22 APRIL 1876, Page 22

England, Palestine, Egypt, and India Connected by a Railway System.

By S. McBean. (W. H. Allen and Co.)—Mr. McBean will take away the breath of the degenerate statesmen of the present day. It is, he says, "incumbent on us, as a nation, to resolve to carry out the entire length of line, at our own cost, from Scutari to Kurrachee, about 3,300 miles; and from Antioch to Ismailia, with branches to Damascus and Jerusalem, about 600 miles altogether." This is not all ; he looks forward to the day when trains will run from Calcutta to Pekin, though he does not expressly tell us that we are to snake this railway also. Mr. McBean has, of coarse, plenty to say for himself, and granted the conditions of money and safety, his railway would bo an admirable institution. But then the money ! Sixty millions is no trifle, and what a corps of policemen would he not want to keep the peace along the three thousand odd miles ! Mr. McBean makes an odd mixture of religious, political, and com- mercial considerations in his argument, but yet he may only be a hundred years or so before his time.