GLORIES OF SPAIN.
Glories of Spain. By Charles W. Wood, F.R.G.S. With 85 Illustrations. (Macmillan and Co. 10s. 6d. net.)—Mr. Charles Wood, as a writer, belongs distinctly to the romantic school. A perusal of his pages carries us back to G. Borrow, the Hardmans, and to the days when Maga was a power in the land. The keynote is struck at Narbonne, before the writer even enters Spain. "On such summer nights the All& des Soupirs is the favourite walk of the people. Whence its sad romantic name ? Has it seen many sorrows ? Do ghosts of the past haunt it with long-drawn sighs ? Has it more than its share of Abelards and Fracases, Romeos and Juliets ? Has some sorrowful Atala been borne under its branches to a desert grave, some Dante mourned here his lost Beatrice, some Petrarch his Laura ? " And this note is maintained throughout. Mr. Wood has a special weak- ness for the clergy ; for priests, nuns, organists, and sacristans, as well as for Cathedrals and ecclesiastical architecture. This is not out of place in Spain, where the Church bulks so largely. But besides this he must possess what Americans term a mag- netic personality. Two priests and a nun confess to him in Gerona, a priest in Barcelona, another in Montserrat, one in Tarragona, and one in Valencia. All are most excellent men, not in the least bigoted, but rather with half-veiled Protestant tendencies ; all have had love affairs in earlier life, most of them have been married, but there is nothing in the least improper about them. Nearly all of what may be called guide-book infor- mation is cleverly introduced in the narrative of enthusiastic organists and sacristans; it is only when Monseigneur Delormais fills pages with the account of his travels in despair, when he shoots tigers in North America and lions in India, that our lips involuntarily frame the syllables "padding." At times history is somewhat freely handled, as when Constantine is said to have been murdered at Maxentius by Eine, instead of Constans by Magnentius, and when Saint Isabel of Portugal at Zaragoza is confused with her great-aunt, Saint Elizabeth of Hungary. Cneid.os Scipio is probably a printer's blunder. The history generally is fairly correct ; but not quite so the few Spanish words quoted; and unless these faults are due to the printer only, the long and fluent conversations carried on with Spaniards of all conditions and ranks approach the miraculous. There is nothing to show that any other language than Spanish is spoken in Catalonia. We have also the inevitable companion, the butt of the author's wit ; known only by his initials, "H. C.," a susceptible poet, who falls into momentary love with every fair one whom he meets. All is rose-coloured.; the travellers move about in a world of sentiment; like beneficent genii, healing heart sorrows, and relieving material wants by timely and most appropriate presents. As the text belongs to the romantic, so do the illustrations to the impressionist school. The former is well done ; but we assign a higher value to the latter. Whether the text is written up to the engravings, or whether the illustra- tions were made to illustrate the text, we do not rashly deter- mine. They are mostly taken from photographs, and are due originally to a skilful use of the kodak. If not of much practical value to the architect and the archteologist, they are fall of suggestion to the aesthetic amateur. The impression of move- ment in the crowds is admirably rendered. Now and then an almost too ambitious attempt is made to give the effects of twilight and of darkness in the interiors; but on the whole they are very pleasing. The book is one to be commended as distinctly good in its own style. "Glories of Aragon" would have been a more appropriate title than Glories of Spain. All the towns described, Gerona, Barcelona, Tarragona, Valencia, Zaragoza, and the others, are in the old dominion. The history of Aragon, though less generally known, is not one whit less romantic than that of Castille, and the other Spains. The book is well calculated to kindle enthusiasm in youthful readers, and to recall pleasant memories to their elders.
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