In Two Volumes.
London and Cambridge: Macmillan & Co.
This is a very _gentlemanly_ book. Whatever excellence of commendation
belongs to the adjective we have Italicized must be awarded to Mr.
Dicey. And it is ill-adapted to the manufactures of most British
tourists who have preceded him. For, to make no mention of the vulgar
buffooneries of Bunn or Grattan, we hold that neither the exalted and
irrepressible prosiness of Dr. Charles Mackay, nor the cleverish
magic-lantern pictures of that good-natured book-maker, Mr. Anthony
Trollope, would be perfectly fitted with this polite addition. It is no
mean praise to say that the word _gentlemanly_ naturally applies itself
to a traveller's work. And it is necessary to allow that the majority of
Americans who have printed their impressions of a scamper over Europe
have fallen as hopelessly below it as a few have risen far above it.
Some word of deeper meaning must characterize the sterling sentences of
"English Traits"; some epithet of more rare and subtile significance is
suggested by those exquisitely painted scenes of foreign life with which
Hawthorne is even now adorning the pages of the "Atlantic.
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