MEMORIES OF TRAVEL.?
ON the first page of this remarkable book Lord Bryce says :— " All I desire to do here is to give some sort of notion of the kind of impression which the scenery and the people make on a passing traveller—a thing which is what one chiefly wishes to know about strange countries, though it is often that which it is hardest to convey." He has succeeded as perhaps no other man could have done : for Lord Bryce combined a fine command of language with rare powers of observation, a love of natural scenery, and an intense interest in the countries and peoples of the world. The reader accompanies him in this volume through many countries—from Iceland to the Isles of the Southern Pacific, and each scene,. each impression, is brought before him with a simplicity and vigour which makes the book a delight.
The first chapter relates of Iceland, and in a few sentences a striking picture of that desolate island is sketched :—
" Everywhere is silence, desolation, monotony : one is awed by the presence of the most tremendous forces of nature—fire which has reared these peaks and poured out these lava torrents ; frost which rends the rocks and soil and frowns down on you from the interminable ice-ridges. One knows oneself surrounded by a tempestuous ocean, far removed from even those outposts of civilization, Norway and the Shetland Isles : in a land out of relation to the rest of the world, and unaffected by its fortunes ; a land where nothing has happened for centuries ; a land which seems not designed for man at all, but left waste for Nature to toss wildly about the materials she did not need elsewhere, and disport her in sudden displays of her own terrible powers. The eye ranges over these vast black landscapes of the interior, and finds among them • Mande and their Mysteries. By A. Hyatt Verrill. London : Melrose. ids. net.I t Memories of Travel. By Viscount Bryce. London: MAcunliau awl Co. Otl. net.1
not only no trace of human habitation, but scarcely a grassy nook where a human habitation might be planted."
But the political and social impressions are no less interesting and illuminating. In 1884, accompanied by Edward Bowen, Lord Bryce followed the famous march of Suvaroff across the St. Gotthard and through Canton Schwyz in 1799, and he comments both on the character of the great Russian General and the nature and difficulties of his task, concluding with three sound reflections—on the effect which the inspiration and example of a commander can produce on an army, on the difference made by scientific inventions in the conduct of war, and on how much is lost in war by divided counsels, especially when it is waged by allies with divergent interests and purposes.
In the chapter on Palestine, the reader is made to realize the close connexion between the Old Testament and Israe (Napoleon used the former as a guide-book in 1799!) as opposed to the abstract and universal application of the New Testament, which the author declares is hard to fit in with the framework of Jerusalem or Galilee, belonging, as it does, to the world of the soul rather than to the world of physical nature.
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