book is made up of three groups, studies of Spain, of London and of
certain coasts, chiefly Cornish. For several reasons I found the last
interested me most. There is entertainment in watching Mr. SYMONS,
so essentially a dweller in cities, discovering the open air like
an explorer. You know already his mastery of delicate and sensitive
words; many of these pages catch with exquisite skill the subtle charm
of the country between land and wave, as it would present itself to a
receptive summer visitor rather than the returned native. Mr. SYMONS'
similes are essentially urban; the sea (to take an example at random)
has for him "something of the colour of absinthe." In fine, though he
can and does get into his pages much of the exhilaration of a tramp
over heathery cliffs "smelling of honey and sea wind," one retains
throughout a not unpleasing consciousness of Paddington. I have left
myself too little space to deal adequately with other papers, among
which I was delighted to find again that called "Dieppe 1895," long
remembered from _The Savoy_ (though here, of course, lacking the
interpretation of the BEARDSLEY drawings). Certainly a book to read
at leisure and to keep "for further reference," perhaps in a future
when travel studies may again become of more than merely sentimental
interest.

* * * * *

Sir ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, on the strength of _Danger! and Other Stories_
(MURRAY), may claim a place among the prophets who were not accepted
by their own country. "Danger!"--written some eighteen months before
the outbreak of war--foretells the horrors of the unrestricted use of
the submarine. In those days Sir ARTHUR could get no one to listen to
him, because "in some unfortunate way subjects of national welfare are
in this country continually subordinated to party politics." Possibly