The Knapsack Guide for Travellers in Switzerland, with clue maps,
plans, and mountain outlines. (John Murray.)—The first of a new
series, whose price will enable them to compete with the numerous- guide-books which were rapidly under-selling the well-known Murray, and whose weight will be better suited to the purposes of the pedestrian. As for this particular work, we believe that its peculiar merits will be best understood by comparing it with others. For the leisurely traveller, who is not tied for time, and is merely "a gentleman
and a scholar," the old Murray is the best. For the hasty tourist who wants to scamp Switzerland in four weeks, seeing all the things people talk about, the "Practical Guide " is the best, for it is lighter even than this, and contains a great deal more information, though not always written in the best taste. Of late years, however, another class has
sprang up, who go to Switzerland to explore the mountains, and without necessarily passing their time among the eternal snows eschew cities and post-roads as carefully as an Arab. To these men Mr. Ball appealed, but while he produced an admirable work its bulk is inconveniently swollen by a mass of information on scientific subjects, geology, botany,
and mineralogy, which are caviare to three-fourths of the young Englishmen who leave Oxford, Cambridge, or the Temple every autumn, with &knapsack on their backs. For this class the "Knapsack Guide " is admirably adapted, though we think it might still be docked of some of the historical information. There is, for instance, a most un- necessary paragraph at page 876 about Garibaldi, which servos no' purpose but to express the compiler's Continental Toryism,—a point on which none of Murray's handbooks are quite as colourless as they should be. A number of slight outlines of the great Alpine chains from different points of view have been added to serve as diagrams by which
the prominent mountain peaks may be recognized, and form a novel and moat useful feature. The volume includes Savoy as well as Switzer- land, and requires to be supplemented by a good map.
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