Current Literature
GRAND TOUR • - -Edited by R. S. Lambert .There are .good and bad excuses for uniting several well- known authors in a single volume. Mr. Lambert's excuse is one of the happiest inspirations of recent years. He has divided the Grand Tour among experts, and persuaded them to conduct parties composed of famous travellers of the past. Gray, Beckford, and I fez] it t, • with many others, add their comments to the .guides" narrative, and we are given a com- posite picture of that uplifting tour which completed the education of " the quality.''fhe first travellers went to acquaint themSelves with foreign peoples and foreign cultures. They sought models of behaviour and manners that were not to be had at home. Their more romantic successors discovered the scenery, which had previously been no more than a tire- sonic delay between one city and the next, and an Englishman " invented " Switzerland. Now Switzerland has been eon- veri ed into a playground, a lavishly appOinted nursery, and the original purpose of the Grand Tour is lost in the modern cult of physical recreation. Mr. Lambert's book (Faber, 10s. 6d.) skilfully reconstructs the atmosphere of one of the most formative of. English fashions. These pleasant journeys are as inviting as any Christmas present could hope to be. Mr. Woodruff, Mr. Blunden, Mr. Sacheverell Sitwell, Miss Janet Adam Smith (who writes excellently on Switzerland) and the other collaborators have provided an elegant text, and the illustrations have been chosen with a fine discrimina- tiOn. This is not a book that one " must " read ; but no one will regret an opportunity of doing so. It is supremely the idle, unexpected, pleasant reading that we like our friends to give to us.
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