| <The Saturday Review  March 21, 1857>
| <Long Vacation Rambles>
| <Lord Robert Cecil>
| <pb n="272">
| Most of our readers probably have, within the circle of their 
| acquaintance, some dealer in anecdotes, who always ushers 
| in his favourite Joe Miller with a premonitory giggle, 
| apparently from an indistinct feeling ~~ invariably justified 
| by the result ~~ that <reg orig="no one"> no-one </reg> 
| except its fond parent is likely so to honour it.  Some such 
| instinct must have induced the authors of 
| <hi rend="italic"> A Long Vacation Ramble in Norway and 
| Sweden </hi> to introduce themselves to the public with 
| the jocose nomenclature of "X and Y, two Unknown 
| Quantities."  Such an advertisement of the authors' 
| benevolent intention of entertaining the public is, as a 
| matter of tactics, decidedly a mistake, especially when a 
| great show has to be extracted out of scanty resources.  It is 
| an announcement that the book is intended to be a funny 
| book, and its failure or its success must be estimated in 
| reference to that standard.  Lame jokes, which might 
| otherwise have been passed over as the pardonable 
| overflow of spirits in the first transports of release from 
| professional drudgery, become a failure when they are 
| made the primary aim of the composition.  The conscious 
| weakness indicated by the title-page is by no means belied 
| by the character of the book.  From beginning to end, "X 
| and Y" are doggedly and ponderously facetious.  Their 
| ramble embraces the greater part of the coast of Norway up 
| to the North Cape, and the principal towns in Norway and 
| Sweden.  They are indefatigable walkers, and seem never 
| to have been deterred from any expedition by hardship or 
| fatigue; and they add to these qualifications, that one of 
| them is a botanist and the other an ecclesiologist.  They 
| must have seen much that was exquisite in scenery ~~ 
| much that was instructive in national character ~~ much 
| that was curious in nature and art; and they make 
| perfunctory attempts to introduce these necessary 
| ingredients of a book of travels.  But their descriptions of 
| scenery place no picture before the eye ~~ their reflections 
| are models of bathos ~~ and their botany and ecclesiology 
| a mere <p> "beadroll of unbaptized jargon."  </p> But 
| though these outbreaks of seriousness are unquestionably 
| dull, they are gems compared to the weighty mass of 
| manufactured wit in which they are imbedded.  Every 
| reader of <hi rend="italic"> Punch </hi> who is conversant 
| with Mr. Douglas Jerrold's peculiar style, knows well the 
| whole armoury of Brummagem facetiousness to which a 
| hard-pressed jester has recourse.  Sometimes it is mock 
| heroics, or an elaborate parody of Scripture phraseology ~~ 
| sometimes a mere jingle, or the inversion of a sentence by 
| putting the adjective first, is made to pass muster for wit ~~ 
| or, what is still more repulsive, if a young woman occurs in 
| the course of the narrative, she is dealt with in that style of 
| gallant inuendo which sly old bachelors are, or used to be, 
| so fond of indulging in after dinner with a chuckle and a 
| wink at their younger neighbours.  But true wit is of all 
| things the most difficult to sham.  Men may catch the 
| twang and the rhythm of sentiment who have very little real 
| tenderness in their hearts; but no art can feign the keen 
| sense of the ridiculous, or the spontaneous exuberance of 
| genial humour, without one or the other of which 
| facetiousness is as flat as champagne in decanters.  That 
| our readers may judge for themselves of the wit of these 
| Unknown Quantities, we will give two extracts, illustrative 
| of their varying styles:  ~~
| <q> </q>
| This may be termed the mock heroic and jingle style; now 
| for the Scripture style:  ~~
| <q> </q>
| When we turn from the false wit of "X and Y" to the genial 
| and easy flow of Mr. Musgrave's pleasant volumes, we feel 
| as if we were passing into the fresh air from the loaded 
| atmosphere of a ball-room.  Making a slight deduction for 
| the good-humoured garrulity which is the speciality of 
| elderly clergymen, he seems to us the very model of what a 
| modern tourist, who writes not for fame but for circulation, 
| should be.  The qualifications for that character are none of 
| them very lofty, but they are rare in the necessary 
| combination.  It is needless to say that the successful inditer 
| of travels must be a man of observation and information, of 
| quick eye, retentive memory, and untiring limb.  He must 
| be more than this.  He must have a smattering of a variety 
| of tastes, sufficient to maintain himself in each at the 
| highest level to which the generality of his readers ever 
| reach.  His character is not perfect without a little 
| knowledge of agriculture, manufactures, architecture, and 
| painting; but it
| <pb n="273">
| must be only a little knowledge, for great proficients are 
| very apt to cast aside, as not worth telling, precisely that 
| which the uninstructed most need to be told.  He must have 
| an extensive sympathy with all sorts of people, especially 
| with those who wear peculiar old national dresses.  He 
| must be well read in all the more touching parts of the 
| history of the ground over which he has to travel; for names 
| and dates, in an Englishman's eye, add wonderfully to the 
| pathos of a moving tale.  But, above all, in belief and 
| feeling he must flow steadily with the stream.  Nothing 
| mars the reader's enjoyment of light reading like the feeling 
| that the author is insidiously trying to convert him to some 
| view or other in politics or religion.  In all these respects, 
| Mr. Musgrave is a tourist made to order.  His pilgrimage 
| into Dauphine (of which, by the way, Dauphine occupies a 
| most insignificant fraction) leads him into a great variety of 
| scenes and associations; but he seems to have the same 
| ready and easy sympathy, and the same historical 
| familiarity, with all.  The wine-vats of Epernay and the 
| solitudes of the Grande Chartreuse, the renowned silk 
| factories of Lyons and the statues of the obscure village of 
| St. Mihiel, the agricultural system of the valley of the 
| Meuse and the sad historical reminiscences of Varennes, 
| the manufacture of millstones and the relics of Joan of Arc, 
| all excite in him a lively interest, and are made the objects 
| of the same curious, indefatigable, but unpedantic research.  
| And he tells it all with such a winning, simple-minded 
| garrulity ~~ taking you into his confidence, even to the 
| extent of informing you that his daughter is a very 
| extravagant travelling companion ~~ recording with lifelike 
| fidelity the most trivial incidents, even down to the fact of 
| his getting his trousers very dirty ~~ making the most 
| execrable puns in the very fulness of his cordiality ~~ 
| quoting in the most shameless manner from the Latin 
| grammar such exquisite extracts as, <q> </q> ~~ that you 
| feel rather as if you were hearing the yarn of a lively old 
| friend at the club, instead of perusing a literary composition.  
| His reflections are numerous, as is natural in his office and 
| age.  They are not fresh, otherwise they would infringe one 
| of the canons we have laid down above, concerning the 
| introduction of controversial matter; but they are precisely 
| the reflections that, in the present state of opinion, would 
| occur to the mass of tolerably clever educated Englishmen, 
| if they chose to do what they never do choose ~~ take the 
| trouble to reflect.  Therefore, Mr. Musgrave answers the 
| end of all literature in these days ~~ he does not invite the 
| reader to think, but saves him the trouble of thinking by 
| doing it in his stead.  In politics, his views are intensely 
| patriotic ~~ Liberal in theory, and Conservative in the 
| application of that theory.  In religion, he has a decided 
| objection to austerity, and views the monastic life with all 
| the contempt that is natural and becoming in a married 
| clergyman.  Beyond this, he evidently dislikes controversy, 
| values practical work, and has an intense appreciation of 
| ecclesiastical art, both in architecture and music.  The one 
| sin for which he cannot forgive the monks of the Grande 
| Chartreuse is Bruno's prohibition of all musical services.  
| The French people he looks upon with a good-natured 
| feeling of superiority, and speaks of with that patronizing 
| liberality which has become orthodox since the Alliance.  
| He spends some pages in proving that they are not wholly 
| given up to frivolity, and then thinks it necessary to 
| apologize for the apparent partiality which such a bold 
| assertion seems to imply.
| The most interesting part of the book is his description of 
| the Grande Chartreuse, and the account he gives of the silk 
| manufacture at Lyons.  He devotes a good deal of space to 
| a history of the capture of Louis XVI. at Varennes, 
| concerning which he copies out the <hi rend="italic"> 
| proces-verbal </hi> that has been preserved; but 
| <reg orig="no one"> no-one </reg> who is familiar with 
| Lamartine's exquisite picture-drawing in the 
| <hi rend="italic"> Girondins </hi> will have much relish for 
| Mr. Musgrave's documentary <hi rend="italic"> rechauffee. 
| </hi>  His descriptions of the architecture of Rheims and 
| Bourges, and the "Retables" of Dijon, are full of the 
| peculiar merit required by a work such as this.  They are 
| not scientific, like the architect's specifications with which 
| X and Y regale us; but they are popularly written, and they 
| convey to the mind a vivid image of the beauties they 
| portray.  The same may be said of his pictures of scenery, 
| of which we will extract one of the best.  The scene is the 
| Rhone, a little above Lyons:  ~~
| <q> </q>
| One charm there is in Mr. Musgrave's work which is rare in 
| an English book of travels.  The pride and the reserve for 
| which our countrymen are noted make them usually the 
| worst travellers in the world.  It may be that they are 
| ashamed of their French ~~ or that they shrink from 
| intruding ~~ or that they are afraid of falling in with 
| sharpers; but, whatever the cause is, the fact is almost 
| invariable, that, go where he will, an Englishman never 
| opens his lips.  The natural result of his speaking to nobody 
| is that nobody speaks to him.  He travels through the world 
| with closed ears; and consequently, for all purposes of 
| information or self-improvement, he might just as well be 
| travelling in the Great Sahara.  This fact is the only 
| explanation of the very small effect which the enormous 
| locomotion of recent years has had upon our peculiar and 
| insular character.  But Mr. Musgrave is entirely free from 
| this fault.  He talks to everybody and catechises everybody, 
| high and low:  and the mass of heterogeneous gossip which 
| he has accumulated is what gives its principal attraction to 
| one of the most readable "Rambles" that it has ever been 
| our fortune to come across.