BYWAYS IN SOUTHERN TUSCANY.t Miss HOOKER has written a most
charming book about this little- known part of Italy, and the photographs, maps, and sketches which illustrate her volume arc particularly good. They give a wonderful impression of the little bill towns crowned with the most perfect and " ogreish " castles, complete with portcullises and dungeons, even to the reader who has not had the good for- tune to travel in the districts round Siena. The plan of the book is a modest one, and Miss. Hooker is not ashamed to tell you what she had for dinner, and that the landlady of the inn, say, at Mancaino, wore earrings and a violet gown. Consequently her
• Every Man in his-Humour. Patted by Percy Simpson. Oxford : at the Clarendon Press. [Os. net.] Byways in Southern Tuscany. By Katherine Booker. Illustrated. London Fisher Unwin. [Ms. nets
book is much more attractive than many more ambitious works. She relates a number of delightful legends and stories. The history of Beata Bonizelli, perhaps the best, is unfortunately too long for quotation.
" At Montemarano there is a house which has an ancient inscription over the door which reads as follows : This is the house of the Alfiere Fausto Grassi and his friends.' One comes here and there in many of the little towns upon the sacred initials with which St. Brandano signed his presence all over Italy. There is a pretty story concerning the origin of the Divine monogram which says that a maker of dice came to him one day and remonstrated against his exhortations. ' You pity the poor,' he said, ' but what is that to us if you take away our living Y The people no longer buy my wares.' The saint lookel at him smiling, and presently traced for him the letters I.H.S., bidding him cast aside his wicked trade and, instead, inscribe the holy letters upon small panels and sell them in place of those incitements to an evil life by which he had hitherto made his living. This the man did, and prospered thereby."
The general effect of the book is to bring on a bad attack of nostalgia for Italy, that disease so common to the travelling Englishman ; and as most of us cannot possibly visit Italy just now, the effect is a cruel one.
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