Golden Ages of the Great Cities. Essays by various hands,
with an introduction by Sir Ernest Barker. (Thames & Hudson. 28s.) A BOOK which includes essays by such writers as Sir Maurice Bowra, Professor Carcopino, Professor Runciman, Mr. Alan Pryce-Jones and Mr. Roger Fulford on such subjects as Periclean Athens, Rome under the Antonines, Christian Constantinople, Vienna under Metternich and Jubilee London could hardly fail to stimulate ; and, such is the freshness and suggestiveness of the ideas, it is clear that the writers themselves have been stimulated by their commission. The essays are no mere recensions of previous writing. Agreeably different in style, they are uni- formly distinguished. To the English reader, the lasting impression of the book is likely to be one of nostalgia, for the tenor of the essays combines with sad circumstance to show that London—and to a lesser degree all European cities—is long past its golden age, indeed past the silver, too, and well into the age of lead. But decline is the fate of all great cities, though the reasons for their fall are various : the Greek temperament that loses its gaiety in the melancholy climate of the Bosphorus, Savonarola's Burning of Vanities in Medicean Florence, economic decline in Madrid, defeat or victory in war. The seed of destruction is part and parcel of the structure of a great city, which can exist only by denuding the countryside of its best men and all its eatable products, so that in the end the land is bare, uncared for, and becomes a dust-bowl, and the city starves. Simultaneously, urban man, overcrowded, ill-fed, rootless, becomes incapable of supplying those fresh ideas the city needs for
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