30 JUNE 1900, Page 12

THE UNCHANGING EAST.

The Unchanging East. By Robert Barr. (Chatto and Windus. 6s.)—Mr. Barr is at once a genial humourist and a keen observer, and if he does not tell us anything that is positively fresh in this narrative of a voyage in which he saw Tunis and Malta, Baalbec and Damascus, Antioch and Jerusalem, he does not give us a dry page. Fortunately, also, Mr. Barr and his companions were arrested by a Turkish commandant, who might have sat for "the instigator of an Armenian massacre," and so they had a good deal of fun. Mr. Barr's observations are always to the point and often full of strong sense. He was charmed with Bethlehem, but he says: "Carthage is the most disappointing city in the ruin line that I ever visited, and I have seen some of the most famous ruined towns in America." Mr. Barr's book would have been still better than it is if that bourgeois humour which delights in "banging saxpences," and in producing "fine old Scotch," had been conspicuous, not by its presence but by its absence. One is irritated rather than rationally amused by such jocosities as : "The origin of Baalbec, like that of Jeames, is wrapped in mystery. It stands 3,800 ft. above the sea, says the guide-book, and 4,500, says the encyclopsedia; but judging by the weather it was 10,000 ft. high the day we were there."