21 MAY 1927, Page 28

TIIE LAND OF THE RHONE. By Hugh Quigley. (Methuen. 12s.

Od.)—Many books designed primarily as guide-books for travellers though ambitious in their literary appeal make dull and flimsy reading. Mr. Hugh Quigley's The Land of the Rhone, on the other hand, is a solid book, full of interest and information. To the serious traveller who has a good while to spend in Provence it will be a godsend ; at the same time, it will repay the careful study of the man who cannot go. Its defect is that it requires rather hard work to master it. Mr. Quigley does not unfold Iris facts before his reader ; rather, he leaves the reader to

unpack them. The effort, however, will be full of delight for the diligent, especially the sections which deal with " Rhoneland in Antiquity" and with the Renaissance. With the mediaeval spirit he is less in sympathy, accepting the unhistorical verdict, now generally abandoned, that 'The originality of the Middle Ages lay more in what they omitted and at times defaced than in their direct contribution to the history of human culture and human ideals."