27 JULY 1889, Page 24

Swiss Travel and Swiss Guide - Books. By W. A. B. Coolidge.

(Longmans.)—Those who are meditating travel among the Swiss Alps will do well to make themselves acquainted with this volume. It may be best described in the author's own words as "an attempt to work out a new side in the history of travel in Switzerland,— the development of guide-books and other means of travel." Place journeying in this country is a new development, but thers have been travellers in Switzerland from very early days. Mr Coolidgegives us an interesting glimpse of the experiences of some of them. Altogether, he introduces us to some curious and interesting literature which may be studied with profit, as it will certainly form a curious contrast to the average guide-book literature. The author does not neglect modern specimens; all the members of the class of which the well-known Baedeker and

Murray are types, come in for proper notice. One appendix gives us a list of Swiss guide-books; another enumerates books relating to Switzerland ; in a third we have a list of mountain inns, beginning with the Great St. Bernard, dating "from before 812." This last is furnished with a number of interesting and useful notes. A second part of the volume gives us the "History of Zermatt."