Letters from Abroad. By Henry Alford, D.D., Dean of Canterbury.
(Alexander Strahan.)—Whether these letters, which appeared in Good Words, were quite worth reprinting may be doubtful, but is hardly worth settling in days when so very much periodical writing is reprinted which bears no comparison with them either for thought or readableness. The book would have been more appropriately named "Letters from Italy," and certainly, well-worn as is the subject of Italian travel, Dr. Alford has managed to produce a work of great freshness. He does not bore one with criticism of works of art, which from an amateur is seldom of much value, but, on the other hand, gives us his thoughts when any picture or statue, famous or not, really made him think ; and, -on the other hand, the aspect of Italian scenery, which so many travel- lers slur over, he brings into deserved prominence. In this he is aided by his really remarkable power of description, and his first letter de- scribing the famous coast road from Nice through Genoa to Pisa is a very charming specimen of easy, unaffected, yet picturesque writing. Of ithe present state of Rome and of religion there Dr. Alford gives a striking account, and not, as we believe, the least over-coloured. It is too much the fashion for English travellers to extenuate the shocking misgovern- ment of the Priest-King, and facts notorious in Rome are so impudently denied by the Catholic publications in this country that it is something to have them from one who was mostly an eye-witness of what he states. The Ddan is not sanguine that the Convention for the evacuation of Rome will be kept by the French, and thinks that Rome had better be left to the antiquarians and the malaria. So think all people who only reason, but the instinct of a whole people is seldom wrong, and even if
the Italian people would compromise the quarrel the Papacy never will.
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