New-York tribune., 1920-10-17

stall their criticism by admitting that
Cannan, Vachell, Swinnerton and other
lesser luminaries who shone in the
spring constellation are not mentioned
in our narrative. In the camping
ground of single page some tents Of
our caravan of novelsts must be miss
ing.
We set foot on British soil at Corn
wall. The English Channel counties
have produced, and are bringing forth,
novelists of tenacious native oak. In
no part of rural Great Britain do we
find more men and women who dwell by
choice among the people whom they
study and reproduce in the printed
word. Cornwall and Devon are a nov
elist's kingdom
Few Travel Books
And now, with our feet on English
soil, for slight gesture toward an
other field of writer's, those who give
the scenery and the physical atmos-
phero Of England, at times with a
slight drenching of color from that
other subtle atmosphere Of local hu-
man qualities. The year has not been
rich in books of travel, for any part
of the world. The war was q disturber
in the realm Of the traveller However,
rs types we select three readable and
reliable books that, taken as united
+rio do t.
physical background for our little
story.
London does not come in the open
ing stages of our itinerary, but the
great city is to Americans so much a
synonym for England that we begin
by opening the pages OF Louise Closer
Hale's An Americans London (Har-
per's) in taking up our three back
ground books. This Is wade mecum
Of new order. written in a chatty,
breezy, Yankee way.
One finds himself slipping into a
Piccadilly, a Strand and an Oxford
Street transformed By the war into ave-
nues pulsing with a strange new Vi
tality. Here is a book that reflects
closely, with cleverly executed pic
lures, the physical effects of the me
trorolis on q visitor from overseas
And yet there are passages in this
confidential Interpretation that gather
up and imprison in words something of
the majesty Of the empire and a pom
lo C -
gloAmer.can joint aspiration and
memories.
Mrs. Hale sets a fresh note tinglng
when She asserts that when she is "in
an ancient building Of an older civil-
zation than ours there always recurs
the picture of our open plains, our
furthest mountains and tall pines of
the Northwest. 1t came insistently and
comfortingly, as though the early
makers of the Abbey could more un-
derstandngly embrace our uniformed
new nation than can these exquisite
peoples of later years"
English Countrysides
DR.. Leighton Parks, speakinp
through the medium of letters written
from England by mythical, but we
suspect authentic or ambassadorial
John and Ruth, gives in English Ways
and By Ways CScribncr's) the color Of
the countrysidcs of England He in
vites his reader to discover "what this
little book contains.' Well, we have
been happy discoverers, for his chap
ters are imbued with the spirit. the
soul of England, freed of the trap
pings Of city investment. Time and
again in glancing over his passages
we como upon sentences that remind
rs in their mood Of similar lines In
certain essays by A. c. Benson and
Belloc. 1t Is the horizon Of the hinter-
region of old things that glimmers in
these spontaneous tributes to an
ancient worth.
In an automobile that traversed the
historic North Road the travellers saw
the rural England that, while it has
changed superhcially is still the Eng
land Of Fielding Squire Weston can
stlll be found in certain countries; in
deed. Dogberry is not unknown in re
mote villages" And there are swift
passing views of stately cathedrals, OF
shimmerlng streams, OF placid towns
III English Ways and By-Ways One
wins from it sense of the passionate
love of all honest Englishmen for their
home acres. "The English carry with
them the smell of the newly turned
earth to the dcsolate, sun baked plains
of India and the scent of the roses tc
the SHOWS of Hudson's Bay
When the tourists of DR.. Parks's
book reached Shropshire and Words
worth's Sylvan Wye, they impinged
upon the province of A. G. Bradley s
The Book Of the Severn (Dodd
Mead & Coz. The historian of Canada
displays in this remarkably sympa-
thetic story of an English river those
splendid qualities Of kinship with man
and nature that have made his writ
ings a delight to all men who know
and appreciate beautiful prose welded
to an accurate presentation of his
torical fact.
Down TO the Sea
Bradley goes up into the misty hills
OF the Welsh frontier and then fol-