24 AUGUST 1929, Page 27

More Books of the Week

(Continued from page 252.) If any reader is disposed to spend an afternoon in Hadrian's Villa, or to dine at Frascati ; see Ostia or Tivoli ; view the emerging galleys of Caligula at Lake Nemi, or the villas of the Renaissance in the neighbourhood of Rome, we can recom- mend Conrunendatore Gilbert Bagnani's The Roman Campagna and Its Treasures (Methuen. 10s. 6d.). Signor Bagnani rather pathetically alludes to the recent measures of irrigation and land-reclamation as being the despair of the archaeologist, but he admits that they have opened out the country with new roads, so that every part of it can now be reached with ease and rapidity. Its charm, says the author, "produces an intoxication of the spirit as potent as its own wine." Some- thing of the generous vintage of the Campagna's story may be found in these pages, adorned as they are by a wide culture and an abiding love for Rome. There is no great city, as Signor Bagnani says, so easy to get out of, nor, we might add, with surroundings of greater interest and beauty.

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