THE ART OF SIGHTSEEING

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20998, 28 October 1933, Page 17

THE ART OF SIGHTSEEING

see for Yourself. By Edmund Vale. J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd. 276 pp. (5/- net.)

u See for Yourself," is a manual about the art of sightseeing in England, told in somewhat the same style as the genial essays of Dr. van Loon. Information is imparted encouragingly, and if Mr Vale is determinedly facetious (" Boyle boiled") and confidential, yet his playfulness masks scholarship and theories that are too recondite to be attractive if set out in the language of the professional archaeologist. He has a rare tolerance for poor taste in architecture and artifacts ; he sees their sentimental value and the human beings who expressed in such works a living, if inferior, culture. While his knowledge of architectural devices is profound, and while he knows their origin and purpose, he enjoys speculating upon the temperament of the creator and deducing information about the spiritual changes that Englishmen have undergone from palaeolithic man to his Victorian descendant. The book would not be so successful if it were not written by a sentimentalist. The emphasis is upon the living man, and Mr Vale can compare the road-making whims of the A.A. and the S.P.Q.R. Few writers have made the Roman occupation so real. The Romans in Britain seem to have imported shiploads of crockery which they have distributed over the countryside and smashed by the ton. They never occupied a site without sowing it with a complete set of coins. They labelled and dated all their works, and thus became great benefactors of museums. So good was the Roman posting system that Tiberius once travelled 200 miles in a day. Mr Vale finds much romance in the Stone Age, but no more than in the aeroplane which is now revolutionising method and thought in archaeology, or in the naughty mediaeval boys who, during the sermon, scratched caricatures on the walls of churches. The last section of the book contains masses of compressed facts: periods and types of brickwork, hillside figures, castles, and churches are defined in a few words. The passion for tabulation is ..carried so far as to include an anatomy of scenery which analyses " genius loci" into sections and subsections like " imaginative reactions" and " reactions of smell and taste." There are many illustrations, all significant, and all revealing the original fancy of the maker of the ornament or structure that is represented. A handbook so spirited and so helpful should drive out on the roads many more " hikers." To New Zealanders, it should suggest a wiser, more thorough watchfulness, and a cultivation of the only Paradise from which man may not be expelled—remembrance.

SHORTER NOTICES Juntrie Night. By Reginald Campbell. Hodder and Stoughton. 319 pp. From W. S. Smart. The hero of this romantic thriller of the Siamese jungle is a rather oppressive specimen of the strong, silent man; but his elephants are magnificent, and his and their battle against Sung Toh. the outlaw, for the "big herd'' is a splendid affair. Monsieur Blaeksliirt. By David Graeme. George G. Harrap and Co.. Ltd. 286 pp. A sword-and-cloak romance of some brilliance. Mr David Graeme is to be congratulated upon researches which revealed that his cousin, Mr Bruce Graeme's, crimestory hero, BJackshirt, owned so fascinating an ancestor as "Monsieur Le Noir," and upon his record of this dazzling blackguard's adventures. Carrying a Gun for A 1 Capone. By Jack Bilbo. Putnam. 232 pp. (2s net.) The first cheap—and very cheap —reprint of "Jack Bilbo's" memoirs of gangster life in Chicago. They may be mere fake, in spite of Mr Bilbo's laying his hand on his heart so solemnly; but if they are, they are very good fake. Shockingly entertaining. Tangled Love. By Kathleen Norris. John Murray. 352 pp. Three persons in love, the romantic geometry as troublesome as ever; but Mrs Norris, in her accomplished manner, works out a happy matrimonial solution without breaking any hearts to reach it. The Dripping Tamarinds. By Cecil Champain Lowis. T. Werner Laurie. Ltd. 254 pp. A highly readable story, if sometimes over-strained. In the critical days of 1918, the lives of an English officer and of the girl most deeply involved in an emotional situation from which the war released him are again connected; and the climax gives her an heroic death and him a life to retrieve.