MOUNT ERYX.t
WE are not sure that Mr. Festing Jones' admirers will be altogether pleased by his new book. It might stand as the type of the discursive travel book of the better sort, but we are not mre that Mr. Samuel Butler's admirable biographer ought to meddle with this kind of loquacious literature at all. Mr. Festing Tones has a standard to keep up, and this sort of rechauffe is not very satisfying.
Those, however, who have ever fallen under the spell of the garden sanctuary, the Sacro Monte at Varallo, can sympathize with Mr. Jones in the pleasure he obviously takes in talking about it. in one thing, perhaps, the reader who knows the place will feel that he has done it a little injustice. He does not succeed in conveying to his readers what seems to the present
* Theological B(111CatiOtt at the Universities. By Arthur C. 'Indian; C.H., D.D. Oxford : Blackwell. 12e.] t Mount Ergs. By linty resting Jones London: Jonathan Cape. 112s. 64.1 writer the outstanding fact about these forty-nine chapels, in which the story of Christ's life and death is told by means of groups of coloured, life-size, terra-cotta figures. We mean the sustained narrative power of the whole. At a first visit the pilgrim of any imagination will find himself hurrying from chapel to chapel, hardly noticing the beauty of the garden, seized against his will, and in spite of the disillusioning effects of tawdriness here and there, by the fire and conviction of the drama. There is an extraordinary sense of expectancy and suspense resting, for instance, over the group which repre- sents the Last Supper. We pass on to Gethsemane, the Judas kiss, the hateful, sly complacency of Caiaphas, and the final tragedy with the feelings of the auditors at a moving play.
But of course this, like most of the other faults of the book, is to be accounted for by its nature. The fact is that Mr. Festing Jones is traversing his ground for a second time.
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