aus: A Uook oF By Sisley Maddleston. London Methuen & Ca. Price, net Despite Mr. Huddleston's assertion that "there is really nothing (and he has every right to the opinion, having himself written two admirable ones), we think that. he gives us more entertainment and more of the essence of the France which he loves and knows so well in these charming essays than when he is bound by his own conscientiousness as an imparter of information and his view that a guide-book should keep to facts anil eschew opinions. For here he is, jin the best and most humanisti: sense, the unofficial ambassador, which he conceives every foreign correspondent ought to be—a man, to quote his own words, who tries "to understand, not superficially but profoundly, the people among whom he finds himself."
After reading these essays we cannot but love and understand the genius of France better, cannot but feel that "Paris belongs to the world" and is a rare possession. And Mr. Huddleston brings his understanding to bear upon so many. aspects of her. He reveals her with equal sensitiveness through her great writers or through a poor collector of cigarette ends on the. terrace of a Paris cafe, through Clemenceau or Robespicrre, Na-pelean's Josephine or the proprietress of 'a huge emporium by the Pont Neuf, through the vineyards of Touraine or the Boulevard trees.
He loves her, too, well enough o1 occasions to smile at her, and he flatters her by writing with a grace which owes much to French model For his essays are beautiful composed. In "By Running Brooks,' for example, he tells us how on a drab day of late autumn he turned inland from the depressing monotone of the sea and discovered the happy tinkle of a little brook. And in "this enfranchisement of the smaller rivers from depressing atmospheric influences" he recognizes why the women of France who go down to the lavoirs of the running brooks and who beat their linen This ts something more than a charming fancy; it ie" Yevealing, trid its sugestiveneas i crystal din the pctare of the kneeling women which follows and of th Angular painter with a Sour visage who. stemmed. fort. mhoment. the pug hasony othe one, The fa'the fealing and the insight end arm of thin ensayo a sao
the' fine union of these qualities typicale—an ts. tu "Manchester
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.