4 DECEMBER 1886, Page 24

Tales of Captivity and Exile. (Black - ie and Son.)—The compiler of

this volume has collected a great variety of subjects belonging to all times and places, from Hegistrates of Elea, who cut off half his foot to escape from the Spartan stocks, down to John Rutherford, an Englishman who was taken prisoner some seventy years ago by the natives of New Zealand. A number of old acquaintances—Richard of Normandy, the Earl of Nithsdale, Sir Sidney Smith, "the Man with the Iron Mask," Elizabeth the "Exile of Siberia," Silvio Pellico, and Baron Trenck—reappear. Others, again, will be new to most readers. Not every one knows how the jurist Grotias escaped from prison ; and the details of the captivity of Francois Arago will pro- bably be fresh to many. It i8 curious to think that this statesman of our own time, so to speak (he died in 1853), should have been a captive in an Algerian dungeon.