that Paris of the early nineteenth century which Balzac knew so well. In a few minutes the walls of our library would have faded from before our eyes ; we would only see the cafés with their bright lights and the thronged

pavements and bear the plottings of these worldlings for place and position, fame or notoriety. At such a moment as we have pictured, with leisure and opportunity, the whole eange of English literature is at our disposal. We can sojourn for a time with the Elizabethans, laugh with Falstaff, weep with Hamlet, be fearful with Dr. Faustus, or live among "hills which garnished their proud heights with stately trees" in Arcadia. At will we can recover the spirit of a later age in the lofty visions of Milton or the poetic prose of Sir Thomas Browne. Or, should we feel in the mood for a coarser diet, we have but to live a century later to enjoy Fielding, the master of comedy, as Sir Walter Raleigh so truly calls him, or the racy novels of Smollett.

But it is not always by any means in the most comfortable and opportune surroundings that we enjoy reading most— provided we have the book and the mood the place matters little. We heard the other day of a gentleman who declared that one of the pleasantest days he ever spent was in an Alpine but when weather-bound. Upon inquiry it appears that he had spent the day reading " The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner," without which he never travelled. We can imagine the wind rustling the leaves of his book as the guide opened the door to see the state of the weather, while he read of one who "suffered all manner of violences and oppressions, injuries, reproaches, contempt of men, attacks of devils, corrections from heaven and oppositions on earth."

Well might this adventurous traveller agree with those attractive lines in Lowell's poem on the " Battle of the Books " :—

" I've thought very often 'twould be a good thing In all public collections of books, if a wing

Were set off by itself, like the seas from the dry lands, Marked Literature suited to desolate Islands,' And filled with such books as could never be read Save by readers of proofs forced to do it for bread, Such books as one's wrecked on, in small country taverns, Such as hermits might mortify over in caverns, Such as Satan, if printing had then been invented, As the climax of woo would to Job have presented, Such as Crusoe might dip in, although there are few so Outrageously cornered by fate as poor Crusoe."

Place and season affect our reading and choice of books greatly. The sea, with its bracing winds, gives us sea- thoughts, and only books of travel and adventure appease our ardent imaginations. Tho mountains exercise a less impetuous

and more reposeful influence. We feel ourselves so small amid the grandeur of our surroundings that to keep an equal mind we must have great and lofty thoughts. We lose a taste for detail and the subtleties of an intricate style, and

find pleasure alone in simplicity and broad outlines. Books of philosophy are our resource and works of high aspiration. Town and country influence us in opposite ways : in town we take a prodigious interest in the problems of the day and the warfare between the critics, but in the country these things are less than nothing to us. Like echoes from another world they are of little importance to us in our isolation among the immortals. We feel that literature is too distinguished a medium for petty strife, and consider with Crowne, the seventeenth-century dramatist, that literature should not be "an hospital of lame conceits." But when we get back to town our ideas change, a desire for the latest publication comes upon us, we become interested in the most modern literary criticism, and perhaps we take part in the war of words ourselves.

Seasons have perhaps a subtler and less obvious influence than places, for they do not affect our taste by sudden contrast of circumstances and environments, but by something in- finitely more delicate, purely temperamental and inexplicable, though this again is, in a sense, contrast modified and less abrupt. The perfumed breath of spring, coming as the un- expected herald of a new-born year, gives to our vagrant fancy thoughts of the beginnings of things, and almost uncon- sciously our interest turns towards art in a primitive stage when it was less complex and elaborate. We suddenly

discover a taste for the early poets. Chaucer and Spenser have a fresh meaning and a readier sympathy for us, and we see the early legends in a new light. The warm, brown tints and falling leaves of autumn affect us with sadness.

With the longer evenings our taste for reading, which has not been exercised much during the summer, returns, but with an unconscious and almost indefinable change. Our taste has lost its robustness. We fail to appreciate the eighteenth-century urbanity of style as much as usual. We like books with a flavour of sadness, which suggest grey days and broken hopes. With the first frosts of winter the influence of autumn is over ; brown leaves no longer inspire our dreams.

Though season and environment influence our choice of books, their influence on the taste which underlies our choice is but slight. An open mind, able to discriminate, ready to appreciate all that is best and to reject anything that is of the second order, is the only true guide. J. T. H.