THE PILGRIMAGE TO SANTIAGO

Mullins' travelogue of the old pilgrim routes to the shrine of St. James of Compostela, patron saint of Spain and first cousin to Jesus Christ, is larded with nostalgia for a bygone age of ""moral urgency"" and ""the creative strength of crude blind faith""; snatches of the history of Christianity in Western Europe; notes on the architecture of abbeys, churches, cathedrals, cloisters and convents; descriptions of a landscape dotted with sleepy villages and pretty towns and encounters with their simple inhabitants; personal accounts of picnics, parties and pelota matches the author and his wife enjoyed -- not to mention reports of a few aches and blisters. This potpourri has a particularly British genteel middle-cerebral ambience but lacks anything more to disengage the American traveler from his armchair.