This is a very pleasant title, at all events, A Nook in the Appennines, or a Summer Beneath the Chestnuts, by Leader Scott, author of "The Painter's Ordeal," &c., &c. With twenty-seven Illustrations, chiefly from Original Sketches (C. Kegan Paul & Co.), and the book is pleasant too. Finding the heat at Florence, on the 11th of June—not last June—too much for them, it being 96° in the shade, an English family flee to a nook in the mountains, where an old villa has been got ready for them; and there they sit, "at the receipt of coolness," like Lamb's "gentle giantess," till September. The villa on the Apennines is 2220 feet above the level of the sea, and the thermometer stands only at 70° in the open air. Now 70° is ordinary agreeable summer heat for England; though it is many degrees higher than anything we have seen (up to the middle of July) in England this dreadful year. The illustrations are helpful, and, without being obtrusively antiquarian, have most of them a retrospective or historical interest, as well as the more obvious one which is common to illustrations. The forty short chapters of which the book consists are filled with sketches of the life our English friends lived in the mountain nook, and of the manners and daily lives of the peasantry by whom they were surrounded—and these will be more instructive to a reader who knows a little about the Etruscans than to one who knows nothing of them. The interest of the narrative is never strong, but it is strong enough to carry the attention equably forward to the end, and there is no affectation; but it is a great mistake, and an unkindness to the reader, to omit, in a case of this sort, giving a sufficiently full, complete, and picturesque account of the travelling party themselves. We ought to be told how many there were, their ages, relationships, &c., and something of their previous travelling experience, if any.
Of course it is a good thing when a first-rate French, German, or Scandinavian novel is translated into English, and this is pretty sure to happen, when it does happen, through the agency of high-class publishers. But it is a very different thing when translations of foreign novels are thrown at our heads by the score, by writers or publishers whose chief object is to pander to certain questionable tastes. We fear that this evil is upon us, or not far off. But a word of pleasant, if qualified, welcome is due to A Distinguished Man: a Humorous Romance, by A. Von Winterfeld, translated by W. Laird-Clowes, (C. Kegan Paul & Co. 3 vols.). The chief thing to qualify the welcome is the fact that the author is too fond of hinting at the skeleton in the cupboard of what people call "modern thought." But apart from this, the book is amusing, and often more than amusing. It belongs to a type which is very rare in English literature—a sort of child-like farce, that is exceedingly difficult to describe; but it must be a very saturnine reader that can help a good laugh at some of the wild adventures of the German schoolmaster and German doctor upon English ground. These two men are rivals in love, and have both sought the hand of a German butcher's daughter. In the fulfilment of a certain ordeal, or test, which he imposes, they have to travel by way of Ostend to London, and thence to Edinburgh; the one who is first at certain marked points in a given route, to be the winner of the fair prize. Make up your mind that you are going to read some nonsense, and you will enjoy the book. The accuracy of the German in guide-book matters, in spelling, and in just those matters in which a French author always fails, is very striking. But we fear he is a little off the line once or twice. Is there in London any teacher of mathematics who keeps a man-servant, and covers his floor with carpets of velvet pile?
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Captain C. A. G. Bridge, R.N.: "The Revival of the Warlike Power of China," Fraser's Magazine, June, 1879.
[2] See Blackwood's Magazine, July, 1879, pp. 120, 121.
[3] Apropos of these remarks it is worth while quoting here a memorial by the ex-Ambassador Kwo Sung-t'ao, published in the London and China Telegraph of 7th July, 1879, as the first presented to the Throne on his return to China, and in which the best that he can say of England, notwithstanding his cordial reception and marvellous experiences, seems to be that he was "excessively cast down in a strange country," where, "had he been put into a ditch, there would have been nobody to cover him with earth." The very name of the place to which he was accredited appears to have been beneath mention to his august master. The Peking Gazette of the 3rd moon, 3rd day, contains the following memorial from Kwo Sung-t'ao, late Ambassador at the Court of St. James's, to the Emperor:—"Your servant," he writes, "has suffered from many bodily infirmities. Relying upon the heavenly (i.e., your Majesty's) grace, I was appointed to go abroad on service of heavy responsibility. I am now feeble with age, having served at so great a distance; I also deplore my stupidity, and am extremely apprehensive of my inability in performing the functions devolving upon me. Since the sixth or seventh moon of the year before last I have suffered from insomnia. A year ago my spirits became daily more abattu. In the second month of last year I suddenly experienced phlegm rising in my mouth, and vomited fresh red blood, without being able to stop it, so that in a trice a basin would get quite full. I consider that my life has been marked by increasing afflictions; my respiration is impeded; I am agitated and nervous; already I have contracted an asthma, and this I certainly had not formerly. Excessively cast down, in a strange country several tens of thousands of li away, I thought that if I were put in a ditch there would be nobody to cover me with earth. Fortunately, by virtue of the heavenly (i.e., Imperial) compassion, having been graciously permitted to give up my office, all that remains of me, protractedly wearing out my failing breath, is due to the overflowing grace of the Holy Lord (the Emperor). During the two years I have been abroad I have passed under the hands of foreign doctors not a few, who felt my pulse and administered medicine in a manner very different from native practitioners. In relieving my indigestion and removing the torpor [of my liver] they occasionally produced some little effect; but my constitution became weaker every day, and there was no restoring it. After casting about this way and that, there seemed but one resource left to me—to take advantage of a steamer bound for Fu (i.e., Shanghai), and then to return by way of the Yangtsze River to my native place and put myself under medical advice. Prostrate I implore the Heavenly Compassion to grant me three months' leave of absence, in order to establish a complete cure, so that perhaps I may not contract disease that will prove incurable. After your servant has got home it will be his duty to report early the day of his arrival, and he earnestly desires that he may be restored to health. Then I will return to the capital to resume my functions, and implore that some trifling post may be given me that I may testify my gratitude by strenuous exertions, like a dog or a horse. Wherefore I, your humble servant, now beg for leave of absence on account of my ill-health, and respectfully present the petition in which my request is lucidly set forth, entreating with reverence that the sacred glance may rest upon it."
[4] Contemporary Review, May, 1879, p. 261.
[5] L. c. p. 262.