Zincke's "triptych "—to use his own description—is less readable than
the two which have preceded it. There is something in it suggestive of hammering out material, and a tendency to preachiness in the style,
which the reader is peculiarly inclined to resent in a book of holiday travel, where the author is bound, if by any means he may attain to it, to the avoidance of the commonplace. Here is an instance,—it occurs when the tourist is nearing Pontresina :— "Our guide of this day was a young man, by trade a carpenter. He told us that it was his intention, in accordance with the Grisons custom, to go abroad for some years. At the end of the year he was to start for Chicago, where be understood that a great deal of building was going on. He hoped that he should be able to make and save some money, and while so employed, to learn English, with which money and language be farther hoped in some half-dozen years to return to Pontresina. How strangely do things come about, and combine! Here
we have a Grison peasant going to the New World to learn English,
and a fire in a town on the border of Lake Michigan, at a spct where, in the memory of people still living, the buffalo quenched his thirst, creating for him an opening for going. But then this peasant can read and write, and so can his neighbours ; had it been otherwise, be never would have comprehended the advantages, or imagined the possibility, of his learning English, and never would have known anything about Chicago and its fires, much less have been able to plan how he might turn the possibilities of the place to his own account."
This is not an extreme specimen of the common-places which abound in the book, and make it wearisome. It contains a great many facts, drily enough stated, respecting the inhabitants of the Grisons, and the face of their country ; and it very properly invites our attention and admiration to the industry, thrift, helpfulness, and honesty of the
Swiss peasant proprietors, "who are the basis and main stock of the Swiss social system." It is solid and instructive, but we hold that a travel-book, especially a book of travel in Switzerland, ought also to be picturesque and amusing. A Walk in Me (hi-sons is neither, but it is solemn and pompous instead.
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