Tuscan Studies and Sketches. By Leader Scott. (T. Fisher Unwin.)—Tuscan
art; literature, as represented by the Laurentian Library of Florence ; early attempts at organ-building ; old Florentine furniture and tapestry, are among the subjects of this volume. It contains also some very bright and lively sketches of life,—of a vintage festival, for instance, which a great lady holds on one of her family estates, of Italian manners at the sea-bathing resorts, of rustic habits and customs, as in "A Mountain Funeral." Altogether, we have here the work of a keen and kindly observer of men and things.—A similar work, though taking us to very different scenes, is The New Paris Sketch-Book. By J. G. Alger. (W. H. Allen and Co.)—" Manners, Men, Institutions," is the second title of the volume. Under the first head we have some curious particulars about Parisian ways of living, and some remarkable Parisian statistics. The number of strangers in Paris is surprising. There are more than two hundred thousand, of whom no small proportion is English, though there are not so many English as there were five-and-twenty years ago. Many of these are poor, a not unfrequent cause of poverty being the repudiation of English wives by Frenchmen who have married them without parental con- sent. (The present writer may mention, by-the-way, the strange fact that he found at a small gathering of London incumbents that most were ignorant of this provision of the French law, and would have married a Frenchman to an English bride without making any inquiry. Such ignorance is nothing less than culpable.) Among the sketches of "Men," we have MM. Grevy, Lesseps, Jules Ferry, Ernest lIenaxi, but not the hero of the day, Boulanger- Under the head of "Institutions," come descriptions of Parlia- ment, the Municipality, elections, journalism, &c. Altogether, this is a pleasant, readable book.
Previous page
