who, with
Enver Bey and Talaat Bey, formed the triumvirate which dictated Turkish
policy and guided Turkey's fate after the coup d'etat of 1913. I believe
these memoirs are of extraordinary interest and the greatest importance.
They give the first and only account from the Turkish side of events in
Turkey since 1913. The development of relations with Germany, France and
England immediately before the war is clearly traced, and a graphic
account is given of the first two months of the war, the escape of the
Goeben and the attempts made to keep Turkey neutral. When these failed,
Djemal Pasha was sent to govern Syria and to command the Fourth Army,
which was to conquer Egypt. The attack on the Suez Canal is described, and
then the series of operations which culminated in the British reverses in
the two battles of Gaza. Further important sections are devoted to the
revolt of the Arabs and the question of responsibility for the Armenian
massacres.

The value of _Miscellanies--Literary and Historical_, by Lord Rosebery,
consists not so much in his recollections of people as in the delight of
reading good prose. Lord Rosebery has a natural dignity and a charm of
lucid phrasing that adapts itself admirably to the essay form he has
chosen. The subjects he takes up are beloved figures of the past. Robert
Burns, as Lord Rosebery talks of him, walks about in Dumfries and holds
spellbound by sheer personal charm the guests of the tavern. There are
papers on Burke, on Dr. Johnson, on Robert Louis Stevenson, and others as
great. One group deals with Scottish History and one with the service of
the state. The last is a study of the _genius loci_ of such places of
mellow associations as Eton and the Turf. The sort of book one returns
to!

=ii=

I was going to say something about Andrew C. P. Haggard's book, _Madame de
Stael: Her Trials and Triumphs_. But so profoundly convinced am I of the
book's fascination that I shall reprint the first chapter. If this is not
worthy of Lytton Strachey, I am no judge:

"In the year 1751 a young fellow, only fourteen years of age, went to
Magdalen College at Oxford, and in the same year displayed his budding
talent by writing _The Age of Sesostris, Conqueror of Asia_, which work he
burnt in later years.

"The boy was Edward Gibbon, who, after becoming a Roman Catholic at the
age of sixteen, was sent by his father to Switzerland, to continue his
education in the house of a Calvinist minister name