ARTISTIC TRAVEL.* IN this picturesque book, Mr. Blackburn takes us
a thousand miles south by degrees, beginning with Normandy, passing on to Brittany, then to the Pyrenees, Spain, and Algeria. The illustrations which accompany each part of his book will be interesting both to travellers and to those who are obliged to stay at home, although they cannot claim the attractiveness of a first appearance. Most of them are familiar to all who care for illustrated books of travel. We all copied the frontis- piece in our youth ; we have been in Brittany with Randolph Caldecott, in the Pyrenees with Dore ; John Phillip's Spanish sketches are not new ; nor are the Algerian pictures, which have already illustrated another of Mr. Blackburn's books. However, they were all worth reproducing, for one reason or another, having, especially Caldecott's Breton sketches, a character of their own. Neither can any special novelty be claimed by the letterpress of the book, The author himself says, "the majority of these pages have already appeared in print." Some of the descriptions apply to places and people as they were twenty, or almost thirty, years ago. This may not affect the book's picturesqueness, but certainly does affect its value. The last thirty years, or even twenty, have changed France as much as, or more than, England. Now it is almost useless to hunt for the old caps in Normandy, and even the strange Breton costumes are fast disappearing. Railways and the Republic are bring- ing everything to what seems a desirable level of sameness and commonplaceness. Not, of course, that France has lost the wonderful interest and variety of her different races and provinces; but the old idea of French travel finds itself un- realised now. Streets of those houses in Rouen, Lisieux, Pont Audemer, Caen, and other towns, which former travellers described so lovingly—quaint, beautiful, artistic, barbarous, dirty, unhealthy—have been pulled down in the last ten or twenty years. Brittany has not changed so much, but it also is changing. In Brittany it seems as if Nature could never lose that peculiar character, " iipre et mysterieuse," which marks the province off so clearly from the rest of France. But processions are hardly any more seen, pardons will one
• Artistic Travel in Normandy, Brittany, the Pyrenees, Spain, and Algioria. By Henry Blackburn, editor of "Aaademy Notes," author of " Art iu the Mountains," &c. With 100 I lustratione. Loudon ; Sampson Low and Co. 1694
of these days be things of the past ; a hundred old customs and superstitions are on their way to vanish with the old language, the quaint costume. Still there is much left ; and Randolph Caldeeott's illustrations, joined to his own interest- ing and picturesque descriptions, make Mr. Blackburn's chapter on Brittany one of the most attractive in his book.
We have long suspected that a peculiar kind of genius is needed to do justice to the Pyrenees ; and this genius is not possessed by Mr. Blackburn. Neither, perhaps, does M. Gustave Dor4, with stormy sensationalism and caricature, satisfy the minds of those who feel the deep romantic interest of that beautiful borderland. Watering-place life is exactly the same everywhere ; nobody cares to know how the day is spent at Eaux Bonnes, Cauterets, or Diction. However, Mr. Blackburn writes of all this in a lively strain, and gives a great deal of description, which will instruct those who have never seen the Pyrenees. If we want to know anything of the real life of the people—of the Basques, for instance— rather than of the Frenchmen and other foreigners who play about these mountains in the summer, we must go to some other authority.
Perhaps Mr. Blackburn is happier the nearer he gets to the sun. His travels in Spain appear to have interested him deeply. This part of the book, however, shares with the rest in the defect of being both conventional and too much out of date. There is something a little distracting in being ex- pected to read parts of a diary of 1864, when one wishes for a picture of Spain as she is. Still, the changes are probably much less than in any part of France, so that we can enjoy a very picturesque account of old cities and cathedrals, of slow but not adventurous travelling—with its own dangers, how- ever, as far as the diligence is concerned—of Madrid and its ways, a bull-fight, the Alhambra ; everything, in fact, that a traveller ought to see in Spain. Here, too, as in the Pyrenees, one cannot help longing for excursions from the beaten track. One would like some "artistic traveller" to write a book on Spain without any of the conventional wonders and admi rat ions mentioned above. Everybody knows all about them, somehow, from earliest childhood. This is Spain ; but is this the real Spain that her own people know ? The aspiration, however, is ideal, and not likely to be fulfilled in so difficult a country.
At last we come to the land where the author's heart is. Mr. Blackburn writes delightfully of Algeria, though, we fancy, with a good deal of repetition from a former book. But under those blue skies he is so happy that we do not wonder at his repeating himself ; it naturally seems worth while to hammer the beauty of Algeria with many strokes into the head of the British public. The brilliancy of light and colour, which can hardly be imagined without being seen, .` the conflict of races, the contrast of colours the glare, the strange sounds and scenes . . . . . . the variety of languages heard at the same time, and, above all, the striking beauty of some faces, and the luxurious richness of costume,"— all this makes a new world for an artist, whether with brush or pen, as he finds himself among the splendid Moors, the dignified Arabs and Kabyles ; waking to such a sunrise, seen from such an Oriental house, as Mr. Blackburn describes—surrounded by the scent of orange.groves in the Bouzareah, among the marabouts' tombs in a garden of palms and aloes, or on the same high ground watching one of those storms that are heralded by "little companies of small white clouds," and that finally break over the country in wildest hurricanes of wind and rain.
It would be worth while to make this thousand miles' journey towards the sun, as the author suggests, in one long autumn, returning in the same leisurely way. We should not take Artistic Travel with us as a guide-book, and we should not follow beaten tracks or haunt watering.places. But though the book is hardly satisfying to those who have travelled already, it may have a mission of its own in teaching young people, and those who have hitherto stayed in England, some- thing of what there is for them to see beyond the Channel. It need not be said that the book is well written ; it is also pretty and picturesque ; and the illustrations are good of their kind. It will make a useful and attractive Christmas present, and as such we recommend it to our readers.
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