MR. BELLOC ON SOMETHING.* FrIont time to time Mr. Belloc
collects the sketches which he- • has contributed to various papers and publishes them, with an addition or two, in a small volume with a characteristic title.. The latest of them contains nothing that will surprise those who know the others ; but whether he writes of something, anything, everything, or nothing, Mr. Belloc deserves to be read. He displays as great a variety of information as ever, and to classify his essays would be impossible. An unusually
large number of political satires may, however, be dis- tinguished; these include an American Blue-book and a
Manifesto from the Simian League in favour of removing the- disabilities of monkeys :— " A Monkey may not sign or deliver a deed ; he may not serve
on a jury He may not enter our older Universities, at least as the member of a college ; that is he can only take a degree at Oxford or Cambridge under the implied and wholly unmerited stigma applying to the non-collegiate student."
The interest of these essays rarely lies in a story for its own
sake ; but no one could help being delighted by the adventurea of Mr. Hammer's copy of a picture by Van Tromp, or by the ingenuity of the boy who made a fortune by selling seats for a public ceremonial. But perhaps Mr. Belloc is most success-
ful when he is topographical, for his descriptions of scenery are entertaining as well as vivid. This is shown nowhere- better than in a disquisition upon bridges :- "No bridges more testify to the soul of man than the bridges that leap in one arch from height to height over the gorge of a torrent. Many of these are called Devil's Bridges with good reason, for they suggest art beyond man's power, and there are two to be crossed and wondered at, one in Wales in the mountains, and another in Switzerland, also in the mountains. There is a third in the mountains at the gate of the Sahara, of the same sort, jumping from rock to rock. But it is not called the Devil's Bridge. It is called with Semitic simplicity 'El Kantara,' and that is the name the Arabs gave to the oh bridges, to the lordly bridges of the Romans, wherever they came across them, for the Arabs were as incapable of making bridges as they were of doing anything else except singing love songs and riding about on horses. Allantam ' is a name all over Spain, and it is in the heart of the capital of Portugal, and it is fixed in the wilds of Estremadura. You get it outside Constantine also where the bridge spans the gulf. Never did an Arab see bridges but he wondered."
Mr. Belloc shows the greatest skill in his attention to detail.
He is prepared to dazzle his reader with a display of precise knowledge upon almost any subject. He handles the
t2chnicalities of finance, of architecture, or of war with alt the ease of a conjurer producing a rabbit from a top-bat.
And nothing is more delightful for the layman than to have a
sensation of treading the maze of specialisation. In a volume that will give him this pleasure, as well as some others that have been pointed to, he can hardly complain of occasional passages where the lack of emphasis amounts almost to.
dullness.
•
On Something. By H. Belloc. London : Methuen and Co. [5..]
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