The Master of the Magicians. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps and
Herbert D. Ward. (Heinemann.)—" The Master of the Magicians," say the authors in their preface, " is not an archaxdogical treatise, but a novel." And a novel of no little power it is. How far Nebuchadnezzar and his Median Queen, Amystis, and Mutusa-ili, the magician, and Lalitha his daughter, and Allit, the brilliant young Babylonian Guardsman, are like the realities, is beyond any one's power to say. But they are certainly brilliant figures, such as it interests us to watch. The Babylon in which they move, with its splendours and its horrors, may be, probably is, a fiction; but it is finely imagined. The central figure of the story, unless we take the King as such, is Daniel. On him, and on Nebuchad- nezzar, Miss Phelps and her collaborateur have spent, it is evident, much pains, and with a satisfactory result. Ashpenaz, prince of the eunuchs, is another historical personage, and is made the means of introducing a certain amount of humour into the story_
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