BOOKS.

A ROUND TRIP.*

[FIRST NOTICE.]

Tins is the most interesting book of its comprehensive kind since Greater Britain. The lucky engineer who found himself in possession of a holiday which meant business to the extent of going right round the world, is the very man for such an occasion; keenly observant, impartial, but not unsympathetic, endowed with active curiosity, and a sense of humour which warded off dullness from himself, and secures his readers from it. He belongs to neither the dogmatic nor the boisterous order of travellers ; he is a first-rate raconteur, and he always keeps the mean between dwelling too long on the matter in hand, and dismissing it too summarily for the reader who, having to see places and people through his eyes, wants to get a good, steady look at them. The book is divided into " West" and " East," and the first chapter of the first part, which deals with New York, gives us a clearer notion of that city and its life than we have ever previously had. The picture is not altogether pleasing,—one just as little so might be painted of London and its life ; indeed, the absence of a chance for the poorer classes here must lend a gloomy hue to any sketch that has truth in it— but it is very striking, and some of its details contrast strongly with the British way of doing things. The state of the streets, for instance, we should think horrible, while the places of busi- * An R,,g,ear'e Holiday ; or, Notes of a Bound Trip from Longitude 0° to Longitude 0°. By Daniel Pidgeon, P.G.S., Aseoo.Inst.0.14. London: Kogan

Vaal, Trench, and 00. ness would open the eyes of some of our City men and lawyers. " While successful merchants and professional men in London," says the engineer, "often spend the business day in dark recesses of grimy old houses, their American brethren are lodged luxuri- ously, and surrounded by the last appliances for the easy con- duct of work, from a newly-patented bill-file to the telegraphic printer. I guess we live the most of our lives here, and expect to be comfortable,' said a friend, to whom I expressed my sense of the contrast." Nothing is too good for the entertainment of industry, which occupies a very different position there from that which it occupies here :-

" We," says the author, "worship other gods besides our occupation. To possess land and enjoy the influence it brings, is an ambition with most of our merohants and manufacturers. By our unwritten code of caste, the trader, as in the half-civilised East, stands below the -soldier and the landed proprietor. The American man of business, on the other hand, owns no divided allegiance; his own work interests• him beyond all other things, and whether he runs a barber's shop or rules a great factory, he has but one aim,—to he top of the heap."

The author's remarks upon the essential difference between democracy in America and in Europe, and the conditions that force the latter to be a conspiracy for levelling down, while the other is a combination for levelling up, are worth attention. His account of Churches and church-going in New York has an unpleasant flavour. " Religion is nothing in this country, if it is not comfortable," said the minister of one of the Fifth- Avenue churches to him ; and religion is made comfortable by mechanical ventilation, softly carpeted aisles, deep seats, and thick cushions, good music, and popular preachers. But fans strew the sittings ; no one kneels to pray, or stands to sing, and the service is heard, like an opera, from a luxurious stall. Here is a passage characteristic of the engineer's faculty for con- densing his information, and which explains some of the puzzled complaints made by other travellers :—

" The visitor who lands in America believing that a dollar in New York equals a shilling in London, is, nevertheless, astonished, not so much at high prices as at their capriciousness. While he can live like a prince for sixteen shillings, or like a gentleman for twelve shillings a day, he cannot buy the Herald for less than twopence- halfpenny, though the publishing price is three-halfpence. Shaving costs a shilling, and a drink the same sum. A shooblack demands fivopence for his services, and a cabman is occasionally to be found who will jolt body and soul asunder over the wretched roads at the rate of eight shillings an hour. Competition is not popular in America. Everybody wants large profits. From rival railroads to rival retailers, every one prefers combination to competition. Even the buyer is a consenting party. He likes paying a large price, and such artificial values as the above are cheerfully approved by Ameri- cans. Some people explain all this by saying that commerce in the States has been reared upon Protection ; but the Yankee, though a smart man of business on the surface, is a Republican sentimentalist not far below, and gives a benevolent width to the proverb, `Live and let live,' wherever the claims of labour are concerned."

Mr. Pidgeon is not enthusiastic about the national system of travelling, and he gives us a low idea of American appreciation. of Art. He is amusing about the advertisements all the way from New York to Washington, on every gable, shed, boulder, or fence-rail that can be seen from the train, and declares that " if the Yankee tradesman could reach the rainbow with a paint-brush, he would worry Heaven to Try Hop Bitters,' or chew Gail and Ax's Navy Plug.'" He brings the accuracy of the definition of Washington as " the city of magnificent distances " to the justifying test of measurements, but he praises the roads. The two questions which Washington suggests are, —will the South finally amalgamate with the dominant section of the nation P and,—what will become of the negro P Mr. Pidgeon believes that the amalgamation will take place. The signs which point to that result are these :—The great estates are breaking up, the contempt of trade is breaking down. Manufactories are rising, Northern capital is welcomed ; men who despised business take an interest in the multi. plioation of factory chimneys. Has the negro " got to go ?" Mr. Pidgeon says he is in course of absorption. From some unaseertained cause, this race, so prolific in slavery, does not increase when free. Black blood tends by preference to mingle with white, and emigration is carrying large numbers of coloured men westward, where white marriages or death will thin their ranks.

We wish our space would admit of a fall extract from the author's account of the American patent laws and their effects, especially in the case of working-men, who are frequently patentees in the States, where the cost of a patent protecting the inventor for seventeen years is £7. In. England it costs £30 to protect an invention for six months, and nearly 2200 to secure it for the full term of fourteen years. Of course, our working-men do not invent. Dickens' un- lucky inventor, Daniel Doyce, who was snubbed out of his own country by the Circumlocution Office, but who made a fortune and was decorated in a foreign land, was no caricature. All that Mr. Pidgeon says on this subject, and concerning the traditions of the work-shop' in England, is thoroughly well put. He dwells upon the "Department of Agriculture at Washington," as an institution we should do well to copy, for it is directing inquiry into the fundamental principles of growth, both in plants and animals, and laying down new lines, much needed in England just now for the guidance of the farmer. Notwithstanding that there are many able scientific and original workers in the States, and that science is taught in the universities, colleges, and schools, the engineer considers that there is little popular appreciation of natural knowledge for its own sake. " Nowhere are men readier to apply scientific knowledge to practical and profitable uses, but the in- terest seems to cease with the application, and, so far as pure science is concerned, the great majority of Americans are Gallios."

If anybody thinks that because Mr. Pidgeon's Round Trip has been made and described before, the book is superfluous, that person will only have to read a few pages of it to correct his impressions. The engineer sees a great deal more than most people, and he is both discerning and discriminating in no ordinary degree. He never writes for effect, but be is as quick to perceive the picturesque as to apprehend the practical aspect of his subjects, and puts it as well; as, for instance, in a little sketch of the Potomac, with its pleasure yachts, like saucers, exquisitely built, and sailing like the wind, and that poetic ob-

servance, the solemn tolling of the steamer's bell as it passes Mount Vernon, where General George Washington is buried. A very interesting chapter is devoted to the coal-field of Penn- sylvania, where the process of excavation is rather quarrying than mining, as we understand it, and the romantic scenery of the Switzerland of America is largely tempered by the dirtiest and noisiest of industries. He likes Philadelphia, and gives great praise to its hospital system and management ; but he is down on the quacks there, and indeed everywhere in the States :—

" The publio sentiment of Americo," he says, "is so jealous of any interference with freedom of opinion, that it resolutely objects to selecting any one system of medicine in which to grant degrees. The title of 'Dr.,' consequently, gives no guarantee that the holder is an educated man ; and a crowd of quacks infest the States, to an extent which is unknown in any other country."

Roads and pavements are abominable in the Quaker State, where there is no more municipal public spirit than at New York, but nothing can exceed the order and cleanliness of the homes of the well-to-do classes. "Housekeeping in the Atlantic Cities," says the engineer, "is carried on with the thoroughness of business. The difference between the Philadelphians and the New Yorkers struck the author forcibly. The latter are cosmo- politan, speculative, and easy of approach. The former are provincial, prudent, and exclusive. New York thinks itself brilliant, and Philadelphia slow; Philadelphia considers herself safe, and New York speculative. " Perhaps," sums up the author, " an Englishman's training disposes him to lean to the 'Quaker, rather than the cosmopolitan view." That depends on the Englishman ; the rocket and the stick are not unfamiliar

images to the English public, in connection with capital hits and big things in business. Mr. Pidgeon tells us all about oil, in a chapter which concludes with an admirable bird's-eye view of the battle-field of life in the still Now World. _ The author describes with great vividness Niagara, Chicago, the Great Lakes, the route to the Rocky Mountains, the -Rockies " themselves, with that wondeiful Estes Park, which is, like the Yellowstone region, a place that one really does want very much to see before one dies—a place where it is

never too hot or too cold, where the sky is always clear, and one isnever tired—the Mining Camps, Pike's Peak, the Grand

Canon of the Arkansas, and Leadville, the greatest mining marvel in America, 10,000 feet above the level of the sea (it is a. pity somebody did not hit on a prettier name for it), which

is approached from Cailon City b beauty a route of such exquisite

as might befit the high-road by heaven, and whose mining history is a wild romance of Tom Tiddler's Ground.

From this wonderful, hateful place the engineer steamed out on the first train that ever left the mountain city, on his return to Denver, raa route for Salt Lake City. A very delightful chapter describes the latter journey, OF the Laramie Plains, covered with short,:nutritive grasses, and tenanted by countless herds, the author says,—" If Wyoming is, as I heard a ranch- man call it, God's own footstool for cattle,' then these Plains are its cushion." He disposes in a characteristic way of Mor- monism, in a chapter with more sound sense on that subject in it than all the books that have been written on it put together, with Mr. Hepworth Dixon's tainted twaddle at the head of the list.

The following is the author's resume impressions of his holiday tour " West :"—

" I landed in America," he says, "a prospective admirer of its people and institutions, and left it, after five months' stay, charmed with the courteous kindness of its private citizens, astonished at the breadth and boldness of the national mind, and convinood that, so far as power and prosperity are concerned, the great Republic is on its way to become the foremost nation of the modern world. But I looked for political enthusiasm, intellectual aspiration, and Republican simplicity of life, among the people of the United States. I found politics a close profession, material well-being the goal of ambi- tion, and luxury rampant among the rich."