The Alps and Pyrenees. By Victor Hugo. Translated by John
Manson. (Sands and Co. 7s. 6d.)—The fact that Victor Hugo's Journal of the Alps and Pyrenees was written in 1839 ought to make a translation of it not less, but rather more, acceptable to readers in 1898 or 1899. Sixty years bring changes,—Biarritz, for instance, has become what the poet feared it might, a resort 3f fashionable people ; but that makes it all the more interesting to know what it was like in the days when Victor Hugo fell in love with its "inextricable labyrinth of rocks, chambers, arcades, grottoes, and caverns," and named it, together with Etretit, Le Treport, and Ault, in Normandy, as one of the spots that delighted him most on the earth. Descriptions of Nature, vivid, magnifi- cent, tender; lively sketches of character, laughable anecdotes and dialogues, historic memories and romantic inventions, make the mixed substance of the diary; and the style, admirably repro- duced by the translator, is everywhere the characteristic style of Victor Hugo, nervous, staccato, free, strong, and elastic,— thuroughly modern, and equally good for the simple and the
sublime. Among the scenes that make the most powerful im- pression are the pictures of "The Charnel House of the Church of St. Michael at Bordeaux," of "The Natural Colosseum of Gavarnie," and "The Strolling Players at Berne." But, accord- ing to the modern fashion, Mr. Swinburne contributes a preface which does the reviewer's work for him.
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