town upon his pilgrimage from Jaffa to Jerusalem, in the wellhorsed landaus of Messrs. Cook, and thence to the Jordan Hotel at Jericho; but he must not trifle on the way with comparative descriptions of the tunnels of Mount Cenis and St. Gothard, as the passage of the Alps is familiar ground to the critical aldermen and burgesses of his audience.

us.

In the meanwhile the countries at our doors are unknown to British tourists have vulgarised the Fair of Seville, and the American twang echoes through the halls of Grenada, yet no one in these days knows the Peninsula as did George Borrow, when he wrote the Bible in Spain,' though to reach Vigo and Lisbon then entailed a sea-voyage, longer and more perilous than is the transit of the Atlantic now. But nearer still to England there lies a fair land, every acre of which has at one time or another for well nigh a thousand years been associated with the history of Great Britain, and, save for some portions which are least characteristic of its nationality, it seems as if the acquaintance of travelled Britons with its soil had not been able to survive long the obliteration of the lilies of France from the escutcheon of George III. In writing thus we have not in mind the peregrinations of that accurate observer Arthur Young, the record of whose experiences in France on the eve of the Revolution have recently been reprinted. We were thinking rather of the journeys of less ambitious itinerants of the more recent generation, which commenced its continental travel when peace was proclaimed after Waterloo, and only changed its method of locomotion through France when railways commenced to traverse that country in the later days of the July Monarchy. In many an English country home there are collections of faded letters, signed with names, some of which have since become illustrious and nearly all of which have passed away, dated fifty years ago or more from Abbeville or from Beauvais, from Dijon or from Bourg-en-Bresse, recounting the incidents of the French highways, the humours of the villages, the costumes of the peasantry.

Such travellers as these, who in leisurely and costly fashion followed the conventional route, disregarded as a rule the advice which Arthur Young had given to his countrymen, that, if they would view the finest portions of the kingdom, they should land at Dieppe, follow the Seine to Paris, then taking the great road to Moulins, they should pass through Auvergne, and striking the Rhone at Viviers, should enter Italy by way of Aix. Nevertheless, the ordinary traveller, who was content to follow the beaten track without exploring the bye-ways recommended by the enterprising Suffolk squire, returned from his tour with considerable

siderable knowledge of the people of the land he traversed and of their way of life. Nowadays, though a thousand British people and Americans pass through France for every one who entered the country in the days before railways, the number of men and women speaking the English language, who are acquainted with provincial France, is probably less than those who have visited Zanzibar or Formosa. The Channel packets disembark myriads of passengers every year on the shores of Picardy and of Normandy; the most glittering quarters of Paris are cosmopolitan rather than French, and British rather than cosmopolitan; the accents of Bloomsbury and of Boston are heard on the Boulevards, and the habiliments of the Anglo-Saxon tourist are the cynosure of Parisian theatres; each winter brings its hordes of gamblers, triflers, and valetudinarians, to a strip of the Mediterranean littoral, which is France only in the sense that Corsica is, and at the same season pleasure-seekers of the same race ride to hounds across country in the Basses-Pyrénées. Statistics are annually published to display the proportions of these rushing idling crowds, and not one in twenty thousand of them knows as much about the land through which the express trains hurry them, as does a Western pork-packer of the ethnology of the Indians who once inhabited the regions on the track between his marts at Chicago and Omaha.

Quaint old towns a few leagues from the mainline, like Auxerre with its glowing cathedral, or Rodez with its triple terraced belfry, are secure from the incursions of scampering wayfarers; but it is strange that places not less attractive actually on the tourist trail should be neglected. Of the summer crowd which hastens on to Switzerland through Amiens and Bâle, rarely does one ever stop to climb the hill which is crowned by the lofty towers of Laon. Of the winter sun-seekers making for the Riviera, hardly ever one is found to rest for a day at Orange, beneath the colossal shade of the Roman theatre. At every season of the year is thronged the railway line to Bordeaux and the Spanish frontier, but the only passengers who alight at Angoulême are the ambassadors of commerce, who are not attracted thither by a taste for Romanesque architecture.

The books which we have before us include in their survey the whole area of France. The volume by Messrs. André Lebon and Paul Pelet, entitled 'France as it is,' is a remarkable work, not only on account of the amount of information it contains upon the administration, the politics, and the finances of the country, but also from the fact that it is a translation of a work which has never been printed in French. M. Lebon is Chef de Cabinet to the President of the Senate; but he is engaged in a

work

work of higher importance than his official duty. He is one of the most instructive lecturers of the talented staff of the 'Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques,' where he has among his colleagues Messrs. Léon Say, Boutmy, Francis Charmes, De Foville and the two Leroy-Beaulieu. This admirable institution, which has its home in the Faubourg St. Germain, provides special courses of instruction for men who have completed their University education, and who wish to enter an official career in the diplomatic, the administrative, and the colonial services. We hope that before long M. Lebon will republish a series of the lucid and impartial discourses delivered in the Rue St. Guillaume, which are too terse and too full of matter to be lost in the note-books of students, however attentive; and the useful treatise before us, excellent as it is as an outline sketch of French institutions, does not represent a tithe of the author's knowledge of the elements which form the France of to-day.

It is the fashion of a certain class of travellers to sneer at the persons who make use of guide books. The adventurous voyager, who has spent a fortnight in Paris and a winter at Nice, despises his humbler compatriot who is not ashamed to confess the limits of his Continental experience. The modest tourist, who on a brief holiday is able to examine only a couple of French cities under the guidance of a good handbook, provided he does it thoroughly and intelligently, may flatter himself that he knows more about France than his scornful friend, who has jostled with the heterogeneous crowds on the plage at Dieppe, in the pesage at Longchamp and in the Casino at Monte Carlo. We would encourage all travellers to commence their explorations with the companionship of a good guide book, but we would counsel them, if they have time at their disposal, not to be content with the concise stores of information therein stored. No Englishman, unless he resides in France, can gain more than a superficial knowledge of provincial life; but most of our fellow-countrymen are in complete ignorance of even the surface of French existence. The key to knowledge of a most important portion of life in France is an acquaintance with the administrative system of the land, which touches the very foundations of French society. The first essential of a guide-book is that it shall be of portable size: the second, that it shall be easy of reference so that he who runs may read. Both of these qualities are admirably exemplified in Murray's Handbooks, and later imitations of these timehonoured travelling companions are a tribute to the excellence of their form. It is not possible, therefore, for such a work to be arranged according to departments or provinces; it must of

necessity

necessity follow the railway lines of communication; but as a supplement to the abbreviated lore of the indispensable scarlet manuals we would recommend the use of the series of little volumes, which bear the name of the eminent geographer, Adolfe Joanne, who has fortunately given to the world copious results of his labours before his lamented death. These departmental geographies are published separately, and each contains a complete view of the department described. Its name is explained, its history is narrated, and its limits defined. Its physical characteristics are given with minuteness, the condition of its population is treated statistically, and a full account is afforded of the agriculture, industry, and products, of the department. The administrative divisions are tabulated in convenient form, and in a dictionary of the communes to the name of every town and village within its boundaries is added a brief mention of each object of interest to be found therein. The serviceable and inexpensive little books are made complete by illustrations of considerable merit, and by an accurate map of the department coloured according to its arrondissements.

With the aid of 'Murray's Handbook' and the 'GéographiesJoanne' a rapid traveller, whose baggage is as limited as his time, can make a survey of the country round about his halting places, which will be full of living interest and of memories of the past. If he has the leisure to settle down in a locality and thoroughly explore it, and is willing to burden himself with a library, he may study with advantage the larger volumes edited by M. Paul Joanne, which we have no hesitation in saying are the best guide-books in existence. They describe in accurate and exhaustive detail sections of France, such for instance as Franche-Comté and the Jura in the east, Gascogne and Languedoc in the south-west, or Bourgogne and the Morvan in the centre, and they, moreover, furnish a valuable bibliography for each department. It is to be feared that in these days of swift travel that there are few tourists who have the time or the inclination thus to make the intimate acquaintance of a corner of a foreign land; but those wise people, who avoid the resorts of hurrying crowds, can invariably find in the humblest French town a well-stocked bookshop, and not unfrequently a bookseller of intelligence, who can advise upon the merits of the monographs which are written in abundance upon every district in France.

For the benefit of those wayfarers in France who desire to make some acquaintance with the literature relating to the scene of their journeys without the agreeable labour of research, Mr. Augustus Hare has at last published three of his long-promised

volumes

yolumes on the French provinces. Mr. Hare's method is wellknown: his manuals for Italy are in the hands of every traveller who crosses the Alps; and future travellers are to be congratulated on the fact that Provincial France, with its wealth of associations, has been treated with the erudition and good taste which he has applied to other regions. Mr. Hare's latest work has come into our hands too late for us to deal with it adequately. The three volumes which have just appeared are entitled respectively, 'North-Eastern France;' 'South-Eastern France;' and 'South-Western France.' The fourth volume, which will describe the North-Western districts, has been left for subsequent preparation, as Normandy and Brittany are comparatively well known to English holiday-makers, whereas nine-tenths of the area which the author has patiently and intelligently travelled through with pen and pencil are as unfamiliar to tourists as are the recesses of the Balkans or the basin of the Mackenzie River. In his first part Mr. Hare commences with a preface full of sagacious hints to travellers, and an introductory chapter which has interested us so much, that we regret that the book has appeared too recently to permit us to offer some criticism on certain of the propositions it contains. He then describes with much detail the towns and villages lying on and near the line from Calais to Paris, which with one or two exceptions are completely neglected by the crowds of passers-by: the Belgian frontier is reached by way of the great industrial centres of French Flanders: the German frontier is arrived at after delightful days in the valley of the Marne and days of sombre association near the battlefields of 1870. The volume describing South-Eastern France includes in its survey all the magnificent district between Paris and Lyon; the vineyards of Burgundy; the pastures of the Charollais; the woodlands of the Morvan and the highland Forests of the Jura. Thence we are taken to the romantic region of the Puy de Dôme; down the Rhone into sunny Provence; along the Mediterranean Littoral to the borders of Italy and through the grandeur of the mountain scenery of Savoy. The third part, devoted to the South-West, describes the sumptuous châteaux of the Loire, the shores of the Bay of Biscay, the central district of France, untrodden by strangers, which lies between Orleans and Toulouse, and the varying hill countries of the Cevennes and the Pyrenees. Mr. Hare naturally finds a greater number of historical and literary associations in and about the abodes of men, whether in populous places like Grenoble, nestling amid the Alps of Dauphiny, in villages like Loches and La Chaise Dieu, rich in medieval and Renaissance architecture,