The Press. — 1858-08-28 (London, England)

THE PRESS, AUGUST 28, 1858.  were forgotten in his beauty, his fortune, and his splendour.  Felix et puloher et acer Felix et sapiens et nobi:im et geuerosus  Et bi perfriiit cantat bone. There perhaps seemed something divine even in his murder of Agrippina ; if he was an Apollo in beauty, perhaps also the destruction wrought icycivot; SZAitTell might rather awaken a feeling of submissive religious awe than of indignant horror.  Stanford's Paris Guide. New Edition. A Guide to the Channel Islands. By Frank Fether Daily. A Guide to the Cathedrals of England and Wales. By Mackenzie Walcott. London: Stanford.  IN spite of the migratory habits of Englishmen, and of the crowds who fill every watering-place, inland and marine, in this island,—who thread in steamers the narrow friths of Scotland, or saunter over the well-trodden paths of Snowdon or Skiddaw,—there is no country in which the tourist receives so little aid from the guidebooks which profess to direct him as in his native land. To the Lakes, a much more troublesome district than most parts of Switzerland, there is no good itinerary. Scotland fares little better; for Anderson's, of the llighlands, though excellent in parts, is very unequally executed, and is deficient in historic information. Wales is (to speak bull-wise) the only part of England which is satisfactorily described ; Cliffe's " Books of North and South Wales" being among the best of their class, and only requiring a little revision to make them perfect. For Devonshire and Somersetshire, indeed, we have Mr. Murray's handbooks on the regular continental plan, which leave nothing to be desired. But why, we may ask, was his own country the last spot to be illuminated by the care of this modern Greatheart of pilgrims ? The covers of his works have long formed the wished-for "bit of red" in every continental landscape ; they have irradiated up the glaciers of Norway, and cast a roseate reflection on the snows of Mont Blanc. They have even invaded Egypt, and thrown a light on the Pyramids which, till lately, they have denied to Stonehenge:—  lllie primus equis Oriens sittvit anhelis Ast hic sera rubens aceendit lumina vesper.  But they have left the English traveller to the tender mercies of local guides,—and what these are the home tourist knows only too well. At these Little Pedlingtons the publisher in the I ligh-street dare not offend the publican in the Market-place—so the hotels are "all excellent; " he is under a similar disability with reffard to the other branches of commerce—so garbled tea and interpolated pickles arc supplied with impunity by the old-established family grocer, and the varying tariff of donkey-boys and fly-drivers is veiled in a discreet and dangerous silence. Perhaps Lord Fitz-Runymede, the neighbouring potentate, has in his armoury a Birnam walkingstick which perthrmed the journey to Dunsinane, or some of the dorsal vertebrae of Richard lll.,—that fact cannot be concealed ; but the potentate does not like gaping visitors, and locks them out most of the week,—so, for all the guidebook tells, you may go sixteen miles on a " wrong day," and return ungratified by a sight of these curiosities. The writers who are silent on these matters, and on the times of steamers and coaches, arc profusely eloquent on' the merits of local heroes. The inscription on the town pump (erected by a venerated churchwarden) is copied at length in small capitals, and an equally grandiloquent paragraph informs you how Madam Blaize placed in the reading-room a votive clock, after being cured by the local Jordan of gout which had resisted all the influences of the Abanas and Pharphars of Germany. Terrible is this twaddle when you only want to know the shortest road to Evesham, Tewkesbury, or Bannockburn, and to be honestly told whether there is anything to see when you get there ! Such being the only competitors, Mr. Murray, had he come forward earlier, might have preoccupied the field against all after invaders, and have done . for all what he has done for only two of our cowl