Thirty Years of my Life on Three Continents. By Edwin
do Leon. 2 vols. (W ard and Downey.)—Mr. de Leon acted as agent for the -Confederate Government, and had informal interviews with Lord Palmerston and the Emperor Napoleon III. when that Govern- ment endeavoured to obtain recognition from the European Powers. Lord Palmerston gave him no hopes. He saw plainly that though the Confederacy had many sympathisers among the upper class, public opinion was distinctly hostile. The French Emperor was less outspoken. He even suggested that a declaration on the part -of the Confederacy that slavery should be gradually abolished would help him to do what he wished. This was impossible. The South was certainly fighting for the institution. Mr. de Leon's recollections of Egypt arc particularly interesting, as is also his wife a description of her visits to Egyptian great ladies, the wife .of the present Pasha, the wife of Said Pasha—both monogamists- -and the third wife of Ismail. A portion of the book is given to Turkey. The author has no hopes of the Sick Man's recovery, and he has, it is evident, a very mean opinion of Abdul Hamid's personal capacity. The real reason of Mourad's exclusion from the throne was, he says, his desire to introduce reforms of the Euro- pean kind. He tells a very tragic story of the fate of the harem
Abd-ul-Medjid, The women were secluded in a remote palace, .and conceived the idea of setting fire to it as the only way of releasing themselves. The firemen arrived; but they were not permitted to act. "The faces of the sultanas must not be soon." The wretched women were burnt to death. There is a very in- teresting story of how Mr. de Leon, when Consul-General in Egypt, assisted in securing the punishment of some villains who had committed some frightful outrages on the family of an American missionary. The matter did not come within his juris- diction, but he insisted with a vigour and persistence which are worthy of all praise. Whether the assassins were executed ho never could find out, but they were sent to Constantinople for punishment. The Turks, resembling in this respect the Romans of the later Republic, shed blood like water in every way but by way of punishment for crime.
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