Journal of a Few Months' Residence in Portugal. By Dom
Wordsworth (Mrs. Quillinan). Edited, with Memoir, by Edward Lee. (Longmans and Co.)—Dora (Dorothy) Wordsworth was born in 1804, married, as his second wife, Edward Quillinan in 1841, and died a little less than six years afterwards. In 1845-46 she spent about a year, for the stake of health, in Portugal, passing later on into Spain, to which country, indeed, about a third of the volume is devoted. These reminiscences of her stay, and her journeyings to see this or that sight, with her pleasant and friendly charac- terisations of the people, are good to read. The Portuguese seem to have impressed her favourably; but then she approached them in the right spirit. Many travellers imitate, though they would ridicule, the absurdity of describing a foreign tongue as gibberish. A strange civilisation seems little better than bar- barism to them. Dora Wordsworth's intelligence and breadth of view made this mood quite impossible to her. There are, of course, many things which are curious to read. "The English carry London hours to Oporto, and dine between six and seven o'clock." But to London such hours seem almost as barbarous as the Portuguese three o'clock dinner seemed to the English of 1845.
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