Page:The Overland Monthly, volume 1, issue 1.djvu/94



sentence perhaps at the close of a serious paragraph—or introduced not impertinently with other matter, as an after-thought. Clever as is the chapter which describes his unavailing attempts to pass the counterfeit coins he gathered in Spain, it is not equal to the satirical audacity of his comparison of the two orders of church architecture— the Grecian and Gothic—and his suggestion that the Gothic "seemed to be designed by both art and nature to facilitate the passing of brass pistareens upon an over credulous sacerdotal order."

¢ Mr. Swift does not impress us with much instruction, for which we are not sorry; nor much that is novel, for which perhaps the reader's familiar knowledge of the lands he visited is alone responsible. He describes a bull fight graphically—but it is not as interesting as his original suggestion that "Spanish revolutions are worked by telegraph," and that the fighting is done around the telegraph office in the Puerta del Sol, at Madrid. He has given us one pretty picture of a Spanish interior, and a street scene by night. But in going from Spain to Syria at the present day, one can touch upon little that shall be novel except in the manner of narration. Indeed, Mr. Swift seems to have been reticent where he might have expatiated; to have been merciful where we did not expect mercy; he takes us into the sherry cellars of M'Kenzie & Co., and permits us to depart without a dissertation on the vintage; he gives an humorous description of his purchases of Ottar of Rose without an account of its manufacture. He is sparing of Scriptural quotations in Jerusalem; and equally sparing of enthusiasm. People seem to have interested him more than places; incidents than scenery; and the little we gain from him about localities is contained in a few graphic touches of character. We fear that his book would hardly answer to illustrate Holy Land lectures for Sabbath Schools, or that his reminiscences of the Holy Sepulchre would inspire a new crusade. Yet he is never apparently skeptical, and if not demonstratively reverent of the Holy places, is at heart too reverent of the opinions of others, oi too listless, for heresy. He humorously confesses to a desire to adopt Mohammedism as a temporary religion, out of respect to the

citizens. He brings into a region of precedents and arbitrary belief, a good deal of originality and independence, and has a kind word of apology—half in fun half in earnest—for even the poor Arabs that swarm about him at the Pyramids and demand bucksheesh under the shadow of the Sphynx. Where Mark Twain works himself into a grotesque and exaggerated passion, Mr. Swift becomes as satirically sympathetic. He does not know of "over three men in America who if they were in the places of these poor fellows would act differently." He is willing to admit that if he were an Arab "no white man should get back to Cairo with a rag on his back." At Damascus, "had a massacre of the Christians taken place, it is doubtful how he would have thrown his influence." Although statements like these are calculated to erect the hair of dogmatic believers, they are the natural effect of any aggressive religious system upon the American mind, trained to the greatest religious liberty.

There is but one fault that we have to find with this pleasant volume. Mr. Swift, like all Californians, desires to be thought inr2pendent and cosmopolitan; yet like all 'Californians, he carries too much of California with him to be entirely free from the provincial taint. He has never altogether severed his connection with San Francisco, and "drags at each remove a lengthening chain." It may be well to note the resemblance between California and Spain; the similarity of the straits of Gibraltar and the Golden Gate; and the treeless hills that remind him so pleasantly of his own local scenery at classic Lime Point and San Pablo; for have not Californians noted the same resemblances in Syria, and indeed wherever they have carried California reminiscences? The rustic habit of detecting likenesses to " brother Dick "or "cousin Jim" in a new acquaintance, is only a more objectionable form of the same instinct. But when Mr. Swift refers jocularly to the Pacific club of San Francisco, with purely local witticisms, we are forced to believe that he is writing more for a very inconsiderable portion of humanity than becomes a cosmopolitan. It may be urged that his work is made of letters written to a local journal; but even if this were an excuse for the original offence,