title, at all events, _A Nook in the Appennines,
or a Summer Beneath the Chestnuts_, by Leader Scott, author of "The
Painter's Ordeal," &c., &c. With twenty-seven Illustrations, chiefly
from Original Sketches (C. Kegan Paul & Co.), and the book is pleasant
too. Finding the heat at Florence, on the 11th of June--not _last_
June--too much for them, it being 96 deg. in the shade, an English family
flee to a nook in the mountains, where an old villa has been got ready
for them; and there they sit, "at the receipt of coolness," like Lamb's
"gentle giantess," till September. The villa on the Apennines is 2220
feet above the level of the sea, and the thermometer stands only at 70 deg.
in the open air. Now 70 deg. is ordinary agreeable summer heat for England;
though it is many degrees higher than anything we have seen (up to the
middle of July) in England this dreadful year. The illustrations are
helpful, and, without being obtrusively antiquarian, have most of them a
retrospective or historical interest, as well as the more obvious one
which is common to illustrations. The forty short chapters of which the
book consists are filled with sketches of the life our English friends
lived in the mountain nook, and of the manners and daily lives of the
peasantry by whom they were surrounded--and these will be more
instructive to a reader who knows a little about the Etruscans than to
one who knows nothing of them. The interest of the narrative is never
strong, but it is strong enough to carry the attention equably forward
to the end, and there is no affectation; but it is a great mistake, and
an unkindness to the reader, to omit, in a case of this sort, giving a
sufficiently full, complete, and picturesque account of the travelling
party themselves. We ought to be told how many there were, their ages,
relationships, &c., and something of their previous travelling
experience, if any.

* * * * *

Of course it is a good thing when a first-rate French, German, or
Scandinavian novel is translated into English, and this is pretty sure
to happen, when it does happen, through the agency of high-class
publishers. But it is a very different thing when translations of
foreign novels are thrown at our heads by the score, by writers or
publishers whose chief object is to pander to certain questionable
tastes. We fear that this evil is upon us, or not far off. But a word of
pleasant, if qualified, welcome is due to