Alone through Syria. By Ellen E. Miller. (Kegan Paul, Trench,
and Co.)—Every reader who knows what is good will agree with the commendation which Dr. Sayce, a most competent judge in such matters, bestows on this book. Miss Miller's title does not describe exhaustively the contents of her very interesting volume. She tells us a good deal about Egypt ; indeed, not far from half of her volume is given to that country and to the Arabian Desert. But her Syrian experiences of travel have a certain novelty about them, the novelty expressed by the word "alone." " Alone " means that she did not go with a party, "personally conducted" or other; but it does not mean that she actually went without any companion. She had a dragoman, but trusted for her lodging, not to the tent which most travellers take with them, but to the hospitality of the dwellers in the land, hospitality, of course, recompensed in the usual manner. The method had its gain and its loss ; but it was a gain by which the reader profits. "Only those who have themselves undergone the same experience can realise what an amount of discomfort such a mode of travelling often brings with it, or what an insight it gives into the daily life of the people." Certainly the result in this instance has:been to give a quite unusual freshness to the narrative. Miss Miller has a very great success in making us feel what the; people really are, and what the country really looks like. She saw below the surface in a way which the ordinary method of travel scarcely permits. She has, we observe, definite views in ecclesiastical matters, and strongly disapproves of the bareness and coldness of the ordinary forms of Anglican worship as she found them in the East. It is satisfactory to find that there is a friendly relation between the Patriarch of Jerusalem and the Anglican Bishop, shown by the assigning of a chapel in one of the Greek monasteries for purposes of Anglican worship. The presence of this dignitary, therefore, is not, now at least, the offence which it was once feared it would bs. Our position in the East is somewhat difficult, and Miss Miller wonders "when English Church-people will discard that narrow, negative, limiting term ' Protestant.' " Unfortunately, the matter is not so simple as it may seem to her. The most catholic-minded divines of the best periods of the English Church found it necessary to retain this name. The present time, when it is now greatly discarded, has been signalised by a great number of desertions, and these in the very direction which the term is meant to safeguard.
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