A RAMBLER'S NOTE-BOOK AT THE ENGLISH LAKES.
A Rambler's Note-Book at the English Lakes. By the Rev. H. D. Rawnsley. (J. MacLehose and Sons, Glasgow. 5s. net.)—We are always glad to see under the guidance of Mr. Rawnsley the glories of the Lake Country, and to be told about the ways of the folk that dwell among them. Now and then, it may be, he gives us too much colour in his pictures. We do not say that in "November Glory," for instance, he exaggerates effects, but we are "blinded with excess" of colour, excess being used in-the literary sense. " Snow in Harvest," on the other hand, " A North- Country Flood," and the "Diamond Jubilee Bonfires" are admirable. In all of these, too, it may be noted, there is a coa- siderable admixture of the human element ; this we must have if the interest is to be sustained. Again, if we are to criticise, we must say that in " The Last of the Rydal Dorothy " there might well be less rhetoric and more simplicity, and, perhaps, fewer names. All unfamiliar names—and many of them must be such to most of Mr. Rawnsley's readers—weaken the general force of an appeal to association. And, after all, we are left with but an incomplete knowledge of who the " last of the Dorethys " was. Something simpler, possibly more commonplace, would have interested us more.
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