A Land of Mosques and Marabouts. By the Hon. Mrs.
Gre- ville-Nugent. (Chapman and Hall.)—Mrs. Greville-Nugent has managed to convey to her readers, with great success, the charm and colour of the Barbary States. Few who go to Algiers and Tunis master the real splendour, the magnificent calm, the superb dolce far nientc of the old Algerian and Tunisian families. The Moors in Algiers, the Arabians in Tunis, support the traditional marvels of "The Thousand and One Nights;" but of course it is not all who have the patience and tact of the writer and her husband, and it needs all this, to obtain the "open sesame" of those wonderful interiors. Besides the customs and festivals, our observant writer has drawn for us some striking outlines of the corsair of today; the stately Moor, beneath whose calm exterior slumbers all the unabated fanaticism of the sternest followers of the Prophet. It is impossible, as even Mrs. Greville-Nugent would allow, to give, with only pen and ink, the indescribable atmosphere and colour of the old cities ; but the writer has done what could be done, more even than might have been hoped for. None will appre- ciate her description better than those who have had her oppor- tunities, and used them as well, for she describes everything, and it is tke details which we like to see recorded in Oriental travel, and it is the details which we miss sometimes in descriptions of Oriental life.
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