absolute fidelity of detail. 'Les poetes anciens,' he says, 'ont le gout
de la precision et de la fidelite: ils n'imaginent guere de paysages en
l'air,' and with this view he visited every place in Italy and Sicily
that Virgil has mentioned. Sometimes, it is true, modern civilisation,
or modern barbarism, has completely altered the aspect of the scene; the
'desolate shore of Drepanum,' for instance ('Drepani illaetabilis ora')
is now covered with thriving manufactories and stucco villas, and the
'bird-haunted forest' through which the Tiber flowed into the sea has
long ago disappeared. Still, on the whole, the general character of the
Italian landscape is unchanged, and M. Boissier's researches show very
clearly how personal and how vivid were Virgil's impressions of nature.
The subject is, of course, a most interesting one, and those who love to
make pilgrimages without stirring from home cannot do better than spend
three shillings on the French Academician's Promenades Archeologiques.

Nouvelles Promenades Archeologiques, Horace et Virgile. By Gaston
Boissier. (Hachette.)




BERANGER IN ENGLAND


(Pall Mall Gazette, April 21, 1886.)

A philosophic politician once remarked that the best possible form of
government is an absolute monarchy tempered by street ballads. Without
at all agreeing with this aphorism we still cannot but regret that the
new democracy does not use poetry as a means for the expression of