10 OCTOBER 1891, Page 18

We would call attention to the very lengthy but very

interesting paper (p. 494) headed "The Levant of To- Day." It gives, and is intended to give, an account only of the superficial changes which have occurred in the Levant ; but it is written by a scholar who has made Palestine and its people the study of his life, and will be found full to repletion of new matter. We question if any one in England has hitherto noticed the curious develop- ment of Turkish energy in Syria; the conversion of Jerusalem, into a Jewish city, the extinction of all the great families of the Lebanon who so deeply interested Lord Beaconsfield, and were described in " Tancred," or, most amazing of all, the rapid depopulation produced by the steady emigration from "the Mountain" to Australia and the United States. If that great tidal movement of men across the Atlantic, the greatest move- ment of modern history, is really drawing away the strength of the Nearer East, the progress of change has gone even farther than the world has believed. Imagine a village from the Lebanon settled and voting in Minneso‘a!