The Story of Egypt. By George Rawlinaon, M.A.; with the
collaboration of Arthur Gilman, M.A. (T. Fisher Unwin.)—This popular account of Egyptian religion, life, and history is one of the series entitled 'Story of the Nations," and will doubtless find, as it in various respects deserves to find, many readers. Professor Rawlinson is not, in the strict sense of the word, an Egyptologist, and some of his statements are, to say the least, open to doubt ; but he has a practised hand in popularising knowledge, and has done hie work well. No reader of this volume, approaching it with the average amount of knowledge, can fail to learn mash. He will certainly get a connected and sufficiently accurate view of the subject.— Another volume in the same useful series is The Story of the Saracens. By Arthur Gilman, M.A.—Mr. Gilman begins by giving a sketch of Arabia and the Arabs in the pre-Islamite days, and then proceeds to a fairly copious biography of Mehemet, to whom he does, we cannot but think, more than full justice. Surely the man was somewhat corrupted by power. Whatever the original purity of his convictions, there was something shameless about the adaptation of his " revelation " to his private ends. The life of the Prophet is followed by the story of his successors, their internal strifes, and the external relations of the great power which they developed. The most interesting part of their history belongs to another writer in the series, Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole, who deals with the subject of "The Moms in Spain ;" bat Mr. Gilman does not want for matter. In fact, he has to use a great deal of compres- sion, and forces the story of nearly four centuries into lees than forty pages. It might have been better to terminate it at an earlier period, but we recognise the difficulties of the task with which Mr. Gilman has had to deal. There is an excellent bibliography of the subject at the end of the volume.
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