ITALIAN TRAVEL IN 1580-1900.
The Book of Italian Travel, 1580-1900. By H. Neville Maugham. With 4 Illustrations in Photogravure by Hedley Fitton. (Grant Richards. 109. 6d. net.)—This is a delightful book, and it would be still more delightful if it were free from the all-per- vading taint of educationalism. The true lover of Italy is very happy to read everything that travellers before him have said and thought; but he a little resents, perhaps, being instrucad
what to think, for his own part, about the land, the people, the art, that fascinate him. It is the fashion nowadays to lead everybody along one track, and to insist on scientific study according to authorities. This is all very well for school-children and uncultivated people. Mr. Maugham must forgive us for suggesting that they only, surely, need be informed that Mrs. Piozzi was "Dr. Johnson's Mrs. Thrale." Fortunately, however, the demon of instructiveness only lifts his head in the intro- duction and notes, and that not aggressively enough to spoil one's enjoyment in reading the varied impressions of so many travellers. We are old-fashioned enough rather to regret the absence of Ruskin's Venice descriptions,—banished, apparently, because he had his own way of looking at art. Nobody now wants to follow Ruskin blindly, but if it was a question of space, we would rather have had his description of St. Mark's than a dissertation, with reference to him, on the Catholic and Puritan spirit. However, as we said before, the book is a delightful one, and many of its interesting quotations will be new to most people.
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