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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. ix. MARCH 22, 1902.

ferule of Dr. Busby. This is interesting as showing that Prior had no objection, apparently, to the doctor's severity. A list of alumni might make another appendix with advantage. There are already sections at the end on the Latin Play, the Deans of Westminster, numbers of the school at different periods, head masters and present house masters. The illustrations give an excellent idea of the various school buildings. There are also engravings of Dr. Rutherford and the present head master, Dr. Gow, for whom we wish a repetition of the success he had at Nottingham. The volume is appropriately clad in the pink associated with Westminster sports.

The Moors. By Budgett Meakin. (Sonnenschein

&Co.)

THIS is the concluding volume of Mr. Budgett Meakin's Moorish trilogy, the first and second volumes in which were respectively ' The Moorish Empire' and 'The Land of the Moors.' Broadly speaking, we may say that the first volume was political, the second physical, whilst the third is mainly ethnological. The three represent an im- portant addition to the literature dealing with little-known Morocco : probably the most important addition of modern times in the English language. They represent a vast amount of painstaking labour and research, backed by a knowledge of the main highways of Morocco superior to that of most writers on the subject, and only to be obtained by prolonged residence in the country. Indeed, there are features in Mr. Meakin's work which suggest that he must be possessed of that intimacy with the Moors and with Morocco which comes only to him who is familiar with both in childhood or, at all events, in very early youth. Regarded from the purely literary standpoint, the trilogy calls for little comment. If Mr. Meakin's writing lacks dis- tinctionand one is bound to admit that it does it is at least free from glaring blemishes. It also lacks altogether the distinction and light which are due to imaginative force and artistic insight. It is, by the same token, devoid of the superficiality which so often mars impressionistic work ; and, upon the whole, the three volumes may be said to disarm criticism to some extent by reason of the evidence they offer upon every page of perseverance, patience, and rigid fidelity to mathematical truth. These are qualities which demand and deserve cordial recognition and respect.

Considered separately, these three volumes may be said to have been presented to the public in the order of their merit, the weightiest and best coming first. The present volume is considerably less comprehensive and exhaustive than either 'of its predecessors, and that is probably due to the fact that the study of the human animal makes greater demands upon the imagination, and upon intuitive and sympathetic understanding, than does the study either of empires or the physical features of a country. Research, the only sound basis of exact knowledge, will not carry its most devoted disciple all the way into the soul of a people. Statistics and the study of every available authority made really exhaustive compilations of the first two volumes m this trilogy, and have given us as much as they could in this concluding volume They have not brought us any nearer to the heart of the people of El Maghrib, however. They have not V 8 * Se int | te glimpses which Mr. Harris succeeded m conveying once (see

his ' Tafilet '), and which, curiously enough, another traveller, whose knowledge of the country cannot approach that of either Mr. Meakin or Mr. Harris, managed to give in his ' Mogreb-el-acksa ' Mr. R. B. Cunninghame Graham. None the less, for the reader who would learn something of the manners and customs of a people whose history is one long romance, and whose country is at once the nearest and the remotest point of the East, Mr. Meakin's works, this last volume among them, may be un- reservedly commended. To the student, also, who requires exact and tabulated information conveyed as tersely and lucidly as possible, 'The Moors' and its two companion volumes should come as a real treasure. One word as to Mr. Meakin's system of transliteration, which he hopes may be accepted as a standard of spelling. The care and labour that have been expended upon it are obvious, but we venture to think it a little cumbersome, and lacking in some of the merits of the Royal Asiatic Society's system, as simplified by Hunter, and used generally in India. ; The Moors,' like the two volumes which preceded it, is handsomely printed and gener- ously illustrated. Such types as ' Moorish Snake Charmers,' slave girls (who, "with any promise of beauty, are carefully fattened," in accordance with the Oriental love for adiposity), jugglers, water-carriers, and other conventional specimens drawn from the e very-day crowd of Morocco market-places, are well exhibited ; while numerous characteristic scenes are included which will surprise the ordinary reader by reminding him of the fact that within a day's journey from British Gibraltar men and women, down to the veriest details of their dress and manners, are living to-day precisely the life which is so beautifully described in the books of the Old Testament.

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