BOOKS.
A ROUNDABOUT JOURNEY.* -
MR. WARNER is known as the author of a pleasant book, "My Summer in a Garden," and readers acquainted with that work will feel some curiosity in opening the pages of A Roundabout Tourney. The traveller does not visit new or strange places. He goes where most persons who read the narrative are likely to have been before him—to Avignon, Montpellier, and Cette, to Palermo and Syracuse, to Gibraltar and Tangier, to Seville and Granada,—and he has little to tell about these places that has not been told before. The book will not be read, therefore, for in- formation ; its interest is personal. Mr. Warner looks at these familiar scenes with the eye of a shrewd observer, and he understands the art of humorous expression. He writes with freshness and vivacity ; so that the reader travels over the old ground under his guidance without a feeling of fatigue. The volume is amusing, but it would be difficult to say precisely in what the amusement consists. Partly it may be due to the way in which Mr. Warner surveys and appropriates common objects, and partly to what may be termed the American flavour of his descriptions. Never are we allowed to forget that he comes from the States, and that his home in the States is Hartford.
The book is desultory, and, like its author, the reviewer must be permitted to flit. from subject to subject, as convenience may dictate. Soldiers, as we all know, swarm in France, and the strangeness of the sight attracts the traveller. "They seem poor material for soldiers," he writes, "short in stature, ill- made, inferior in every way, light-weights in head as well as in body," and he adds the wish that if the Republic chooses to use up its energies in the multiplication of soldiers, they would put some good-sized men into the army, "jut for appearances." French women, like French soldiers, receive from Mr. Warner more criticism than praise. In Paris, he says, a handsome woman is as rare as a good one in some places ; and we may add that his opinion of Spanish women is not more flattering. While at Seville, after a careful examination of ladies in full toilet at a bull-fight, given for the special amusement of the higher classes, he observes that the Seville women have usually sallow, pasty, dead complexions. "Beauty of .feature was very rare ; and still rarer was that animation, that stamp of individual character, loveliness in the play of expression and sprightliness, that charm in any assembly of American women." He allows, however, that graceful figures, fine teeth, and large dark liquid eyes, are not uncommon ia Andalusia, charms surely of. no mean order ; and observes that if the play of facial expression is wanting, the fan takes its place. "It is, I believe," says Mr. Warner, "a well-known physiological fact that every Spanish girl is born with a fan in her hand. She learns to use it with effect before she can say Mamma.' By the time she receives her first communion it has become a fatal weapon in her hands, capable of expressing every shade of feeling, hope, tantalisa- tion ;" and he adds that when a woman has an object the fan has a hundred varieties of expression, as the victim learns to his cost.
We are not upon Spanish soil at present, and must return with Mr. Warner to the South of France. At .Nimes the lack of pretty or even passable-looking women is deplored, and the town is described as being full of idlers both old and young. Of Montpellier, liveliest of cities, the American writes for his country- men's benefit that the population is about the same as Hartford, but he adds, drily—" It does not, however, enjoy such a climate as that of Hartford " ; and the Sunday amusements of the place, which included a travelling circus, are noticed with the remark, "We seldom have so animated a Sunday in Hartford." Before visiting Montpellier, Mr. Warner had spent some time, pilgrim- like, at Avignon, where at the hotel the English tongue is said to be in the ascendant. In illustration of this fact, a characteristic quotation may be made :—
"The sensitive American who attempts to speak it is apt to be
• A Roundabout Journey. By Charles Dudley Warner. London Chatto and Windup. encouraged by his British cousin, who lets him know that he detects his accent, but likes Americans himself—has, in short, been so for- tunate as to meet many pleasant people from America. If the American expresses surprise at this, the Englishman pleasantly insists, and even goes so far as to name names. The American some- times gets weary of this incessant flattery, and seeks to evade it by assuming at the outset his proper position. It was at the table in Avignon that I heard one of my countrymen reply to an Educator of the Globe and Standard of Manners who followed his soup with the usual question, Parlez-vous Anglais, Monseer ?" No, Sir. I speak American, but I understand English ; you can go on.'" •
Aigues-lfortes. is interesting as the most remarkable walled city in France, and it has an interest also of another and pain- ful kind. The author grows serious as he describes the frightful persecutions inflicted by the Roman Church on the devout Protestant women of the town, after the repeal of the Edict of Nantes :—
"The Tower of Constance was for many years the prison of un- fortunate women whose sin was a humble profession of the Protestant faith. I saw the round chamber in the second story in which they were confined. It has several long, narrow slits in the thick walls to admit air, and one small grated window. In this room, with never any egress, were heaped together the poor women, fed on the coarsest food, with little light and air, and deprived of the common accommodations of life. The wretched condition of these prisoners at length excited the sympathy of the Swiss, the Hollanders, and the Germans, who by their Ministers protested to the Court of Louie XIV., but without other result than to increase the rigours of the prisoners. Their confinement lasted during a great part of the reign of Louis XV. Finally, in 1767, a humane man, Prince de Beauvau, was made commandant of the province (Languedoc), and inspected the Tower of Constance. I cannot, he says in his report, describe the horror of the first view of this appalling chamber, which had as little light as air. Fourteen women, the survivors of many, pined away in wretchedness and tears The youngest of these martyrs exceeded fifty years, and she was only eight years old when she had been apprehended, going with her mother to hear a sermon, and her punishment yet continued.' On the walls of this round chamber are scratched the names of these unfortunate women, who for nearly half a century languished there."
Let us take the steamer at Marseilles for Palermo, a city which leads Mr. Warner to tell once more the story of the Sicilian Vespers. He was present just before the celebration of the sixth centenary, and observes that peculiar significance was given to it by a revival of the old enmity to the French, caused by the occupation of Tunis. Mr. Warner thinks that the brigands' calling is gone in Sicily, unless they have taken possession of the hotels which are on their way to be first-class. "Their prices are already first-rate. They have only to raise the accommodation, the food, and attendance up to the prices, and they will be all right." At Palermo, one of the loveliest cities in Europe, the writer seems to have been most struck with the hideous exhibition in the convent of the Cappucini, where the dead and dried bodies of former citizens lie dressed in boxes or dangle in the air. It is said that 8,000 bodies are visible in this home of dust, and that every year at least, on All Souls' day, the friends of the departed come to look upon the frightful remains. -The women, who have a corridor reserved for them, wear silk dresses, kid gloves, and satin slippers. "These be dresses for a ball ; and what a ball and dance of death is this ! Is it any pleasure for my lady to have her partner or her lover come to see her in this guise ?" At Girgenti the traveller put up at the Hotel Belvedere, which out of Sicily, he writes, has not its like in the world :— " How it is kept running I cannot imagine, since the keepers of it feel no interest in their guests until the time comes for making out the bill. They give all their energies to that. It is a hotel where you can call for anything you want; you have this privilege, but of
course you do not get anything It is an exciting place, a place where you struggle for existence, and the landlord looks on in an amused manner."
At Syracuse, Murray's " Handbook " pronounces the " Locanda del Sole" one of the most comfortable hotels in Sicily ; but times change, and views change with them, and Mr. Warner writes of it as detestable. In summer the climate is unhealthy, and always has been unhealthy, owing to the miasma from the marshes infecting the atmosphere ; but the author's guide re- sented the imputation, and to refute it told the story of an American lady who came ill to Syracuse. "She hired a villa on the. hill by the Cappucini convent, bought a cow and had plenty of milk, got well in a few weeks, and went back to America and married a species Of poet."
From Sicily we pass to Malta, where the writer notes the " manly " British soldiers, and observes that they form "a decided contrast to the scraggy under-sized Frenchmen engaged in that occupation." The, island is said to be pretty much all limestone rock,—" in fact, it beats Western Massachusetts for stone walls." Of Gibraltar, "which looks insolent and domi- nating, both from land and sea," he has not much to say, -save that he never heard the drum and. fife played with such vigour and such pride, and was never tired of studying, as a scientific problem, "the elevating effect upon the mind of well-regulated noise."
We do not propose crossing over with Mr. Warner to Tangier, neither can we follow his footsteps in Andalusia,—where, accord- ing to his experience, strangers are treated coldly, if not rudely. He does not wonder that Spaniards are at table a temperate race, for with such food and cooking it is no merit to be ab- stemious; and. he objects to the inventive genius of the inn- keepers, observing that "no country can rise in civilisation whose people call twenty-two hours a day and. a half." With the re- mark that he found it "like Paradise to get out of Spain," we must take our leave of Mr. Warner, who, as subscribers to Mudie's and the Grosvenor will quickly discover, understands the art of travel.
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