AMONG THE BOOKS.

Otago Witness, Issue 953, 25 April 1889, Page 37

AMONG THE BOOKS.

THBOU GH HOLLAND AND* GERMAN T WITH A LEARNED GUIDE. k By J. P. Mahafpy and J. E. Eogbbs.

Professor MahafEy is a very erudite person-. He, is one of our best Hellenists* and has written great, text books oh all' sorts of Greek lore v He has lately been touring in the lands of the Dutch and the Germans, asid took his learning and a facile-pencilled friend, Mr J. E. Rogers, with him. The result of this expedition is the present book, adorned.'.'with over four-score illustrations. But the pro- j fessor is 1 a great deal more than learned. £p. be merely learned 1 is .worse than useless. The'man who has .all the lore of the ancients ah'djth,e moderns in his brain,' andyet is able , to divulge none of it, is of less advantage to his fellow men than the smart carpenter whn invents a new beetje-trao. N — ""-.»■ - taMte supre^r • ' " ' ". I ',-+* an of fmpartlng his ejudi,*v«. .pleasantly and humorously, and he is a delightful travelling companion,- and if ,he Would not ru;n. his' head against the singularly false notion- that everybody who takea , vp 1 an Ephemeral Volume of Mprestidnsrde jj«#«|d r&'cW, fluently, and at sight,' German verse and truncated Latin inscriptions,, he would be" Variety more Charming, translate, professor — to many of us your German and Latin is . all , your own delightful Greek; to others it is an aggravating call upon their faculties. In the first c'bapter We are satirically told that ib selitis the glory of fch. 1 nineteenth centnry io have discovecc-i<{ that evieu iha enjoyment of beauty must not bu obvious; there must be obscurities and complications in anything that is truly beautiful in and' for itself ! If you want real poetry go to Robert Browning, and take care to avoid .what he has written easily and fluently ; if you want real music you must-go to Wagner and select those works where he 1 carefully avoids staying in one key for more than one bar. And so it" is if you desire, to delight the eye with real beauty. You must not .pursue the vulgar and obvious track of; the Rhine and (Switzerland; you must not be fascinated by crude peaks "of snow and boundless wastes of ice ; you must go and see what to the' vulgar herd appears dull and sleepy, or dirty and confused, -and there- you -must detect • hidden delicacies of an sdsthefcic beauty far beyond the ordinary loveliness recognised by any common person. Nevertheless he has taken this passage seriously himself. It is the out-of-the-way, the quaint, the not obviously interesting that he has sought— old architectural oddities and curious bits of little known good domestic building, forgotten scraps of historic interest, overlooked inscriptions. His itinerary includes Dordrecht, Leiden, Haarlem, the Zuider Zee shores, and Descartes' place of exile ; then on to Brunswick, with Helinstedt Hildesheim, Malburg, Fulda, and away t'. the Baltic, Wismar, Luneberg, and Hamburg. Going down the Thames, we wished he would leave Mr Vicate Cole and art criticism alone ; but this is good : — The Dutch sea-pieces with' flying clouds and rough waves came up vividly before the mind's eye ; and, by the way, it ought to be remarked that on the wide but shallow surfaces of these estuaries there is a short; choppy sea, which, when accurately painted by the local masters, looks 'quite" conventional to us who live beside a deep ocean, whereas it is true to Nature.

Our authoris very, hard on German 'varsitystudents — a. " beery^ swollen, criminal-look-ing set of people." He thinks the English sports and pastimes better training for men than the 1 duelling ground and gymnasium. Over Hamburg he waxes eloquent. It is "by far the most beautifuljind agreeable town in Germany." ' „, There.ia everywhere an air of gaiety and pros* perity about the people, as well as a tendency to adopt English ways and treat .English prejudices with kindness^— English manners with respect. We quite agree 1 with him.'- Hamburg 1 deased to be a' free port on October. 14, 1888. The Hanseaft'c' League, formed in 1219J is no more. Our last visit to Hamburg was a midsummer cruise in a big Schooner yacht. Why do not English yacht 1 owners ofteiier thus delightfully vary the monotonous two months' coasting- . from - Dunkerque to Plymouth"? On the mammoth dulness and vulgarity of new 'Berlin, our author is not too severe. Some of the snialier scraps of illustration are " distinctly precious."— Land and Water.