19 AUGUST 1905, Page 23

Parisians Out of Doors. By F. Berkeley Smith. (Funk and

Wagnalls Company. 6s.)—Mr. Berkeley Smith has written about Paris before, and written in a very picturesque fashion. (" How Paris Amuses Itself" will probably occur to many of our readers.) He is from the other side of the Atlantic, and we are reminded more than once of the saying that "good Americans when they die go to Paris." It is true that everything in the Gay City does not please him, the cochers perhaps least of all, while he finds that "the spirit of highway robbery underlies nearly every small business in Paris." But it is not of out-of-doors Paris only that he writes. Ho describes the goings on at Trouville, at Sunday seaside resorts in Normandy, at Nice, and at Monte Carlo. He has to confess that his dear friends are a little too much given to gambling. However, baccarat and roulette are, after all, less objectionable than corners, say, in cotton, where whole districts suffer in order that this or that capitalist may be enriched or ruined. This is a very pleasant and readable book. Some of the illustrations are good, but the photographs are not invariably successes.