The Roman& Roussillon. By Isabel Savory. (Fisher I.7nwin. 25s. net.)—A
book of travel that makes one wish to visit the country described is a success. Miss Savory will unquestionably send many of her readers to the Eastern Pyrenees to explore the romantic valleys of the Agly, Tet, and Tech, to climb the Canigou, and to study the Romanesque churches and the little walled towns that abound in Roussillon. She writes well of her own impressions, and does not weary us with an excess of history or architecture. She found Roussillon a land of colour and light, vexed by the " tramontane " on the coast, but warm in the sheltered valleys, and comparatively free from tourists except at Perpignan and Vernet-les-Bains. Borderlands are always interesting. In Roussillon the Catalan influence, politically dominant till 1659, still survives in speech and manners after two and a half centuries of French rule. Miss Savory, by an obvious misprint, makes Richelieu, instead of Mazarin, annex the little province. The contrast that she draws between the prosperous Roussillon and the squalid villages across the Spanish frontier is significant. The illustrations, from pencil studies by Miss Muriel Landseer MacKenzie, are most attractive ; we wish that there were more of them.
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