A NEW LONDON GUIDE-BOOK,

IT is difficult to look at a familiar object with the eyes of stranger, but Mrs. E. T. Cook has succeeded with wonderful sympathy in entering into the feelings of a traveller arriving for the first time in London. What a moment of be- wilderment to the foreigner must be the first arrival in the multitude of towns which are called by the collective name ofii London. How striking is the first view of the Thames as the train slowly steams across the bridge leading to Charing Cross: the shining water reflects the long lines of lights to right and left, and the great buildings stand up black and mysterious against the luminous night-sky of London. For the day may be dark and cloudy, but in London the night-sky-- always glows with the reflection of the million lights blazing improbability that So-and-So would under the given cir- • fAndon and Ennironx. By Mrs. N. T. Cook. With Chapters oil "The

&43.. by E. T. Cook. "Darlingtolis Handbooks.' London:.

Eirmitpit Museum." ulTaC'sha 1. -...----Iroughout the vast city. The traveller who has had the lablfteresight to read Mrs. Cook's guide-book beforehand will, vowever, kr.orv exactly what to do when he first gets out of vole e train. If he is arriving "in force" with a large party, be T‘l have ordered a station 'bus to be in waiting; whereas if he se' lone and has little luggage, he will know that a hansom, a tor a four-wheeler, is the proper vehicle to take him to his ivaa, tlreation. He will also prepare an unpleasant surprise for ,nteshbman in the shape of the exact fare, which will have been (Ale 'bated on the device of "a penny a minute," a device knIttii, as a rule, only to hardened Cockneys, but now set forth by Mrs. Cook for the information of the new arrival. The traveller will also know better than to try to judge of London by the first impressions he gets of the crowded, dull- coloured, bustling streets, for even in the preface of her book Mrs. Cook warns him that it is London's habit to put her worst foot forward :— " Nowhere are first impressions, superficial views, outside aspects more apt to be misleading than in London. In this respect typical perhaps of the race whose capital she is, London does not wear her heart on her sleeve or reveal her inner characteristics to every passer-by. Let us take two or three examples London is the centre of the judicial system of the British Empire. The Supreme Court for Appeals from its dis- tant provinces is the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, a court which exercises a wider and a more far-reaching jurisdiction than that of any tribunal in the history of the world. Yet this court has none of the pomp and circumstance of power, none of the trappings and gildings of authority. The members do not even wear robes, and the Court sits in an upstairs room at White- hall, and not one Londoner in ten thousand could tell you, we fancy, where to find it. Again, London mansions have as a rule very unimposing façades, and one can imagine the intelligent foreigner wondering where the wealthy inhabitants of the richest city in the world live. A good story is told in this connection of an American visitor. He was standing on the Terrace of the House of Commons, and looking across the river to an uncommon sight in London—namely, a IOW of detached buildings of exter- nally imposing appearance. 'Are those the mansions of your aristocracy P he asked. They were the wards of St. Thomas's Hospital. The West-end houses, with their very ordinary-looking outsides, only reveal their magnificence when you are inside the doors. And this is typical of London all over, of poor London, no less than of rich London, of disreputable London as well as of respectable London. Only long and intimate familiarity with the life of the Metropolis enables a man to form any kind of correct idea of what lies behind a. London exterior. A similar remark applies to the men and women whom you meet. Take a walk in Pall Mall, and you will pass, say, half-a-dozen elderly gentlemen of very ordinary appearance, and another half-a-dozen gilded youths, with nothing remarkable about them except the high polish of their hats and their boots. Yet as likely as not, these are men who, only the other day, were fighting their country's battles beneath the burning skies of Africa or of India; while of the elderly gentlemen, issuing quietly from their clubs, one may be a minister of the Queen, and another may have exercised dominion over some vast province of the Empire. One more illustration, which we borrow from a speech by Lord Rosebery. What could be less imposing or interesting in themselves than the railings of St. James's Square ? Yet, 'you cannot touch those railings— hideous as they are and dull as are the houses that sur- round them—without thinking that Johnson and Savage, hungry boys, starved by their kind mother, London, who attracted men of letters to her, walked round that square one summer night and swore they would stand by their country.'"

As to the beauty of London, which Mrs. Cook goes on to praise, the present writer remembers a singular instance of the effect which the view of London from the deck of an ordinary penny steamer had on a comparative stranger, who, though living habitually in Venice, vowed that there was nothing in that beautiful city comparable in beauty, majesty, and splendid grouping of buildings, to London seen from her great waterway.

A year or two ago, in a newspaper controversy on where to go for the summer holidays, one man of real genius threw out the brilliant suggestion to the Londoner : "Stay in your com- fortable home and see the sights of your own city." And certainly one is inclined to follow this advice when one reads this excellent handbook. Think of the pleasure, in these calm, bright autumn days, of setting out, as Mrs. Cook suggests, for a long tour on the top of a 'bus, to get a good general idea of London. How delightful, too, to walk up Regent Street, not because one wants to get to the other end, but to see with leisurely eyes whether the Quadrant really does look like the illustration in the book before us. The picture looks like that of a fine Continental boulevard. Is Regent Street really a fine boulevard, and is it only because our eyes are dimmed by hurry and work that we think London so grimy and smoky ?

Li turning over the illustrations of the book it is impossible to help being struck by the foreign look of the streets and buildings. Does the delightful look of " abroad " merely lie in the fresh holiday eyes which we take with us, and does England look the same to people to whom she is " abroad " P Mrs. Cook will certainly help any old inhabitant of London who tries to see the streets with the interest of a stranger, for she has something new and pleasant to tell about the moat-

grimy and tiresome of familiar objects. The Athenreum Club, like the Dowager Countess of Southdown in Vanity Fair, is made amusing for the first time in its life by the tell- ing of the following epigram :— " Ye travellers who pass by, just stop and behold, And see, don't you think it a sin,

That Minerva herself is left out in the cold While her owls are all gorging within ?"

In fact, besides giving us excellent descriptions of all the recognised London lions, Mrs. Cook leads us through the well- known streets, and points out fresh objects of interest on every side. Here lived or died some great man; from this house took place a famous elopement a hundred years ago ;- in this district (Belgravia), foreseeing the coming tide of

fashion, George III. wished to speculate in land, but was pre- vented by his unimaginative Ministers, to the great profit of the Westminsters, who ultimately purchased it. So the story goes on. Even the tales of the Berkeley Square haunted house, and of the ghost of the Queen in Queen Anne's

Gate, are not forgotten. The book is, therefore, of perhaps- greater interest to the Londoner who loves his city, and wishes to perfect his knowledge of her past traditions, than. to the stranger who treads her streets for the first time.

Those who have read Mr. E. T. Cook's handbook to the National Gallery will not be surprised by the excellence of the four chapters which he contributes to his wife's book, on the British Museum, the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, and the South Kensington Museum. Mr. Cook does not think that a guide, even a condensed guide, must be a dull catalogue, and instead of merely enumerating the works of art before him, selects the most interesting, and tells his readers something about them. His account of the British Museum is specially well done. The excellent descrip-

tion of the Mausoleum Room recalls an interesting opinion of Sir Charles Newton's, expressed more than once to the present writer, and probably to others who also enjoyed the privilege of- seeing the Greek and Roman marbles under his guidance. Sir Charles was accustomed to stop before a fragment of tbo frieze in the Mausoleum Room, and, pointing to a figure of & charioteer, to say that he considered that in that face was to be found the first attempt in Greek sculpture to make the,

human countenance expressive of emotion.

If anything can rouse the authorities to activity in the. rebuilding of Kensington Museum, it will be the picture on p. 180 of the entrance to the Museum. It looks like the shed of a country railway station. This is certainly one of

the instances, of which Mrs. Cook warns the stranger, in which the outside aspects of London are misleading.