Palms and Temples. Notes of a Pour Months' Voyage upon
the Nile. (Tinsley Brothers.)—Mr. Edwin Arnold introduces, with a preface -which will readily secure the favour which it bespeaks, this volume, the work of his son. The party met with a disastrous accident, the capsizing of their dahabeeah by a sudden squall under the cliffs of Gebel Tookh. One of the crew was drowned. Most of the travellers retraced their steps to Cairo, but the writer, who was offered the hos- pitality of some voyagers on board a more fortunate craft, continued his expedition, and now gives us this light and pleasant record of it, drawn partly from the pages of his diary, which was one of the few things which came ashore after the wreck. "The book," says Mr. Arnold in his preface, "does not aspire to take the place of any learned treatise or methodical guide, but simply to catch the joyous spent of the rich sunlight of the river, and to reproduce its scenes and sights by easy and passing touches." This aim it attains with very considerable success. Perhaps,—but this may be the view of a critic wearied out with much reading of books that have not a tenth part of the liveliness, or even of the actual, solid usefulness, of this— it may be a trifle too long. It is certainly too heavy, literally heavy, we mean. Such reading as it gives us should be enjoyed without any sensible exertion. The publishers have cut the leaves (we always hold it a point in favour of a book to have the leaves cut), but if they had made it smaller, we should have been obliged. Still, it would be ungracious to grumble at what is really a delightful book.
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