18 FEBRUARY 1871, Page 22

Papers on the Great Pyramid. By St. John V. Day.

(Edmonstonn and Douglas.)—We read not a little of this book without gaining any but the faintest idea of what it was about, but seeing quite-plainly that it intended to be very severe, not to say insulting, to Sir Henry James ; but we came at last to a bit of familiar ground. " More than two thousand years ago," we read, "Herodotus wrote that he had been in- formed the Pyramid was so constructed that the area of its slant-side should be equal to the square of its height," a meaning which is not easily to be extracted out of 'iii; Foil ,,ravrax71 ihirogroy i'xacrroy GZ7-4iF crxiopa, c-Erpw-Ayou, vies kw/. We take that to mean that the building is eight hundred feet (or whatever eight plethra may amount to) each way, and that the slant-side—and Herodotus could measure height in no other way—was the same. On the whole, we are inclined to say that we do not see our way very clearly in Mr. Day's- arithmetic, do not admire his manners, and have no very high opinion of his classics.