William has consulted Beladzori and Ibn Khaldun, and among moderns the works of Weil, Caussin de Percival, and H. von Kremer. The use he has made of his authorities, readers of the Life of Mahomet will not require to be told is extremely judicious. From a vast mass of traditions, often partaking more of the nature of legends than of history, he has worked out a clear and consistent story. Sir William is not what is usually called a philosophical historian, and the work before us he has styled simply Annals; but on every page it bears ample evidence of an admirably philosophical spirit, and of great critical acumen. At the same time, it does what many volumes bearing a more pretentious title often fail to do. It gives the reader clear and definite impressions and vivid conceptions of the men and stirring events described in its pages. The opening passages are remarkably striking, and, though one fears lest there should be a falling off in interest or pictorial effect, the fear is never realized. The attention is sustained from the beginning to the end with unflagging interest. To say that the book is brilliant might convey a false idea. There is no striving after effect, and no artificial rhetoric about it. Its style is as simple and artless as possible, and consequently as effective. Rare, indeed, is it that a writer trusts so much to the simple narration of his facts, and so little to rhetorical and literary artifice as Sir William has here done, for the effect to be produced on the mind of his readers. The first eight chapters are devoted to the revolt among the Arabian tribes and its suppression under Abu Bekr, than whom a more suitable successor to Mahomet could not have been found, and of whom, in the thirteenth chapter, we have a remarkably fair and discriminating estimate. 'The secret of his strength,' it is well said, 'was faith in Mahomet. He would say: "Call me not the Caliph of the Lord: I am but the Caliph of the Prophet of the Lord." The question with him ever was, What did Mahomet command? or, What now should he have done? From this he never swerved one hair's-breadth. And so it was that he crushed apostacy, and laid secure the foundations of Islam. His reign was short, but, after Mahomet himself, there is no one to whom the Faith is more beholden.' Not without significance, too, are the following remarks: Had Mahomet been from the first a conscious impostor, he never could have won the faith and friendship of a man who was not only sagacious and wise, but simple and sincere. Abu Bekr had no thought of personal aggrandisement. Endowed with sovereign and irresponsible power, he used it simply for the interests of Islam and the people's good. He was too shrewd to be himself deceived, and too honest himself to act the part of a deceiver.' The wonderful story of Arabian conquest, which is ascribed to the two motives-'the love of rapine and the lust of spoil,' is told by Sir William with a masterly hand. We cannot here follow it, nor can we refer to the points in which Sir William differs from others. All we can do is to express our preference for the author of the Life of Mahomet for our guide, and to refer the reader to his fascinating pages. To our mind the story which is here told is more wonderful and more

profoundly interesting than any in the Arabian Nights, for the simple reason that we are here told what men actually thought and did, and not what they merely imagined.

The Cities of Egypt. By REGINALD STUART POOLE. London: Smith, Elder, & Co. 1882.

The articles of which this volume is a reprint were originally written, and are now republished, for the purpose of awakening a deeper and more intelligent interest in Egyptian research. After a charmingly-written Introduction, descriptive of the natural features of the country, the author proceeds to give an account of the various cities of Egypt which are mentioned in the Bible. As might be expected, the book, while full of learning and careful research, is full also of living interest. In fact, having once opened it, it is difficult to lay it down. The cities dealt with are, among others, Memphis, Nanes, On, Thebes, Pithom, Migdol, Alexandria. We have also interesting accounts of Goshen and Sin. The materials for a history or description of these places as they once were are scanty, or at least hidden beneath vast mounds of earth, but of so much of them as is known Mr. Poole has made a wise and ample use. The difficulties which are continually cropping up in the course of his narrative are stated with great fairness, and the author is by no means wedded to theories. Some of those which have been advanced by Egyptologists of considerable authority he rejects; as, e.g., Dr. Brugsch's theory that Pe-tum or Tekut is the Succoth of the Bible, and M. Chabas's identification of the Aperiu with the HebThe idea that the Israelites fled from Egypt, not across the Red Sea, but along the narrow and treacherous way between Lake Serbonis and the Mediterranean, an idea first suggested by Schleiden, and more recently advocated by Brugsch, is also rejected. On the other hand, it seems to us that the invasion of the Shepherds is placed by Mr. Poole too late. As of mportance to students, whether of history or of the Bible, the chapters on Memphis, Goshen, Sin, and Migdol may be particularly referred to. Small and unpretending as the volume is, it is replete with valuable information, and ought to do much towards awakening and extending popular interest in Egyptian studies.

rews.

By JOHN

1882.

The Russian Empire: Historical and Descriptive. GEDDIE, F.R.S.E. London: T. Nelson & Sons. After Mr. Wallace's admirable and apparently exhaustive book on Russia, we might have supposed that for another on the same subject there Mr. Geddie has shown that there is. His book is at once historical and descriptive. Beginning with the planting of the first germs of Russian power in the forests of Novgorod, he has written an excellent account of the growth and agglomeration of the vast fabric of the Russian Empire, and at the same time given a brief and not unfrequently highly

was no room.

picturesque description of the various provinces and peoples as they were successively added to the imperial crown. The result is an extremely interesting volume. Here and there, owing partly to the limits within which he was obliged to confine himself, and partly to the vastness and intricacy of the subject with which he deals, Mr. Geddie's narrative is less full than we could desire. Still, as he always writes with a thoroughly well informed mind, and with admirable clearness, the reader is able to form a pretty full and accurate conception both of the past and present condition of Russia, and of the dangers to which it is exposed.

Memorials of the Life and Ministry of Thomas Main, D.D. By

his life was

Soon told. father was of his education.

his Widow. Edinburgh: Macniven and Wallace, 1883. To the somewhat limited circle of readers to which it appeals, this memorial volume will be very acceptable. Outside his own religious denomination, Dr. Main seems to have been scarcely known; but having held the office of Moderator of the Free Church of Scotland, we must suppose, as indeed the volume before us fully attests, that in the Church to which he belonged, he was both well known and highly esteemed. Though active, undistinguished by any remarkable event. The story of it is He was born in January, 1816, at Slamannan, where his parish schoolmaster, and from whom he received the rudiments When thirteen he attended the University of Glasgow, and seems to have been known for his industry and piety. Licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Glasgow, in October, 1838, in the following year he became minister of the High Church, Kilmarnock. In the controversy which led to the Disruption he took an active, and, in fact, a leading part, and did considerable service in the cause of the Free Church movement, both in Kilmarnock and elsewhere. In 1850 he married Williamina, youngest daughter of John Cunninghame of Craigends, and seven years afterwards became colleague and successor to Dr. Grey, minister of Free St. Mary's, Edinburgh. His public work seems to have been mostly in connection with the Free Church, and was occasionally interrupted by trip to London or the Continent. Returning from the Continent in 1880, in order to prepare for his duties as Moderator of the Free Church Assembly, he heard Dean Stanley preach in St. Margaret's, Westminster. Dr. Main's comment on leaving the church was, much disappointed, little memorable in his sermon, and no gospel.' His of the Moderator's chair was not without difficulty, and not without credit to himself. The Memorials of the Life' are written with considerable skill and taste.

a

there

was

occupancy

Dr. Main seems to have been an earnest and

energetic minister, strongly attached to the Free Church, but tolerant and desirous of being fair to others. The sermons which occupy about half of

the volume are strictly evangelical; some of them are highly doctrinal, and

a little tedious. By those for whom they are intended, and as memorials of the ministry of one whom many learned to esteem and love, they will be highly appreciated.

Allessandro Manzoni. Reminiscenze di CESARE CANTU. Milan: Treves Brothers, 1883.

This book bears the impress of having been written by degrees; as the author himself says, 'during the course of thirty years,' in which scarcely a day passed that he did not add or erase some lines.' The first volume treats of almost every subjects except Manzoni himself; it is crowded with the names and opinions of all the eminent men with whom Manzoni came into contact, with many quotations from their letters, and with abundant notes, and it is only in the second and last volume that we find a clear, very detailed, and very interesting picture of the poet himself, in the two chapters, the family' and 'the man.' But wherever one dips into the work there is something of interest. An index of names in addition to the index of subjects would have made reference to the book easier.

By

The Great Pyramid, Observatory, Tomb, and Temple. London: Chatto & Windus,

RICHARD A. PROCTOR.
1883.

The reputation so justly enjoyed by Mr. Proctor for wide learning, especially in astronomy, makes us regret, for the sake of his character for wisdom, that he should have hastily-it must have been hastily-written and published this little book. Besides the knowledge of astronomy which it of course displays, and the exhibition of which is very interesting, it appears to us to possess two merits-viz., that of recognising to some extent the cosmological features of the building of which it treats, and that it sometimes professes a certain amount of diffidence in putting forward its main hypothesis. That hypothesis is what the author calls the astrological, and is, briefly stated and in more correct technical language than he employs, that all the pyramids in general, and the Great Pyramid of Cheops in particular, were designed to be the tombs of their builders, but that during the lifetime of each builder his pyramid was only raised to a certain height, so as to form a very large square plane, which in the case of the Great Pyramid was at the level of the floor of the King's Chamber; that the object of this square plane was to afford a space upon which the Natus of the builder should be inscribed in a vast angular scheme, and from which the transits over the various points of the nativity should be observed; and that, in the case of the Great Pyramid, the Grand Gallery, a feature which was peculiar to it, was a kind of telescope to facilitate observations of the particular point called in astrology the Medium Cœli, or Midheaven. It may be observed that neither the Great Pyramid itself,

nor anything known of its history, affords the slightest ground for any such idea. There is no reason for supposing that the alleged plane ever existed at any time during its construction—and, indeed, it can never have done so precisely, since the walls of the so-called King's Chamber rest upon a level other than that of its floor, while all the authorities are unanimous in stating that Cheops and the other pyramid-builders built pyramids and not platforms. The telescope theory of the Grand Gallery might be equally or better applied to the door of any dining-room or other apartment, since, if it be answered that they have a room beyond them, of which they are obviously designed to be the entrance, the Grand Gallery has the King's Chamber, with its ante-room-the most important part of the pyramid-beyond it, to which it is the approach. That these two chambers, and the whole upper part of the building-its most important parts and features; in fact, its raison d'être- were not built by Cheops, but after his death by his successors, seems to us simply incredible.

Nor is there the

slightest suggestion of a reason why, if all the pyramids, as well as the Great Pyramid, were first of all built as stone platforms, on which to draw the diagrams of Radices, none of the others have got the alleged gigantic telescopic tunnel for observing the M.C.

That the Great Pyramid was a tomb, Mr. Proctor brings forward no argument to prove, except that some people have thought so, and that it has an external resemblance to buildings which were tombs. That somebody has thought so, is true of any theory-geocentricism in astronomy, for instance, or the idea that the earth is a plane; to the resemblance, it is as though one argued that the City Temple is a railway-station, because it possesses some features,

and, as

such

as walls and a roof, in common with the London termini. That

the Great Pyramid was a tomb appears to us to the last degree improbable, for several reasons, one of which is that Cheops is recorded to have been buried in another place, near at hand, in a grave of which the peculiar description (a subterranean island surrounded by the waters of the Nile') was a puzzle to the learned, until it was discovered some while ago, where any one can now go and see it who likes. In fact, it seems to us that the Great Pyramid possesses a feature probably designed specially to guard posterity against the idea that any interment had ever taken place in it; this is the subterranean chamber corresponding to the sepulchral chamber of the other pyramids, which has been left unfinished, with the rock of the floor rough to this day, as if on purpose to show, as indeed it does show, that it never has been or could have been used.

for such a

The reason

precaution is not far to seek, for the building is known to have been built under the influence of Shemitic religious ideas, and any student of Judaism knows the excessive horror with which any contact of a sacred or object with a grave was regarded, and the excessive precautions

building

in the way of substructures, etc., which were taken at Jerusalem to avoid the possibility of such a thing. By the way, Mr. Proctor recognises the