SKETCHING- RAMBLES.* Dunrso the present century the pursuits and amusements
of ladies. have undergone a great change, which is in no respect more remark- able than in the increased share they now take in literature. The' i
exterior of a lady at the present day is not a greater contrast to the' costume of ,her powdered or high-waisted ancestress, than her intel- lectual furniture is to the much scantier supply which was thought necessary by her grandmother; and the Nancy Lammetera of the past generation, could they descend from their canvasses to the carpet, and converse with their fair descendants, would not be more astonished at the iron cages which enclose their forms, than at the curious medley of subjects which fill the space in their minds once exclusively allotted to needlework and cookery. Desdemona less eagerly devours the discourse of Othello while hastily despatching the house affairs, because she has almost as many moving accidents' by flood and field to tell as he has; and if she chooses to "dilate her pilgrimage" on paper, she may explore the "autres vast" of Albe-: marle-street, of the "Row," with equal prospect of success. We have? often thought it would suggest curious speculations if it were possi-' ble—as perhaps it is—to ascertain the number of books produced by male and female authors respectively during the current year, with. some kind of analysis showing their comparative strength in each department. In the absence of such a census, it may probably be assumed that fiction and books of travel would predominate in the feminine catalogue, and it would not be surprising if this also occa- sionally included the most successful works in both these branches- Of the greater number which achieve only a moderate popularity, some, of course, are produced as a mere matter of trade, like any other mechanical article, while many are simply the outpourings of an energy which has found letter-writing too contracted a sphere for its employment. How far it is a good thing, generally speaking, for ladies to be encouraged to write books of a mediocre kind, is rather' a perplexing question. On the one hand, anything which has the effect of bringing them before the world, and teaching them to look for reward out of their own circle, is likely to have a somewhat deteriorating effect, especially if that reward is so transient and in- significant as in the case of the popularity gained by most books below the first rank. It tends to spoil some of the best parts of the female character, without giving in exchange any amount of fame at all worth having for its own sake. So far female authorship is a ba& thing. On the other hand, the art of writing a Wok is a corrective to intellectual slovenliness, and an encouragement to more accurate? habits of thought and expression than most women usually care td attain. To write a book often supplies to a woman much of thaf which the higher part of education does to a man, and by arousing self-consciousness of defects, leads to what is probably the only very valuable kind of study, To have gone through the thought, re.: search, and trouble necessary to accomplish a book, gives a WOMIIII an experience different from her own, and more like that of the other sex; and anything which creates sympathy between the two, and in., creases the number of subjects of interest they have in common, must always deserve to be warmly welcomed. How far authorship may affect a woman's character depends on too many circumstances to make it possible.to lay down any general rule on the subject ; on the amount of vanity she may have, on the degree to which she is capable of having her head turned by success, or her temper'seured by failure, also on the judiciousness of her friends and advisers. We should only be inclined generally to say, that to venture into print without having very good reason for doing so, is a worse thing for a woman than a man, because it takes her more out of her usual sphere. The book before us has suggested these remarks, because itti anthers appear to have engaged in its cornpositiorr as they might have done in any other pleasant feminine occupation, and because it is to some extent beyond the reach of criticism. 4t. reviewer cannot seriously condemn or praise a book which has nothing either objection., able or particularly striking in its execution, and the contents of whicla will, he knows, be as acceptable to some readers as they will be stalk' and flat to others. The 3B.sses Callow appear to have " done!! Switzerland and Italy thoroughly enough, as far as concerns the.
• cb Ramb/es Natareia the All Apennines.. alcmayarat4.14ala E. Catlovi. IlluetrarQd. Two volts. Hogg.
number of places visited, and they stayed long enough at each to have had more sport among the reindeer, and we should have been anableiliem to carry away a rather less hurried notion of things and gladdened by many more pages of a very agreeable book. From people Than is usually the case with the regular English tourist. But Bergen, where the English steamer landed him, he again embarked they do not seem to have gone a step beyond the most thoroughly for the Hardanger .Ford, and found hospitable quarters at Sandvig, beaten track, either in Swiss scenery or Italian towns, and their tour on its shores, in the house of an engineer officer. Here his sporting was simply that which hundreds of travellers make every year, but adventures began, for the neighbouring mountains were infested by a occupying apparently a longer space of time than most tourists are bear which in eight days had killed no fewer than twenty cows, and able to devote to it. The reader is warned "not to expect a recital an order had gone round for a general hunt, in which every man who of stirring adventures in the High Alps," which were beyond the was able was expected to join. The affair appears to have been ill. strength of the writers, and as we have had almost a superfluity of managed, for Bruin got off unseen, leaving three more carcases of such adventures just now, we are not sorry that such was the case. cows behind him. Apparently they had been hugged to death, for Bat there are many parts of Switzerland which do not fall into the scarcely a mark of teeth or claws was visible, and probably they were common route, of which we should have been glad to hear something, destined for the bear's autumnal stock of food. After this excursion and there are many more parts of Italy which offer, both in respect Mr. Wyndham ascended the fjord, and took the road northward to of their inhabitants, their scenery, and above all, their artistic Sogne Fjord, which runs one hundred and twenty miles inland, and
, treasures, opportunities to a tourist with a literary turn, of which we is the largest in Norway. Contrary to the received opinion, he thinks are surprised. to see so few people avail themselves. There is nothing it superior in scenery to the Hardanger Fjord ; but none of the fjords in the way of information, of antiquities, or criticism, or practical of Norway came up to his expectations, for though exceedingly bean. hints, in these volumes, which may not be found in Murray, and in tiful, they appeared to him rather monotonous. Their scenery is more than one case, quotations appear in their pages which are to be generally deficient in background, for their lofty perpendicular cliffs found in the guide-book. The reflections, when at their best, are shut out all view of the mountains beyond ; but the highland lakes such as would occur to most well-disposed and well-educated women, are free from this defect, and there it is that the picturesque charae. and are sometimes rather below that level, as where the authoress, teristics of Norway may be seen in their fullest perfection. on seeing some forests near Berne being felled for railway purposes, The waters of the Sogne flow from a group of mountains lying "could not but regret that trees so beautifully grown, of such elegant north-east of the fjord, and almost wholly impracticable for wheel- proportions, should be doomed to lie hidden under the iron rails, and carriages. Among them are at least two summits rising higher than be crushed by the weight of the locomotive." The writers appear to Snehreten, which used to be reputed the loftiest peak in Norway; see an intensely foreign air in the simplest things, and on the terrace but that rank is now claimed for the Galhopiggene, which has an at Berne, where there were refreshment shops, were "much amused elevation of eight thousand five hundred and forty English feet. So in watching three little boys marching in, deliberately taking chairs, little is this rugged but magnificent district known to tourists, that at and calling for ices and glasses of water, an invariable accompani- Riidseim, a station near its verge for the hire of baggage ponies, Mr. went to this luxury abroad." This is an amusement which may be Wyndham wrote his name in the travellers' book on the very same had without going so far as Berne, and the "invariable accompani- page as Captain Biddulph, ILA., who had passed that way just ten went" is not unknown in Pall Mall and Regent-street. The Misses years before. In this region Mr. Wyndham employed himself from Catlow are authors on some works of popular science, and the char the middle of August to near the end of September, shooting willow ters on Alpine Botany and Zoology—though the best parts of t euse near the limit of the birch-trees and among the shrub-bearing are from the work of Tschudi, in the "Travellers' Library,"— rights above them, ptarmigan in the higher parts where all growth are written with fulness. There is, however, very little evidence of of shrubs ceases, and stalking reindeer on the same naked fjelds. If historical knowledge or general reading : among the celebrated men his bag was not always as heavy as he could wish, not the less did he who have lived at Lausanne, Gibbon is omitted, and the writers talk rejoice in his gun, and deem it the best accompaniment for a moun- of "a poem" of Lord Byron's, beginning " Clarens, sweet Clarens, tam tourist, as leading him to the enjoyment of superb scenery birth-place of deep love," which looks as if the knowledge of the amongst untraversed and unexplored regions, and throwing him into quotation was not derived from " Childe Harold" at first hand. The close contact with the peasantry river-side, the country ; whereas " the ri Imes, " Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains," are also at- angler, detained in the valley by the ver-side, loses that ever-changing tributed to Byron, but we fancy this also is a mistake. Of the twenty variety of scene which in a mount4a country is so enchanting.' illustrations, some are so much inferior to the others that we should He describes the willow grouse as a most beautiful bird, of about imagine them to be by a different hand. The two in colours, which the same size as the red grouse of Scotland, and possibly identical form the frontispieces, may have been well drawn, but if so, have with it in species, for the point seems still scarcely decided. At all met with very ill treatment from the lithographer. The best are events it affords very good sport, and he thinks it might be worth those of Chilton and the Rhone valley, of the bridge at Narni, and of while to try it in those parts of Scotland where the red .grouse have the Jungfrau; but many of the others are commendable for the un- suffered from the disease. The fjeld, as we have said, is the haunt exaggerated impression they convey.- The views of buildings in of the ptarmigan and the reindeer, and this word is explained by our Venice and Florence are so well known bb photographs and draw- author as not having the meaning commonly supposed to belong to
ings that it was hardly worth while to insert them. it of plateau, or "table-topped mountain," nor is it significant of one
What merit the book has is in its general spirit, and in the goodness of the peculiarities of the mountains of Norway. It is applied to of a few of the descriptions. We have said that works of this kind every part of a mountainous region, whether peak or table-land, are not very attractive to those who know the route from experience which, from its elevation, is entirely devoid of shrubs or ..bushes of or from other sources, but to those who do not the volumes may be any sort. The words fell and tarn, in Westmoreland and Cumberland, entertaining enough. They make no pretension, except that of con- are evidently the same as the fjeld and the Ora or yarn arn of the Sean- veying the impression felt by the writers of the scenes they passed dinavians.
through, and they have certainly succeeded in transferring to their Apropos of this lesson in philology we quote a little incident of pages much of the genuine feeling of their own enjoyment. The our author's sojourn at a mountain sceter, or dairy. "Daring the first continental tour has a feeling about it which never comes a evening," he says, " the workmen amused themselves with cutting second time, and any one who can reproduce this, so as to recal it out little articles of wood—an example which I also followed, and, to those who have travelled, or inspire it in those who have not, can in due time produced a small spoon to do duty as egg and tea spoon, exercise a fascination in which books intrinsically more valuable are which I afterwards found very useful." It is pleasant to come upon
often deficient. Freshness is not so common a quality in books that an English gentleman of the nineteenth century in the act of thus we ought to pass it over, and freshness this book certainly possesses. unconsciously illustrating the etymology of the word spoon, among We have said that there is some power of description, and in proof of the direct representatives of the race by whom that name was first this we may refer to the account of the Staubbach i
and to that of Schaffhausen. These are not specimens of what is primarily, a chip, and its secondary meaning is spoon, just as the usually called "word-painting," which is a thing rather over done by Latin word cochlear denotes the use of a shell to convey potage to Mr. Ruskiu's numerous imitators, but they are simply careful and the mouth.
faithful delineations of the features of each scene, such as are not Mr. Wyndham was not fortunate in his pursuit of reindeer; only beyond the capability of many tourists, but the minutia of which most one animal fell either under his own gun or his companion's, though people forget after they have left the spot. At Sorrento the author- he was tantalized by the sight of several herds almost within range, eases were fortunate enough to witness one of the late eruptions of and by an interview with a peasant who had recently killed four rein- Vesuvius, and of this they give what we should imagine to be a good deer in one day. It must have gone near to irritate even so excel- and unexaggerated account. They do not meddle with politics, lent a temper as he evidently possesses, to find that the fellow to which is as well, and, except for an indignant allusion to some Aus- whom this quite unparalleled success had fallen was beyond compa- trian cannon pointed into St. Mark's-square, at Venice, one would rison the most stupid and uncommunicative loot in all Norway. Two not know from the volumes who were masters of Italy when the tour peasants whom Mr. Wyndham met on their return from the field, was made. For the experienced traveller the book cannot be said to where they had killed two deer, had with them a little dog trained have the least attraction, but any who wish to refresh their memories for that kind of hunting, which was the only animal of the kind he of lake and mountain, or to map out a pleasant tour for the coming mentions as having been seen by him in his tour. He wished to buy summer, will not find an hour or two ill bestowed in looking over it. it, but the price asked for it was enormous. A good dog of this
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