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MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE. 



Excursions in Switzerland, By J. F. COOPER, author of The Spy, 

 Pilot, &c. 2 vols. 8vo. Bentley. 



No people of Europe are more restless or more dearly love the sight of other 

 countries than the English. Soon as the summer fairly sets in flocks of these 

 sight-hunters rush to the out-ports and pour their living flood on the conti- 

 nent with a regularity not less remarkable than the periodical visits of the mi- 

 gratory birds. Not even the most retired nook of middle and southern Europe 

 is free from the curious eyes of our countrymen. A few paltry pounds suffice 

 to waft the tourist up the Rhine, and the facilities of steam communication 

 convey him, by way of Mayence, into Switzerland in so short a time that a 

 visit to the land of lakes and glaciers becomes as easy and inexpensive as a 

 trip to the northern lakes. That this extension of national intercourse has 

 been, in some sense, a benefit to all parties we are willing to believe ; but the 

 attendant disadvantages have been in some instances so great as to make it ex- 

 tremely doubtful whether or not the evil is balanced by the good. We are 

 not disposed to quarrel with the increase of wealth resulting from an inter- 

 course with wealthy foreigners, because it is necessarily accompanied by the 

 adoption of less simple manners ; but we cannot congratulate our continental 

 brethren, and the rural population more particularly, on a very sad moral 

 change which every intelligent observer acquainted with the continent for the 

 last twenty years will agree with us in saying has taken place wherever the 

 English have sojourned, and that too so regularly as to mark with a painful 

 accuracy the track of their journey ings. With our countrymen rests the fault, 

 and a heavy one it is, of tainting the morals of the simple and happy peasantry 

 of France and Switzerland, by the example of conduct which they would blush 

 to exhibit to their countrymen. We speak not of the literary or scientific men 

 who travel with a definite object in view, to ascertain the state of foreign 

 science, or to investigate the natural phenomena of countries, we speak not 

 of fathers of families who usefully and economically pass the summer months 

 with their beloved circle in the retirement of a Swiss valley, we speak not 

 of the ardent lover of nature and the true observer of life and manners, who 

 assumes the incognito, travels alone and on foot, mingles with the people, 

 and rejoices in the privilege of seeing their rude but single-hearted and charac- 

 teristic manners ; we allude to that large class of English tourists to whom 

 the leisure from a laborious occupation legislative, legal, or commercial, 

 matters not to whom, we say, such leisure brings no repose, but rather a 

 bustling eagerness for an expensive and dissolute holiday-keeping. Travelling 

 with such impatient speed as the quality of the cattle and the obstinate dispo- 

 sition of a native postillion will allow, making a permanent stay only in those 

 populous town where an assemblage of curiosities marked in Mr. Leigh's 

 rubbishing " Itineraries " collects a crowd of gapers of the same stamp as 

 themselves, having the same associations, loving the same pleasures, and there- 

 fore successfully claiming their society and fellowship, they carry all the vices 

 and prejudices peculiar to our country, rife and rank, into the provincial towns 

 of the continent ; first shock the simple natives by their coarseness and mo- 

 roseness, next seduce them with their purses, and lastly, by their example, 

 work on the imitative propensities of human nature, and permanently lower 

 their standard of morality. Thus baneful, we regret to say, is the moral in- 

 fluence of a large class of English tourists, who, with a disgraceful ignorance 

 of the resources which the father-land supplies to a legitimate love of enquiry, 

 yearly rush to the continent, and show a want of acquaintance with men and 



