IN his preface, Mr. Le Gallienne is modest enough to say that this volume is not a guide-book. And yet it is. Those who follow him while he rambles about Paris must know more of that delectable city than others not so fortunate as to traipse along. To move with a poet down those old, haunted streets-ah! What a privilege it will be to thousands of us; for we shall be bound to find vistas we may have missed before. Mr. Le Gallienne's love of Paris is well known. It has come to be almost a sensational "affair" of the spirit which neither the loveliest city in the world nor the dreaming poet has ever wished to conceal. There is an enchantment in the very name by which the world calls the city on the Seine, and no one can utter it without a glow, an ecstasy. The perfume and the sweetness of it are captured in these beautiful, leisurely pages; but likewise one will find here an old and almost forgotten city, full of vigor and strength, full of a humanity and a romantic history that warm the heart and cause the blood to run faster. I venture to say that no Frenchman could be more passionately fond of Paris than the English author of this living book; for to him, Paris is not, as it is to so many thoughtless visitors, merely a "light woman." To him it is-Home.
