ANNUAL GIFT BOOKS..
Arruoueu the day of the Annuals has long since passed in a literary point of view, the kindly feelings and the genial time which first made them so widely popular still require a handsome book, that may serve as a " Friendshi 's Offering," or a compli- ment of the season. Mr. Bogue not only applies himself to fur- nish this desideratum in the continuation of old favourites, but puts forward another Annual, under the title of The Rhine and its Picturesque Scenery, described by Henry Mayhew.
The idea is not altogether new. Years ago, the Landscape and the Picturesque adopted the similar course of combining plates and letterpress in a volume of tours, so as at once to in- form the mind and please the eye. Indeed, we are not sure but that the Rhine formed the subject of one of the Landscape An- nuals. Be this as it may, it is long enough ago to bear doing again in the oldfashioned mode—that is, views of the most striking scenery, accompanied by description, historical allu- sion, or traditional stories. For one portion of his tour Mr. Henry Mayhew is sufficiently qualified. In the lower part of the river, where Goldsmith's epithet of " lazy " may be as well applied to the stream of the Meese as that of its neigh- bour the Scheldt,—where the land is below the water, the landscape dependent for its interest upon its novelty and peculiar- ity, rather than upon any intrinsic beauty, and where a sort of regular routine animated by a plodding but by no means a dull spirit animates daily life,—Mr. Mayhew is at home. His literal description, depending for effect upon the enumeration of well- selected but minute features of a subject, is fitly adapted for Hol- land, and its quaint old houses, quaint old customs, and its some- what formal life. Cologne, with its Roman remains, its celebrated churches, including the unfinished cathedral and the well-worn legend thereunto attached, are scarcely so fitted for the manner of the author; though there is enough of the mere town to suit his method. As he ascends the stream, to " the castled crag of Drachenfels" and " the broad and bounding Rhine," with moun- tains rising from the banks, and ruins associated with tales of diablerie or feudal chivalry and passion, Mr. Mayhew gets more and more out of his element. The whole becomes lost in a crowd of details, and the spirit of poetry and romance is rather over- whelmed by literalness. What the author does, however, he does accurately : it may be somewhat ponderous, but it is vera- cious in a way.
Holland is not only the most truly characteristic, and therefore the most interesting, but the most informing part of the book. The means by which the land is defended from the sea has been often enough described before; but Mr. Mayhew's particulars as to height, breadth, and thickness, more truly realize the nature and extent of the works than would be accomplished by a more sprightly account.
"But the river-roads and streets are not the most peculiar though per- haps the most striking, feature of Holland. If we could ascend high enough in a balloon to narrow the whole of the Netherlands into a mere span, the country would seem like a spider's web with its many threads of water; though at the same time, we should see it almost like a tiny fortress hemmed in by a ring of rampart walls against its great ocean enemy without. " Thew sea-bulwarks are what are termed the dykes ; and along their tops run the roads of the country and the streets of the towns. The High Street of Rotterdam, for instance, stands upon one of these, and the highway to the village of Scheidam is merely a continuation of the same embankment. "The dykes, at first sight, strike the beholder as no extraordinary work; and it is not until we find that a considerable part of the country of Holland lies some twenty-four feet beneath the level of the sea at high-tide, and that it has merely a fence of mud banks to fortify the land against the terrors of invasion from the host of waters about it, that the mind becomes awakened to the vast- ness and importance of the structures. "Nor is it in summer-time, when the surrounding rivers are half dried up, and the ocean without is placid and beautiful as some vast lake, that we are able to arrive at a sense of the protection afforded by the belt of sea-walla to the people within them ; but only during the tempests of winter, when the terrible waves are towering to the sky ; like liquid mountains, and the tide has risen many feet above its usual height, owing to the immense body of water from the Atlantic having been driven by the gales across the Ger- man Ocean towards the narrow Straits of Dover, and there being dammed up as it were, so that the vast flood is forced back upon the Dutch coast, and leans, with all its stupendous weight, against the ridge of dykes around the Nether-country. It is at such times, indeed, that we learn how much pro- perty and how many lives depend upon the strength of these same ocean- bulwarks. It is fearfully interesting then to walk at the foot of one of the great dykes, and to hear the heavy waves beating like so many battering- rams against the outer side of the mud wall, and to know by the noise that
the ocean is already some twenty feet above the head. C * *
" The dykes are sometimes forty feet high, and their foundation, which is generally of clay, is from 120 to 150 feet in width. The dyke itself is com- posed of clay—if not entirely, at least on the outside ; and the interior is filled with a mixture of earth, clay, and sand. The face of the dike is thatched, as it were, with willow twigs, interlaced into a kind of wicker- work, the interstices of which are filled with puddled clay. This wicker- work lasts but a few years ; so that, as it requires to be repeatedly renewed, a number of willows have to be grown in Holland for the purpose. The base of the dyke is generally protected by masonry, and strengthened by large heaps of stones and rows of piles ; while the summit is mostly planted with trees, because their roots are found to bind the soil firmly together."
The steel plates with which the book is illustrated present their designer, Mr. Birket Foster, in a new medium, as he has been hitherto known by wood-engravings almost exclusively. ' Here he becomes so much like any other competent artist without strong originality, that one would hardly recognize him. He tends * The Keepsake, 18.56. Edited by Miss Power. With beautifully-finished En- gravings, from Drawings by the First Artists, engraved under the Superintendence of Mr. Frederick A. Heath. Published by Bogue. The Rhine and its Picturesque Scenery. Illustrated by Birket Foster. De- scribed by Henry Mayhew. Rotterdam to Mayence. Published by Bogue.
The Court Album : a Series of Portraits of the Female Aristocracy. Engraved by the best Artists. Published by Bogue.
rather to the romantic humour of the tourist than to Mr. May- hew's literal tone. An illustration of another sort is the binding, which presents, with some fair auxiliary decorations, an escutcheon blazoned, and blazing, with the arms of Prussia, Hesse-Darmstadt, Wurtemburg, Saxony, Frankfort, and Belgium.
The Keepsake does not come upon the reader with the same feeling of freshness as The Rhine, because we have had the frame- work of the book before us year after year without intermission. A volume of " miscellanies "—tales and sketches, prose and verse alternately mingled—can afford no variety of plan; and the time, we fear, has gone by for much novelty of style and matter. Yet some names of literary notoriety linger about the once aristocratic Keepsake. Mr. Alaric Watts contributes a couple of stanzas of apology, not striking, but with a neat and pretty close. Barry Cornwall's " River " recalls the style of his best ballads, but it wants object. The author of Festus has both poetical feeling and imagery in his "Farewell": the effect is marred because the reader does not exactly know to whom, or why, the writer is bid- ding adieu. Mr. Chorley has a pretty incident in verse—a " Glee Maiden" of the olden time recounting her gains to her father; the spell which acted on her hearers being the thought of him. Mr. Octavins Friere Owen has written a species of mythological satire, the gist of which is a magic glass that exhibits the inward thoughts in contrast with the outward appearance. The conception is not new ; and the execution, though not lame, is deficient in the point and finish such things require. It is, however, more a reflex of the living world than any of the other poetical pieces, and is therefore more removed from poetical conventionalism. In prose, Mrs. S. C. Hall contributes a pretty sketch of " Cousin Kate, with a little incident in which straightforward, strong- minded Kate, is more than a match for an attorney. Mr. Albert Smith has written his reminiscences of "Bedfordia,"—possibly with some confounding of ages or generations, and some extension of place, as well as with a spice of exaggeration for effect ; but, like Mr. Friere Owen's " Vulcan and Momns," dealing with the actual, and therefore, we think, the best of the prose. These are the boundaries of the region ; pushed a little beyond reality in the Western direction, to include Tottenham Court Road and the author's comment, while the true Southern boundary is Great Russell Street.
" I would define Bedfordia as somewhat freely bounded on the East by the Foundling Hospital, and on the West by that of Middlesex. Northwards, the New Road forms its frontier; and to the South, the rolling tide of Oxford Street prevents its respectability from running astray into St. Giles's. Its inhabitants would repudiate Tottenham Court Road if they could, but it is impossible. It is the great artery of the quarter ; and were it, in surgical phrase, 'taken up,' no other branches could carry on the circulation of vi- tality into the contiguous component members. "It comprises several squares beside the one from which it takes its name. The frigid Fitzroy, the respectable Russell, the bland Bloomsbury, and the two-windowed Torrington, ventilate its atmosphere. A large portion of its inhabitants live as theychoose; an equally large portion live as they can. Russell Square is the region of the first class; Rathbone Place of the second. "Let us consider the first. Possibly nowhere else in London is the con- ventional mechanism of set social life so gravely observed. The heavy morning-call in the heavier carriage—the raids routine of the society alto- gether—the grim grind of the dull dinner-parties—the belief that certain articles can only be procured at certain shops, and those the most expensive —the creed that establishes the importance of the tongue and brains of Gun- ter on the table over the tongues and brains of anybody round it—the im- mature French beans in April, not because they are nice, but because they are dear—the drawingroom-table with the same books and articles on it, in the same places, from year to year—the loss what to say next in conversa- tion, and the leaden platitude that it turns out to be when it is said—the pompous, empty arrogance of disbelief in the immeasurable self-relying su- periority of artistic and literary life,—all these attributes, and thousands of others that their combined influences, acting together, produce, characterize ' the Squares.' " Once leave the squares, and the population of the streets of Bedfordia is more varied than that of any other department of London. It is par ex- cellence the Quartier des Arts.' From the varied struggling for a liveli- hood in Rathbone Place, to the academical aspirations of Upper Charlotte Street, there is not a floor that does not boast an artiste ' as an occupant. Heaven only knows how a great part of these folks live. Not the painters who cut large bits out of the fronts of the houses over the windows ; nor the sculptors who have roomy studios behind, opening into the mews, with the same dusty old plaster heads, and big hands, and casts of human chines hanging about—of no earthly use but to look professional, as tea-dealers dis- play, mandarins and Chinese lanterns—not these clever folks, who are more or less established ; but the professors.' Professors swarm hereabouts. They teach the accordian, and model in leather, and have classes for dancing, French, wax-flowers, potichomanie, the guitar, photography, and dressmaking."
The " letterpress " of the Court Album is, as usual, simply a Reties of heraldic notice of the family of the lady whose portrait is to be illustrated. These notices, we think, are better done than formerly, because they are closer and more precise. The only no- tice that mixes much of fanciful tradition with the genealogy is the story of the worm of Lambton, told in connexion with the Countess of Durham's portrait. -
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