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NOTICES OF BOOKS. 415
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
... Maitre Jpierre. Par Edmond About. A ...
M . About is one of the writers of wholesome novels ; and < l Maitre Pierre" is in some sort a novelbeing an idealized account
, of the Landes of the Gironde , with a romantic story running * through the whole and holding it tog-ether . Those who have read the
author's " Tolla , a Tale of Modern Rome , " will be able to judge how lie can combine a very good novelette with a vast deal of information
about the politics _, social condition _, and future prospects , of the Eternal City . In " Maitre Pierre " the thread of the story is much slighter
and the practical part brought much niore prominently forward ; no one would care to read it who did not wish to learn what is going on
towards the improvement of the Landes , while " Tolla " was a very fair story in itself ; and one who had read the " Question _JRomaine "
might be free to follow the story only without any of that perplexing feeling that he was expected to learn something , which is the
grievance more or less in all these novels with a definite aim and direct moral . The instructive novel is , in general , somewhat dull ;
the tale is sacrificed to a weak setting forward of the truth to be enforced . The arguments want cogency , the plot wants
completeness , the incidents want vivacity , and the writer is tempted to relieve himself from absolute dullness and tickle the palate of his
readers by turning on the tap of melodrama too strongly , especially towards the end . M . About is above all this : his work deserves
reading both because it is very desirable that we should know what a great deal is being done in France towards agricultural
improvement , and also because it is so utterly unlike anything that an Englishman would have been likely to put forth as the record of a
three days' sojourn in a new land whose peculiar features he was very interested in investigating .
A French book of travels is still a thing sui generis ; not but what ¦ we have been ( ever since " Eothen" ) getting more and more unlike
the dry methodical abstracts of diaries which used to satisfy our fathers . We have not yet , however , gone to the length of
embodying two private histories , a long dinner with the village mayor ( iven .. full length ) and a mass of details of village life and
character g in a book which is to tell the Parisians what they are doing to drain , the water off the Landes and make the sand there grow
something better than furze and rushes . The Parisians must be amused , it seemseven when their interest is being awakened in _jmblic
works of , immense importance . Even wlien perfectly _seriotis they look down with a good-natured smile on " affaires cle province "
Nowhere , indeed , is the contrast between the two nations more strikingly shown than in the style in which Englishmen and
Frenchmen in general speak of their respective capitals . With us London is a good dealbut it is certainly not everything ; some civic matters
are never mentioned , without a smile or a sneer ; to be a mere Londoner is not particularly creditableto be a cockney is a sort of
, reproach . But Paris is France : " what they will think there , " is
eagerly inquired from one end of the land to the other , " what they
Notices Of Books. 415
NOTICES OF BOOKS . 415
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Feb. 1, 1862, page 415, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01021862/page/55/
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