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and a description of its several parts. Here the subject does not readily lend itself to lively description; but, if I have been compelled to be dull, I have done my best to avoid being tedious.

The arrangement then becomes geographical and chronological. My next five chapters are devoted to the Sword in its topical distribution and connection. The first (No. VIII.) begins with the various blade-forms in ancient Egypt, which extended throughout the then civilised world; it ends with showing that the Nile valley gave their present shapes to the 'white arm' of the Dark Continent even in its modern day, and applied to the Sword the name which it still bears in Europe. The second (No. IX.) passes to Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor, lands which manifestly borrowed the weapon from the Egyptians, and handed it on to Assyria, Persia, and India. The arms and armour of the 'great Interamnian Plain' afford material for a third (Chapter X.). Thence, retracing our steps and passing farther westwards, we find manifest derivation and immense improvement of the Egyptian weapon in Greece (Chapter XI.), from which Mycena has lately supplied bronze rapiers perfectly formed as the steels of Bilboa and Toledo. The fifth Chapter (No. XII.) continues the ancient history of the Sword by describing the various blades of progressive Rome, whose wise choice and change of arms enabled her to gain the greatest battles with the least amount of loss. To this I have appended, for geographical and chronological symmetry, in a sixth and last chapter (No. XIII.), a sketch of the Sword among the contemporary Barbarians of the Roman Empire, Dacians, Italians, Iberians, Gauls, Germans, and the British Islands.

RICHARD F. BURTON.

EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS.

'Antiquaries, anthropologists, and men of war, may, from various points of view, find instruction and delight in "The Book of the Sword."-MORNING POST.

Captain Burton's wonderfully erudite and exhaustive "Book of the Sword," which, in most sumptuous form and copiously illustrated, has just been published by Messrs. Chatto and Windus. The superb monograph is a highly valuable contribution to archæological, philological, historical, and technological literature.'— ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS.

'The development of weapons is a curious and interesting study, and Captain Burton has illumined it by a rich variety and wide range of information, gathered both by personal observation and in long careful research.' PALL MALL GAZETTE.

'This sumptuous quarto, luxuriously printed, richly illustrated, and calling in the resources of Arabic, Hebrew, Sanskrit, and even Chinese types. It is full of interest both for amateurs of the sword and for archæologists; carried through to ripeness and stopped short of over-ripeness.'-ST. JAMES'S GAZETTE.

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'Not only study, research, and reflection, but widely-extended travel and the inspection of innumerable specimens of swords and their congeners, were needed for the production of a complete conspectus of the history and literature of the sword; and Captain Burton found it indispensable to the completion of his project that he should not only visit nearly all the armouries of continental Europe, but undertake a fresh voyage to India in quest of sword-lore. Difficulty and danger are, however, words which must have been long since erased from the dictionary of the undaunted scholar and explorer, who, in the earliest days of his military career, passed examinations in eight Oriental languages, and who at present, it is said, is the master of twenty-nine different forms of human speech. . . A work of extraordinary interest, full of abstruse learning, classical, archæological, philological, and technical, with respect to the weapon-the history of which he has so earnestly investigated, and which he knows so well how to wield. "The Book of the Sword" is produced in most luxurious style, and is abundantly illustrated.'-DAILY TELEGRAPH.

'Alike in his treatment of the main subject and in his occasional digressions, there is evidence of the boldness and originality of the views he founds upon independent research, of the vast range of his lore as an anthropologist and a philologist, above all of his want of respect for traditional beliefs or current ideas, theological, ethical, or scientific, if, in his view, they do not accord with fact. But this load of material has been admirably digested and methodised, so that each point which Captain Burton seeks to establish, each inference he draws, is supported by a serried row of evidences.'-SCOTSMAN.

OF THE SWORD, First Part, at a cost of 32s. per copy.

(Signed).