England and Abroad
Venice. By Arnold Lunn. (Harrap. 5s.)
THERE is a class of travel book " something more than a guide " which, with photographs and potted sketches, acts as a kind of tempting carrot to the tourist's nose. It is the sort of boOk which frees some from the false shame, of carrying their
Muirhead or Baedeker, and at the same time relieves them from the responsibility of reading standard books on the country. Thus Mr. Lunn quotes liberally from Ruskin on
Venice, and so absolves us from reading The Stones of Venice. Very rarely has Mr. Lunn the courage of his own impressions or opinions. M. Faure's book is really a selection of good picture- postcard illustrations of the charms of Sicily eked out by a
chatty letterpress. The more romantic the scene the more he rises to the heights of archness. He would people the island with honeymoon couples.
A Ceylon Commentary is more in the nature of a political guide-book, and it is quite a little holiday in itself. Mr.
Smythe joined the Ceylon Civil Service and left it after only twenty months, and he has let no official reticence hamper his reminiscences. He has many a hard word to say for British administration in Ceylon and India. He attacks the exclusiveness of the English attitude which assumes that " the meanest white man, the private soldier, or the engine driver, ranks above any native ; he becomes a gentleman when he steps ashore." Mr. Smythe writes with a freshness of attitude and an animus that will make his book unpopular with the old guard, but what he writes is from his own experience and proves interesting where it can be read with tolerance.
Mr. Morton, who has already " discovered " England, Ireland and Scotland, with the spring in his blood and a steering-wheel in his hands, left London for a " mystery ramble " into Wales. Mr. Morton has a way with him.
Schoolmasters hailed him as a great musician and an audience for their pupils' voices ; Mr. Lloyd George came at a con- venient moment along a country lane ; the slopes of Snowdon provided a note of comedy ; Bangor had the Eisteddfod and every ancient castle its mite of history. Mr. Morton discussed Handel and dogs in a coal mine and listened above ground to miners singing " like angels in blue serge . . . . " His hearty mood persists throughout and he leaves an impression that a desert island would provide him with historical anecdotes.
Sir Charles Close tells about the old maps of England, when they were made and where they are to be seen, but most of his book is occupied with an account of the Ordnance Survey from 1747 to the present day. The first systematic mapping of Great Britain was done under the direction of William Roy, who began work in Scotland and later was placed in charge of measuring a base for purposes of triangulation. The " Great Triangulation " with its chief stations on Norwich Cathedral and York Minster took seventy years to complete, and a one- inch map was the result. Later the country was surveyed on the scale of six inches to one mile and also on the scale of twenty-five inches to one mile. The one-inch sheets issued since the War and called the " Popular Edition " are those in general use at present, but in 1931 the first sheet of a revised " Relief Edition " was issued. This will not be completed for some years. Sir Charles Close gives instructions for the correct reading of a map, and he has some interesting things to say on English place names. The book is packed with facts and is
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