The Rise of the Empire. By Sir Walter Besant. (Horace
Marshall and Son.)—This is the first of what is called "The Story of the Empire Series," a number of volumes which are to appear at intervals of two months. Sir Walter Besant sketches in outline what the contributors, whose names, so far as they are given, are of the best promise, will give in detail. He also supplies some introductory matter, all of it interesting, but especially so when he writes of what he calls "Preparation," an account of various enterprises, some of them apparently mere waste of life and energy, by which Englishmen became fit to undertake the huge work of colonising and conquering which they have accomplished. This is followed by a chapter on "The Lessons of Virginia," an example of how success has been slowly won after a long series of blunders, and this again by four more in which the Empire of "the West," "the East," "the South," and "the Isles" are successively treated. The work has beea admirably well done, though we should be inclined to think that the Mother-country's way of letting things alone, as far as any direction of emigrants is concerned, has been in harmony with the general principles by which the Empire has been acquired. "Won in a fit of absence of mind," some one has said. It was not in us to regulate,—and see the result !
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