4 DECEMBER 1897, Page 11

The Cities of the Dawn. By J. Ewing Ritchie. (T.

Fisher Unwin.) Mr. Ritchie, who uses the nom de plume of " Christopher Crayon," might have written, if he had pleased, a harmless book, even if he could not have written one of value. He went through France and Italy to Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Egypt, kept a diary, or wrote letters, and was quite within his right when he chose to publish them. But why does he go out of his way to offend ? "The Holy City is one gigantic fraud." That is the sum and substance of what he felt in the one place which every one but the most ignorant pagan agrees in reverenoing. If he can feel nothing else, he is to be pitied ; but to feel it and say it, the bad taste is indoneeivablo. Enough df Mr. Ritchie.