5 MAY 1928, Page 30

* * * * Another book from the same exquisite

pen is Miss

Gertrude Bell's Persian Pictures (Benn, 10s.- 6d.), also with a preface by Sir E. Denison Ross. Truly Miss Bell had a spiritual grasp of the East given to few Western men or women. Her little pen picture of " The King of the Merchants " and his surroundings is perfect in style- and in that subtle power of

transferring not merely the setting of a scene to the reader's mind, but its very soul. The last six essays, as Sir Edviard suggests, written to order, fall short of the charm to be found in those fashioned to please herself. But they are all good, uncommon, instinct with vision.