13 FEBRUARY 1892, Page 24

Across Russia. By Charles Augustus Stoddard. (Chapman and Hall.)—Mr. Stoddard

is an American traveller, and looks upon Russian things from the American standpoint, one which, for some reason not easy to explain, means a certain sympathy. Across Russia means a journey through some part of Fin- land to St. Petersburg, from St. Petersburg to Moscow,

and thence to the Fair of Nijni-Novgorod. From Moscow Mr. Stoddard travelled to Warsaw and Cracow, and thence made his way through Hungary, winding up his story of travel with a description of Buda-Pesth, to which he pays the compliment of saying that it is "the Chicago of Europe." It will be seen, then, that the traveller did not go out of the beaten track. Nor is there anything uncommon in his experiences. He seems to have liked well enough what he saw, except, indeed, the Novgorod Fair, the noisy and coarse revelry of which seems to have disgusted him. On serious matters he does not touch ; but for an account of the surface of things in Russia, this is fairly satisfactory.