SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
['Under this leading we notice such Books of the week as hare not been reamed for review in other forms.1
Londres, Hampton Court, et Windsor. Par Joseph Aynard. (Librairie Itenonard, Paris.)—For French visitors to London this will prove a useful guide-book of the shorter kind. For Englishmen and Londoners it will have a different sort of interest, for it will give them some idea of the way in which London strikes the average Frenchman. It cannot be said that M. Aynard shows much imaginative appreciation of the peculiar beauties of London. He is, of course, ready to admire the rather obvious "pittoresque de Londres dans les docks on sur in Tamise, et clans les pares," where he is pleased to recognize "les sujets de Whistler, les effets de Turner." But further than that he cannot go. He can see nothing whatever in the ordinary house architecture, which he describes as "b plus trist,e et le plus laid d'Europe," and he laments over "les longues rangees uniformes de maisonnettes ouvrieres" and "les graardes rues mornes." This was only to be expected, and there are even probably many Londoners who have not yet achieved Raskin's admiration for Gower Street. But we confess to some astonisbnient at M..A.ynard's bitter attacks upon the architecture of Wren and his pupils. " C'est Christopher Wren," he says, " qui a fait du centre de Londres une vile non sans originalite main sans &twine." M. Aynard seems to connect this with the English Puritanism which he so much dislikes. "IL fallait des temples, on les fit froids et nus, sepulchres blanchis l'interieur, noircis h exterieur par In fumee de charbon." Most astonishing of all is his attack upon St. Paul's, which he thinks is merely the work of a mathematician, nothing more than a problem solved, a cathedral "grandiose mais sans ame." He sums the matter up by declaring that "rien h, Saint-Paul no pent nous emouvoir."
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