HARPER'S GUIDE TO EUROPE.*
Wirxrevau may be the faults of this guide-book, it has one decided merit. It is exactly typical of the American traveller as he is ordinarily conceived and too often as he really is. A single volume professing to give a full account of everything 'that is to be seen in England, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, and Spain is a faithful representative of the hurry which runs through all those countries in a few months. Perhaps Mr. Fetridgo, the editor of this guide, is a little too slow for some of his own countrymen, as he allows a whole year for the com- plete round of Europe and the East, including two months on the Nile, but omitting Russia. If it is interesting to speculate on the Mate of mind likely to be produced by a rapid scamper over so many countries, all of them so diametrically opposite to your own, yet each differing so much from the other, it is also curious to ob- serve the characteristics of the general guide-book which is intended to accompany the tourist. We are aware of the difficulties to which the editor of the hook is exposed, and we feel that completeness is out of the question. Even if the book has been accurate in the first instance, the labour and incessant attention required to mark the changes of every year must be a severe strain on any man's faculties. Mr. Fetridge remarks with some truth that " while the author is watching the completion of the beautiful mosque of Mehemet All in Cairo or the exquisite restorations that are being made at the Alhambra in Granada, a new bridge may be erected at St. Petersburg or a new hotel opened at Constantinople." It Harper's Handbook for Travellers in lamps and the East. By W. Porabralro Fetridge. Tenth Year. Now York: Harper and Brothers. . London: Sampson Low. 1871.
would be too much to expect fidelity in all these minute parti- culars, and we are sure that American travellers meeting with a bridge where they expected a ferry-boat will not be very hard on Mr. Fetridge. But there are matters of greater importance which ought not to escape the attention of the compiler of a guide-book, and the excuse we have quoted does not cover all oversights. Changes which have long since occurred, or which are of European notoriety, cannot be omitted without giving rise to a charge of carelessness. There is still better ground for that charge when a correction is made or partly made in one place, while the old information is coolly repeated in another. If the English guide-books, on which Mr. Fetridge is frequently so severe, but of which he has evidently made some use, would more than once have saved him from falling into such errors, he may have reason to regret his boasted independence. At all events, there are many respects in which Murray is more useful than Harper, and though it may not be convenient to carry " a small library " on a journey through Europe, it is just as well to know what there is to be seen in each place when you go for the purpose of seeing.
We cannot be surprised at the scantiness of the information given by Mr. Fetridge on some of the most important features of foreign travel. He may think that so long as he enables his countrymen to get over the ground without much difficulty, they may fairly be left to form their own opinions about pictures. Yet when we consider that very few people miss the chief collections of Europe, however little they may really care for the old masters, we must question the wisdom of such a course. A short list of the principal works of art in each gallery might generally be sufficient, but without this Mr. Fetridgo's readers will either be dependent on local guides or run the risk of losing much enjoyment. Mr. Fetridge is especially brief in his mention of English picture-galleries, and when he honours one of them with a few rare lines he leaves the traveller in a vague state of wonder, But oven when he lands on the Continent and describes "Me city of the world," he follows a similar plan. The Luxembourg is considered of such importance as to demand two separate descriptions, but of the pictures we are told " it is unnecessary to give the name of any leading work of art in these rooms, as it is liable at any moment to be removed to the Louvre." In the gallery of the Louvre, Mr. Fetridge, with a thorough appreciation of the command of French which is uni- versal among his countrymen, contents himself with printing the catalogue in the original. As, of course, he knows his country. men better than we do, it would be impertinent for us to make a remark on this subject, or even to ask whether most Americans would recognize Francia under the name of Francesco Raibolini. But we can hardly think that the largo Paul Veronese " in the central room, the picture opposite to the " Marriage at Cana," is aptly described as the " Reins chez Is Parisieu," or that travellers in general will at once transmute this mythical Parisian into the Pharisee who entertained our Saviour. That Mr. Fetridge describes the Palazzo Brignole at Genoa without the faintest allusion to the superb Vandycks which are almost un- rivalled in any other collection, that he speaks of the casts from the .2lfgiva marbles in the British Museum as being originals, though he might have remembered his account of the originals in the Glyptotbek at Munich, are faults which would have been avoided by a reference to any of the despised English guide-books. Murray would also have told Mr. Fetridge that the Leuchtenberg gallery of pictures, which in this book is said to be still in Munich, was removed to St. Petersburg eighteen or nineteen years ago. The worst mistake has yet to be mentioned. We should have thought everybody who had the least knowledge of art and the least regard for it would know that the "Peter Martyr," one of Titian's grandest pictures, perished by fire more than two years ago, and that such a European calamity could not have failed to im- press itself on the mind of the most casual observer. Yet in Mr. Fetridge's book the painting is still in existence ; it is still in the north transept of the church which proved unfaithful to the treasure it ought to have guarded ; and the American traveller is still told to ask for it as the third best picture in the world. We have not met with anything more flagrant since the Cockney tourist in Albert Smith's entertainment asked to be shown the Bastille, and pointed to its name on an omnibus as a clear proof that it still existed.
If it was only in mattere connected with art that Mr. Fetridgo was guilty of such errors, we might think there was a single weak point in his armour, and that he was merely deficient in apprecia- tion of one of the main attractions of Continental travel. Even this would be a grave fault in the compiler of a guide-book. Yet
it is not the only fault in Mr. Fetridge. We find him prefacing his remarks about Germany, with a remark that is worthy to be classed with the Times' celebrated announcement of Prussia's intended entry into the Zollverein. Says Mr. Fetridge, " Until lately every different State in Germany had its own custom-houses, its own tariff and revenue laws, which frequently differed very widely from those of its neighbours. Customs' officers and lines of eustom-houses were spread over the country. Now throughout the whole extent of this immense country there is nothing to prevent the freedom of commerce." We can hardly think that an American writer intends the contrast between the past and the present to cover an interval of more than twenty years, or that " until lately " means before 1851, when the last laggard States joined the Zollvereiu. In Mr. Fetridge's view, the war of 1866 is pro- bably the origin of commercial union. Again, in the account of the passage of the Mont Cenis we are told on one page that it is made by the Mont Cenis Railway. On the next page, however, we read that the railway terminates at St. Michel, and that travellers have to proceed in (Engem:ft+, which are dragged up the mountain by eight mules and two horses. We ought not to be hard on Mr. Fetridge for any failure to chronicle the changes brought about iu France by the last revolution. It is possible that the part of his book which relates to Paris may have gone to press before the demolition of the Vendome Column, and therefore we must not complain if that crowning act of Vandalism remains unrecorded. We are sure that Mr. k'etridge will feel this the more deeply, inasmuch as he thinks it necessary to give two separate and independent descrip- tions of the column in his present edition. But the manner in which he endeavours to keep pace with the alterations made by the substitution of a Republic for an Empire is sometimes very ludicrous. He does not wish to cancel all the information that was so valuable and interesting to free and independent Americans newly brought in contact with the pageantry of European despot- ism, yet he cannot shut his eyes to faits accomplis. Accordingly we have presentations and State balls described at some length, but a judicious blank is left for the names of the entertainers. Here are two of Mr. Fetridge's paragraphs :-
" Most travellers will be anxious for a presentation to the but witnessing the magnificent State apartments in all their brilliancy, filled with the wealth, intellect, and nobility of Europe, as all persons presented attend the State ball on the same evening."
" The apartments used on these occasions are eight in number : first, the buffet ; then the Salle de la Paix, with its immense chandeliers and mirrors, which is used for dancing ; then the Salle des Marecolianx, with its magnificent coiling, its colossal caryatides, its portraits of distin- guished marshals and generals, its furniture, and curtains of green, gold, and velvet, in which the --, surrounded by the Court, high offioers of the Court, and the wives and daughters of the corps diplo- matique,"
Reading these paragraphs, we seem to have before us one of those mysterious meetings where the president's chair is always left empty, and is supposed to be occupied by him in spirit. The mockery of bowing to an empty throne, and of having a blank space surrounded by courtiers and diplomatists, is all the more striking when we compare the former show of the Napoleonic Empire with its present condition. 1Ve do not know whether Mr. Fetridge expects to fill up the blank in some future edition either with the name of a King or of a President, as Rip van Winkle found the head of George III. on the public-house sign- board replaced by that of General Washington. But we should have thought that it was better to strike out the whole descrip- tion, and let the new regime, whatever it may be, start afresh without inheriting any such traditions.
Among Mr. Fetridge's errors there is one which, though excus- able in itself, will probably be resented by his countrymen. He talks of Mr. Tennyson's residence being still in the Isle of Wight, and as the poet's house has long been a place of pilgrimage for his many American admirers, they will be disappointed to find that their guide-book has not kept up with his movements. We men- tion this as likely to affect a good many American travellers. Mr. Tennyson may probably gain in privacy from the absence of those who were wont to haunt his garden fence, and the loss to curious gazers will thus be more than counterbalanced. But there are other genuine causes for complaint to be found by those who rely on Mr. Fetridge. They may easily be misled by such statements as that a London cab-driver cannot be compelled to go more than four miles an hour ; that the South-Eastern Railway bridge is a road running from Charing Cross to Cannon-Street terminus ; that, though Blenheim is nine miles and Woodstock eight miles from Oxford, it is au hour's drive from Woodstock to Blenheim ; that it is only four miles from Holyhead to Kingstown, and that the refreshment-rooms on the French railways provide dinners almost equal to those of the most famous Paris restaurants. We must say, too, we should be sorry to place implicit confidence in Mr. Fetridge's judgment about hotels, and it is worthy of remark that the advertisements at the'end of his book often tally with the favourable notices in the body. This is not necessarily a sign of corruption ; it may be explained in the present guide by that which seems to us one of its features, a want of constant personal investigation. Still it detracts from the value of such a work, and that the more seriously when the main object of the work is to be of practical use to the traveller.
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