f the Baltic, in a July that
might have answered to December in the sunny climes she had so recently
left, allowed her account of Swedes and Sweden to be shaded a little _en
noir_ by her own physical discomforts; it is evident, we say, that on
the other hand, our present author, either more favoured by the season,
or less susceptible of its influence, sins equally in the contrary
extreme, and throws a rosy tint over all that he portrays. Though
equally likely to induce into error, it is the pleasanter fault to those
persons who merely read the tour for amusement, without proposing to
follow in the footsteps of the tourist. Your complaining, grumbling
travellers are bores, whether on paper or in a post-chaise; and, truth
to tell, we have noticed in others of the Countess's books a disposition
to look on the dark side of things. But this is not always the case,
and, when she gets on congenial ground, she shines forth as a writer of
a very high order. Witness her Italian tour, and her book upon Turkey
and Syria, with which latter, English readers have recently been made
acquainted through an admirable translation, by the accomplished author
of _Caleb Stukely_. She has her little conceits, and her little fancies;
rather an overweening pride of caste, and contempt for the plebeian
multitude, and an addiction to filling too many pages of her books with
small personal and egotistical details about herself, and her
sensations, and what dresses she wears, and how thin she is, and so on.
But with all her faults, she is unquestionably a very accomplished and
clever writer. Her criticisms on subjects relating to art, and
especially her original and sparkling remarks on painting and
architecture, although qualified by Mr Boas as twaddle, stamp her at
once as a woman of no common order. She has profound and poetical
conceptions of Beauty, and at times a felicity of expression in
presenting the effects of nature and art upon her own mind, that strikes
and startles by its novelty and power. As a delineator of men and
manners, she is remarkable for shrewdness, subtle perception, and
truthfulness that cannot be mistaken. Should our readers doubt our
statements, or haply Mr Boas turn up his nose at the eulogium, we would
simply refer them and him to the last work that has fallen from her pen,
the Letters from the Orient, and bid them open it at the page which
brings them to a Bedouin encampment--a scene described with the vigour
that belon