* * * * A period of about a century
and a half covered Portuguese activities in. Abyssinia, and there is no doubt that their intervention during the critical years of the sixteenth century saved Abyssinia from being Islamized. To his earlier volumes Mr. C. F. Rey has now added The Romance of the Portuguese in Abyssinia (Witherby, 18s.), which covers this fascinating period. He tells his intricate story with such simple directness, that we have no difficulty in following the change in Portu- guese sentiment, which gradually substituted an ecclesiastical for a political influence. The chivalry of da Gama, whose mission it was to assist a fellow Christian country against an enemy of their common creed, yielded place to the arrogant fanaticism of Oviedo and the Jesuits, who demanded military intervention to force Roman Catholicism on their Monophy- site ally. This was, of course, their undoing, and their end fitly closes an interesting book, which it requires no specialist's knowledge to enjoy. * * * *
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