GIFT-BOOKS.
CITIES AND TOWNS OF EUROPE.*
THE illustrated books that describe and depict towns or countries are pouring forth from the publishing houses in a copious stream. Those readers who know the places concerned are generally delighted to have the scenes recalled, while those who are compelled to stay at home are probably less pleased to learn what they miss than discontented with the substitutes offered; yet they find a painful pleasure in these irritants of their sense of loss. The number of travelling artists com- petent to give a good idea of what they see increases rapidly. Sometimes, it may be admitted, photographs give quite as much pleasure in reviving memories, since the reproduced water-colours fail more often than not in the effort to give what the photograph candidly does not pretend to offer, namely, any atmospheric sense of colour or characterization. One suspects several of the illustrators of making consider- able use of photographs; at any rate, there are pictures in some of the books mentioned below which, after comparison • (1) The Charm of London. Compiled by A. H. Wyatt. Illustrated by Yoshio Markin°. London : Chatto and Winans. [5s. net.]—(2) Hampstead. By Anna Maxwell. London J. Clarke and Co. [7s. 6€1-. net.]—(3) Edinburgh. By R. L. Stevenson. Illustrated by 3. Heron. London : Seeley, Service and Co. [12g. gd. net.]-0) Traditions of Edinburgh. By Robert Chambers, LL.D. Illustrated by J.Hiddel, R.S.W. London : W. and It,. Chambers. [21s. net.] —(5) Some Old Flemish Towns. By G. Wharton Edwards. London: Gay and Hancock. [18s. net] —(0) Paris. A Sketch-Book by E. Belot. London: A. and C. Black. [Is. net.]—(7) Germany. Painted by E. T. and P. H. Compton. Described by the Bev. J". F. Diehie. London : A. and C. Bk. [20s. net.]—(8) Moscow. Painted by F. de Haenen. Described by H. H. Grove. flame Publishers. [7s. bd. neta
with photographs, reveal a rigid accuracy uninformed by any imagination.
Let us begin at home with the very catholic collection of pieces of English prose and verse entitled (1) The Charm of London. It has been reissued with twelve quite charming illustrations in colour by Mr. Yoshio liarkino. It is astonish- ing how he imposes his Japanese art upon London. The fir trees of his view from Hampstead Heath could not have been painted by an Englishman, and yet his misty scenes of the streets, the Thames, and canal could not have been painted by anyone whose artistic eye did not fully comprehend our London. Even his little figures of policemen are treasures. Besides the now large resident population nearly all Londoners have some acquaintance with (2) Hampstead. Mrs. Maxwell's volume is evidently a labour of love and local patriotism. This makes it a pleasure to read in spite of certain small defects. It is by no means an exhaustive history. There is very little history of early times before the existence of buildings now standing. To the author the epithet "primaeval" seems applicable to the village when it had its Kingeswelle Street (p. 106). Equally meagre treatment is given to the last hundred years of garden suburbs or more prosaic build- ing, local government, and so on. Mrs. Maxwell is mainly concerned with the larger houses and their famous occupants. Her chief heroes are Keats, to whom the last sixty pages are practically devoted, and Sir Harry Vane. This is to the credit of her romantic taste. There is also reference to more modern residents, such as George du Meunier and Canon Ainger. These portions might be described as respectful gossip. The preservation of the Heath, the rise and fall of the Wells, and the places of worship are not neglected, but there is little descriptive writing of the Heath and the views therefrom. There are a few misprints in the text and in the index, which is not very complete, and there never was a " Duke " of Clarendon (p. 58); but these fanits can be corrected when the inhabitants and friends of Hampstead call for another edition. The illustrations, chiefly taken from old prints and a few water-colours, form an interesting collection. Now let us travel northward to Edinburgh. What a city to inspire the writer and the painter ! Stevenson's (3) Notes on Edinburgh have been splendidly reprinted by Constable, and are republished with twenty-four pictures by Mr. J. Heron. Though the artist evidently knows and loves the streets and wynds, his brush cannot rival the pen of Stevenson in making us feel the charms and austerities of Edinburgh. Several of his pictures which show Arthur's Seat and the Pentlands, for instance, are probably handicapped by the process of reproduction, which fails as usual to give us green grass which is pleasing. Yet the view of Holyrood from the castle is certainly successful ; the view of the city from above is perhaps the beat of all. Mr. Heron or the printer fails to convey the grey tones which pervade the city. A constant pink glow of sunset is not characteristic of Edinburgh. We wish that the picture by Sam Bough to which Stevenson refers could have been again reproduced as it was in the same publishers' "Portfolio." Then Dr. Robert Chambers' venerable (4) Traditions of Edinburgh reappear from the publishing house which he founded. Explanatory notes have been added and some good coloured illustrations by Mr. Riddel. These give more faithfully those grey tones of the wet and windy city of stone. They are well chosen and well executed. The picture of the Leith Links is less successful than the views within the city. There are also many small black-and-white sketches to enliven the printed pages. There are no reproductions of old portraits, although the pages are full of references to those lawyers, reviewers, and others of Edinburgh's Augustan age who live in the pictures of Raeburn and Watson-Gordon.
A much shorter journey from London will bring us to Flanders. Mr. Edwards by his pictures of (5) Some Old Flemish Towns will certainly make the stay-at-home long to visit that country on either side of the Franeo-Belgian border, to say nothing of Louvain in Brabant. Centuries ago the traffic thither from the south of England must have been immensely greater than the traffic between London and Edinburgh. Now the relative intercourse is altered; and yet Flanders is so close to us, and possesses such treasures of architecture in the churches, beffrois, and Hotels de Ville! Mr. Edwards gives us three dozen pictures : some are coloured, but the majority are sepia, and none the worse for that. A few are of characteristic figures or of boats, but many more are architectural views. In art and in the character which the artist draws out of the buildings they are considerably above the average book illustrations. But when we come to the letterpress, alas ! they are so buried as to seem "but one halfpennyworth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack." There is a certain amount of fairly useful information about the places and the people, much of which might have been found in a guide-book by those who do not know it as well as Mr. Edwards does. But it is swollen out to three hundred pages with this kind of thing : "My visit to Lille is memorable for the fact that I wore a pair of tight brown leather shoes," and so on about his shoes for the rest of the page. There is no index nor map. We cannot object to Mr. Edwards's use of his native American language and spelling, but the repetitions are intolerable and the misprints are too numerous. He may by all means write of a frankly haphazard unordered tour if he wishes, but it is grossly careless to mix up for us the pages of his note-book, so that on p. 95 he derives the name of Courtrai from Yper boomen (lime trees) : the note was evidently made in reference to Ypres. Another time let the cobbler stick to his last, as M. Bejot has done in his sketch-book of (6) Paris. His black-and-white views are slight but clever, suggestive, and characteristically French. They represent chiefly the pais and open spaces of Paris with surrounding archi- tectural features. It is a great merit that it is really a sketch-book which the publishers present without swelling it into a heavy and expensive volume with hundreds of pages of letterpress. (7) This volume, devoted to the German Empire and its cities, is a delightful picture-book. There are seventy- five coloured illustrations, all rather above the standard of mere competence. It may be an invidious comparison, but Mr. Harrison Compton seems to put a little more artistic character into his work than does his fellow-artist. There are only two hundred short pages of letterpress, and these are, on the whole, well written. They do not very closely follow the pictures, but are rather a sketchy guide-book to as much of the country as space allows. In so vast a subject there must be omissions. For instance, we are not taken nearer to Russia than Dantzig, and in the south Salzburg is neglected. Other towns have to be so hastily passed through that in Strasshurg, for example, the houses of Diirer and the Gutenbergs are not mentioned. Mr. Dickie has a weakness for apostrophizing the towns and for chronicling details of crowned heads, but he makes a very creditable effort to put forward the immense variety of attractive and historical scenery. There is an index and a practical sketch-map. To the artist is given the place of honour on the title-page of a volume on (8) Moscow, and the thirty-two illustrations, half in colour and half in black- and-white, are the better part of the book. Both architecture and figures are presented by Mr. de Haenen with competence, if without any particular distinction. One can trace the Byzantine work, the aid given by Italian and Scottish advisers, and the semi-Oriental work which could only exist in a city which is half-Tartar by tradition. It is astonishing to realise how vast a town has grown up in a century, for the buildings outside the Kremlin, destroyed a hundred years ago, were all of wood, and now a million and a half inhabitants are housed in brick and stone. Mr. Grove's part of the work has no great qualities. He knows Moscow as well as any Englishman, and the opinions be gives are full of good sense, but much of his description does not rise above the guide- book level, and there are inexcusable repetitions. However, a guide-book about such a place as Moscow, with pictures and a useful plan of the city, must be of interest to many English people.
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