CURRENT LITERATURE.
Notes and Sketches of an Architect. From the French of Felix Narjoux. (Sampson Low and Co.)--The author has given us a descrip- tion of his journey through Holland, North-West Germany, and Denmark, from a professional point of view, and has handsomely illustrated it by the most valuable of the contents of his sketch-book. We thus learn the chief features of the public buildings in the principal towns of these countries; and of still greater importance, if we would acquire a correct idea of the mode of life of the inhabitants, an accurate and technical account of their houses and domestio arrangements. M. Narjoux, besides being an architect, is a keen observer of men and manners, and his readers will gain much information about the habits and character of the people with whom he comes in contact, although, unfortunately, he mars his work by a groat want of impartiality,—a fault pro- ceeding from a two-fold cause, an over-ruling opinion of the superiority of the French, and a thorough detestation of the German race. We felt some sympathy for him at flrst,—a man of great refine- ment, coming from tho gay and elegant Paris, among the stolid and lethargic Dutch, with their monotonous and unpieturesque landscape. When he enters Hanover, he openly confesses that the image of the French disasters and their terrible misfortunes recurred to his mind, and that the people and country appeared to him under a new light and different aspect to what they did in his former visit, and we begin at once to distrust. This is his picture of the Germans—fl race with great physical power, but of little intelligence, and of immense vanity, whose prominent characteristics are wearing spectacles, eating and drinking inordinately, a fondness for coarse jests, " over which their countenance expands with simple and dull enjoyment, and over which they ponder a quarter of an hour," and always smoking, when not eating. The women arc badly dressed, ungraceful, and inelegant, their behaviour with men indecorous in the extreme, and their language fit only for French horses I He is particularly hard on German lovere. "They talk little end think less, but exchange interminable kisses, while they
dream of philosophy and ethereal poetry." Denmark has his warm sympathies, for the Danes have been ill-used by the Prussians, and they appear to have as great a hatred of them as M. Marjoux himself. In spite of this drawback, the book is very entertaining.
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