AN AMERICAN IN EUROPE.* Wr look vainly through this book
for traces of the typical American traveller. Mr. Guild is much more quiet than some of his countrymen ; he neither glorifies his own land, nor makes invidious comparisons between it and the rest of the world ; he is willing to do justice to all other nations, and he finds much to admire throughout Europe. We must say that these charac- teristics, however laudable, somewhat interfere with the interest of Mr. Guild's volume. Writing, as he does, on a well-worn subject, and describing places with which most of us are familiar, he cannot hope to be read with pleasure unless his own views supply some novelty or his descriptions are marked by freshness and power. He informs us, indeed, in his preface, with a candour which is rare in him, that "the habits of observation acquired by many years' constant occupation as a journalist were found by the author to have become almost second nature, even when the duties of that profession were thrown aside for simple gratification and enjoyment." But though such an opening might lead us to expect some striking descriptions, and does lead us to expect a certain absence of modesty, neither promise is strictly kept. There are a few passages in the book which do credit to their author's power, especially the sketch of the grounds at Chatsworth, the account of Wiertz's pictures in his studio at Brussels, and the description of the organ performance at Lucerne which rendered a .storm in the Alps with marvellous fidelity. But on most occasions Mr. Guild seems contented with the track beaten by so many travellers and so fully mapped out in guide-books. For most of his facts and inferences he seems indebted to these trustworthy sources of infor- mation, and if he does not see more than they tell him to look at, he does not generally say more than they have told him already. The result is that his mistakes are few, but his book is mediocre. 'We may read parts of it with pleasure as the work of a cautious and moderate traveller, who comes from a strange land, and cannot fail to light upon much that will be new to himself and his countrymen. The comparisons which he makes between English and American customs me often worth noting, and may suggest necessary changes, though not to the English only. This is perhaps the best feature in Mr. Guild's book, and ought to disarm some of our criticism.
One of the first things that struck Mr. Guild on his arrival was the readiness of English shopkeepers to oblige their customers. A poplin dress was made in Dublin to match a sample brought over by a lady in Mr. Guild's party, and was delivered in London with- out any extra charge. This was a piece of civility which struck Mr. Guild as totally opposed to American practices, and in the London shops ho found a similar tendency. "One misses," he said, describing the briskness and polite attention of London shop- men, "that sort of independent nonchalance with which an American retail salesman throws out one article at a time, talking politics or the weather to you while you yourself turn over the goods, place them and adjust them for the effect of light or shade, as he indolently looks on or persistently battles in argu- ment with you that what he has shown you you ought to have, instead of what you demand and want ; also that American style of indifference or independence as to whether you purchase or not, and the making you—as you ascertain after shop- ping in London—do half the salesman's work." There are other English habits, however, which Mr. Guild contrasts disadvantage- ously with those of America. He was surprised at being kept 'waiting more than half an hour for his breakfast in one of the chief hotels at Liverpool, at the waiter's ignorance of the mean- ing of "hot biscuit," at the paucity of papers taken in, at the indifference of the London Press to American affairs, at the inconvenience of English railways. We may admit that there is some ground for his censure of the cramped carriages and the ex- posed engines, but we do not know in what part of England he noticed that the door of the waiting-room opening on the plat- form is kept closed until a certain time before the train starts. It Is evident that in this he is canfusing England with the Continent,
4" Ozer the Ocean ; nr, Sights and Banes in Foreign Lands. By Curtis Guth!, Editor of the Boston Commercial Bulletin, Boston: Leo he Sboperd. London: Low &Co. ISM where the only access to the platform is through the waiting-room, and where a long delay is followed by a mad rush of the whole body of passengers. A propos of English railways, Mr. Guild mentions that at Rugby the young ladies in the refreshment-room, who are very attentive and have very good sandwiches for sale, have come to recognize every American by his invariable question of "Where's the boy ?" It can hardly have been Dickens's inten- tion to make the fortune of the refreshment-room at Rugby by his extravagant caricature. When Mr. Guild goes to Sheffield and visits the great steel manufactories, he is struck at the sight of the "dingy nooks and corners in a series of old rookeries of buildings" where the metal is hammered out into razors. No American workmen, he says, would work in such a place ; but the next minute he admits that the American work- men fall far short of their English rivals. He admires the thoroughness and the honesty of the English work, although in another place we find him ready to vindicate his country's claim to invention. The suggestion made both at Warwick Castle and the Tower of London that Colt's revolvers were copied from old English originals was received by Mr. Guild with supreme con- tempt. It is interesting to observe that an idea in Lord Dufferin's speech at the Scott centenary is forestalled by Mr. Guild, who comments on the money profit derived by Scotland from her great novelist. We have already spoken of the description of the grounds at Chatsworth, and we need only add i that Mr. Guild brings out very clearly the peculiarities of the artificial rockery and the cele- brated weeping willow. But it is strange that the author is much less impressed by a Continental garden of much greater variety and skill in arrangement, the Pallavicini garden at Pegli. Here Mr. Guild is contented with a lifeless enumeration which does not in- clude the most remarkable features, and the tricks with water which are admired at Chatsworth are anathematized in Italy.
Of course Mr. Guild's Continental tour occupies many more pages than are devoted to England, but it need not detain us very long. Like most Americans, the author goes rapidly over the ground, and he jumps so suddenly from Venice to Florence that before we are well out of the Academy of Fine Arts we find our- selves in the shadow of the Palazzo Vecchio. We cannot say that Mr. Guild gives us anything very fresh about either France, Germany, or Italy, though he is in general correct is his details and deals with what is most prominent. An ex- ception must be made as regards his account of Munich, which he describes so fully that he is afraid of tiring his readers, and about which he falls into three or four errors. in his description of Vienna he is startled into a ludicrous comparison by the sight of "the largest opal in the world, as largo as a man's fiat and weighing seventeen ounces, too big for the breast-pin of the most ambitious American expressman or negro minstrel." And this home-thrust reminds us of one or two other places in which Mr. Guild makes sport of his countrymen. He says that a great many bronze models of the obelisk of Luxor arc sold in New York, and yet, notwithstanding the hieroglyphics, many people no sooner see one of these models than they exclaim, "Oh, here's Bunker Hill monument, and it looks just like it too !" At Diisseldorf we are told of an American proprietor of patent medicines making an offer to buy a picture. The subject was a knight's return from the chase to his grand old ancestral ball, and one of the features of the ball was a splendid antique chimney-piece. It struck the would-be purchaser that there was nothing on the mantle-piece, and this gave him a wonderful idea. Why should not the artist put a bottle of his patent syrup, with the label distinctly visible, on one end of the mantle-piece, and a row of boxes of pills and ointment, also with the labels visible, on the other ? Unfortunately the artist refused to fill up the vacant space in the way proposed, though he was offered double the price named for his picture, and the bargain was broken off. We must add, as it is characteristic of Mr. Guild, that he approves of the artist's resolution.
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