The Day of the Crescent : Glimpses of Old Turkey.
By G. E. Hubbard. (Cambridge University Press. 15s. net.)—Mr. Hubbard has made an interesting book on the " golden age " of Turkey by collecting and summarizing the narratives of Euro- peans who visited the Near East, willingly or unwillingly, in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Among them were Busbe- quius, the Imperial envoy of 1553, Wratislaw who went with another and less fortunate embassy in 1591, Blunt the English traveller who went to Turkey a few years later, and Dallam an organ-builder who was sent to fit up an organ presented by Elizabeth to the Grand Turk. A number of the old prints illustrating their narratives are reproduced. Turkey was a grave menace in those days to Eastern Europe. In other respects the Turks are unchanged. They were barbarians then, as they are now. The bygone travellers cited by Mr. Hubbard, if they could come to life again, would be ill at ease in modern Europe but they would notice little that was new in modern Turkey.
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