An Impressionist in England. By F. Horace Rose. (J. M.
Dent and Co. 4s. 6d.)—This is a volume of interesting sketches, chiefly, though not exclusively, dealing with "impressions" of England by an evidently very capable South African journalist. Mr. Rose is an effective phrase-maker, as when he says : "Modern Edin- burgh is a city of one street and many precipices ; old Edinburgh is a city of one precipice and many streets." He has also a happy journalistic knack of effectively indicating contrasts between places, as when, on the authority of a London friend, he states that, grouped together, London's eleven thousand refreshment- rooms and coffee-shops alone would form a town larger than Durban, and four times the size of Grahamstown or East London, and that its "650 theatres and music-halls would form a city bigger than Bloemfontein, sheltering every night between the hours of eight and twelve 325,000 people, or more than at present populate the four largest towns in Africa." The horrors of London poverty have struck Mr. Rose as they strike every visitor to this country, and he writes of them quite as interestingly and almost as forcibly as the author who styles himself "Jack London," and who recently published a volume devoted to this subject. But we prefer his miscellaneous papers, such as those on Edinburgh, Whitby, and Mr. Hardy's Wessex. Fully a third of the volume is given up to South African sketches and stories. In these, and particularly in "Reminiscences of a Refugee," Mr. Rose is perhaps seen at his very best.
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