Incidentally, and rather as things told him than of his own knowledge, Mr Urquhart gives some brief details of the celebrated French campaign against Morocco, in which Marshal Bugeaud won his dukedom, and Admiral Joinville immortalised his name. His account of the affair of Isly is contemptuous enough, and will assuredly entail upon him the indignation of France, or at least of that portion of Frenchmen who believe, or affect to believe, that there was a battle and a victory—not a surprise and a scamper, unexpected by the assailed, and bloodless to the assailants. “On the 14th August,” says Mr Urquhart, “the son of the sultan is awakened by an alarm, ‘_The French army is in sight_.’ He tells his people the marshal is coming to pay him a visit, before his departure; and after giving orders for a tent to be pitched, and coffee—which he knew the French liked—to be sought for and prepared, he again assumed, to use the phraseology of Antar, ‘the attitude of repose.’ He is again awakened—‘_The French are on us_’—and the French _were_ on them—found _the coffee ready_, and, instead of drinking, spilt it. The loss of the Moors was eight hundred men by _suffocation_.” Compare this statement with the reflection of Alexander Dumas, on approaching the mountains of Djema-r’ Azaouat. “Behind yonder hills,” he fervently exclaims, “are two great mementos, equal to Thermopylæ and Marathon—the combat of Sidi-Ibrahim, and the battle of Isly.” Funny Mr Dumas! how gravely he says these droll things. How many persons, out of France, remember to have heard of this modern Thermopylæ? We seriously suggest to Mr Dumas, whose indefatigable pen, although more particularly devoted to romance and the drama, occasionally flies at history, to write that of the conquest and colonisation of Algeria, in which would naturally be included the episode of the campaign against the Moors. We are quite sure his account of the battle of Isly will differ widely from that of Mr Urquhart: as widely as, or still more so than that of Admiral Bruat, which was addressed to the inhabitants of the Society Islands, in a proclamation quoted as a note to _The Pillars of Hercules_, and which Mr Urquhart declares, with much truth, to be highly deserving of a place in history. M. Dumas seems to us to be exactly cut out for the historian of his countrymen’s African exploits. The razzias and crop-burnings, the bloody skirmishes of Zouaves and Bedouins, the constant pursuit and many narrow escapes of the Emir, will acquire additionally romantic interest from the picturesque handling of the author of the _Mousquetaires_, who declares, in the pages of _Le Véloce_, that he is not only a soldier’s son, but himself a soldier at heart. With what glowing eloquence will he refute the various charges brought against his countrymen in Africa! “If Abd-el-Kader,” says Mr Urquhart, “had not been playing a game, at all events a game was played in his person. He was necessary to the French military system of Algiers.