CRIPTURE lands have been

S thoroughly explored by men

of various periods, and more varied light has been thrown upon them, perhaps, than upon any other lands, ancient or modern. Dr. Robinson has brought to bear upon ancient tradition a keen observation and analytical intellect, and has established conclusions respecting probable sites of sacred events in Palestine, which subsequent explorers have done much to confirm and little to correct. Dean Stanley has woven sacred geography and sacred history together so as at once to make localities truly sacred and history genuinely varied and picturesque. Dr. Palmer has followed the Children of Israel al

most step by step in their wanderings in the Wilderness, and has demonstrated, as far as demonstration is possible, that the Biblical narrative of the Exodus is historical, not mythical, a narrative derived in its essential parts from eye-witnesses, if not itself the work

IN SCRIPTURE LANDS: NEW VIEWS OF SACRED PLACES. By EDWARD L. WILSON. With 150 illustrations engraved from photographs taken by the author. Large 8vo, $3.50. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.

of an eye-witness. Dr. Thomson has carried his readers into the Holy Land of to-day, and by his vivid description of its life, its manners, its customs, which repeat those of eighteen centuries and more ago, has thrown light on some things that were obscure and imparted a realism to much that seemed romantic and unreal in the Scripture narratives. Yet these and their predecessors in the field which Mr. Wilson has entered have not precluded him from treating the theme in a somewhat different spirit and from a different point of view.

Mr. Wilson is an expert photographer. He has carried his camera with him, and reproduced in black and white the scenes of Scripture lands. If we say that Dr. Robinson's work is scholarly, Stanley's historical, Palmer's topographical, and Thomson's biographical, we may best differentiate Mr. Wilson's work from that of his predecessors by saying of it that it is pictorial. He does not discuss debated questions in either history or topography. But he gives the reader a view of the localities which previous students and explorers or traditions trustworthy or otherwise have identified. His pen seems to have caught something of the spirit of his art, and to be almost

as photographic in its realistic portraiture as his camera. Take for illustration this little cabinet picture of a night bivouac :

The Bedouin attendants had arranged their camels on the ground in semicircular groups. Against the inward-turned haunches of the beasts our camp luggage was placed for protection from marauders. In the centre of each semicircle a fire of brush and twigs had been kindled. Around these fires the more idle of the swarthy fellows squatted, and toasted their bare shins while they spun their wondrous tales and waited for their evening meal of barley cakes to bake in the hot ashes. A few of the more industrious

pounded beans in stone mortars for camel fodder. This weird night-scene was made to look all the more picturesque by the red glare caught upon the faces of the Arabs, and by the twinkling high lights which played from one awkward, protruding camel-joint to another.

Or take this equally graphic picture of a unique study in geography under the guidance of a Bedouin sheik, who is planning the journey through the desert for Mr. Wilson and his company:

This ceremony ended, a still more picturesque

scene followed-the discussion of the journey to be taken. With his fingers Mousa drew upon the sand a map of the pear-shaped Sinai peninsular. A depression at the right was the Red Sea. A similar one on the left served for the Gulf of Akabah. An English walnut served to mark the locality of Mount Sinai, and the oases were indicated by chicken-bones. An egg-shell served for Akabah and an orange-peel stood for

of the finding of the body of Rameses II., too long to transfer to our pages.

The artist is not a critic. He is more attracted by pictorial effects or poetic influences than by hard questions. When, for instance, he says (p. 30): "Before night we came to the rock stricken by Moses, as recorded in Exodus

From "In Scripture Lands." THE JORDAN TOWARDS MOAB. Petra, while bits of stones served to show where tribes of Bedouins were probably encamped. Winding lines were drawn in the sand to represent the wadies which led from one place to the other, the sand which rose at each side of the royal finger serving to mark the chains of

mountains over which we must travel. Then the whole map, thus laid out, was discussed, and the chances of escape from unfriendly tribes were considered.

These smaller pictures must serve to illustrate the author's power of pen-and-ink drawing, which is quite as characteristically exhibited in the larger and more important pictures which he furnishes, such, for example, as that

17 6 and referred to so graphically in Numbers 20: 7-11," and describes it with particularity as an isolated rock twenty feet wide by twelve feet high, with a deep cut running down its side, "the mark of Moses's rod whence flowed the waters of Meribah and Massah," we are not quite sure whether to take him seriously or not. Probably there is not in fact anything more to identify this particular rock with the one which Moses struck than there is to identify the cavern which Dr. J. P. Newman supposes to be the den of lions into which Daniel was cast, or for that matter the grave of Adam over which Mark Twain shed some reverential tears.

Mr. Wilson is not, however, to be regarded as seriously vouching for this monkish tradition. He simply portrays what he sees, and neither sanctions nor questions the traditional identification. "The traveller," he says, " who endeavors to work out the topography of the Hebrew migration from Egypt to the Promised Land finds himself engaged in disentangling a very puzzling skein. He must accept tradition and follow what has been, in a measure, satisfactorily disentangled for us." The reader must accept his book in that spirit; if he desires to trace the process of disentangling, or even to reach the latest and best results of that process, he will look elsewhere than to this volume. But he who, without leaving his own home, wishes to make the journey across the desert, or to visit the Holy Land, taking, as the ordinary tourist must do, the traditions for what they are worth, neither believing nor disbelieving them, but looking

FOR some years past it has been impressed upon the minds of the funloving people of this country that nothing in the nature of pure fun-honest, consistent, with no alloy of moral or conventionality-has been offered to them which can at all compare to the Brownies of Palmer Cox. A great part of our humorous illustrations need, legends or context which shall inform us how they are funny, but the Brownie pictures need none of these. We need no help of print to know how they are funny.

These little fellows have become very familiar to us. We know all the principal characters in their company as well as we know the members of our family, and we should miss any one of them should he be absent from one of their nightly larks. They are our friends the paddy with his high hat and coat-tails, the Chinaman with his wooden shoes, Uncle Sam,

ANOTHER BROWNIE BOOK. Written and illustrated by PALMER COx. Sq. 8vo, $1.50. The Century Co., New York.

the Indian, the policeman, the jolly tar, and all the other frisky little chaps, not forgetting the inevitable dude, with his big cane and eyeglass.

Here in this new book we have them all, entering with an earnest and comic zeal into new phases of the life of to-day. They have not yet endeavored to find the North Pole, nor have they tried to revise the tariff laws, but we should not be at all surprised should they make efforts in those directions. They are very generous little fellows, these Brownies, and, true to their traditions, they take delight in doing for us what we do not seem able to do for ourselves. In this new record of their exploits, we find them not only gathering the farmer's apples for him, cleaning the village clock, and raising a flag-pole for the public benefit, but the goodnatured little chaps even go so far as to take care of homeless cats, feed faminestricken rabbits, defend baby birds, and make

themselves little Brothers of Charity to all living things.

In whatever prank they engage, the Brownies are always impelled by good intentions. They get into all manner of scrapes, and things often turn out in a way they could not have expected; for example, the dip into the falls of Niagara, the bursting of the cannon their celebration, and the mishaps on the back of

at

the whale. But they never set out to do harm or make mischief, and, if possible, they put everything right at the scenes of their revels before they go home at cock-crow.

A very delightful thing about the Brownies is the consistency of their characters. Every boy-jack of them is true to himself, no matter what the circumstances may be. Whether they are in the yacht race or in the garden, in the swimming or dancing school, flying kites, running a locomotive, on the race track, eating a birthday dinner, or engaged in any of the other surprising performances described in

this book, the policeman is always on duty, the paddy is always blarneying, the Chinaman wants to know, the Indian is ready for the war-path, Uncle Sam's beaver and striped trousers never fail to breathe an air of true patriotism, and no matter what be the dangers or the labors of the Brownies, the dude-most consistent of all-never renders any assistance, and never carries anything but his big cane, except on one occasion, at the Brownies' fancy ball, when he carries his own costume.

The spirit of these pictures is a good and healthful one. There is a briskness of spirit and action, and of general honesty of purpose, and a true sense of enjoyment which are good for all of us, old or

young, to look upon and consider. If the people who do the things in the daytime that the Brownies try to do at night could be induced to imitate more frequently the generous earnestness and jolly good humor of the little chaps, the real world would owe much to the Brownie world.

GOOD NIGHT":