But the parts of
traveler and manual are inverted: whereas you take your _Murray_ or
_Baedeker_ in your hand and carry it whither you list, Mr. Hare takes
you by the hand, leads you in the way you should go, makes you pause the
requisite time before the things you are to look at, points to every
view, lets you miss no effect, does not force his own opinions upon you,
except now and then when he loses his temper a little on the debatable
ground between religion and politics, repeats that quotation you are
vainly trying to recall, or delights you by the beauty and aptness of a
new one. He gives to a course of systematic sight-seeing the freedom and
variety of a ramble with a cultivated and sympathetic companion. We
would not be ungrateful to that inestimable impersonality, Murray, for
all are his debtors, even Mr. Hare for the plan of his books; but,
remembering how, with the latest edition in hand, we have panted up four
or more flights of stairs in a Roman or Venetian palace in search of a
picture removed years before, we are not sorry to find him here taken to
task for leaving uncorrected statements which had ceased to be true.
Moreover, Murray is no guide in matters of art; his authorities are
often captains of the British Philistines; while Mr. Hare generally
gives all that has been said by competent judges, sometimes
imperturbably recording two conflicting opinions, and leaving the reader
to decide. The range of quotation is indeed remarkable, from Dean Milman
to Ouida, including many writers too little known in this country, such
as Burckhardt, Ampere and Street.
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