place to a match, and carried off the victory. From this officer, and from other Europeans of high rank in the Turkish service, Dr Wagner, who loves to speculate on the political future of the East, and on the probable or possible infringements of Russia upon the territories of her weaker neighbours, gathered opinions, valuable although very various, as to the military power of Turkey, and her means of resistance to Muscovite aggression. The Doctor entertains a very high respect for the power of Russia, strikingly illustrated by the recent crisis, when, with one army guarding Poland and another warring in the Caucasus, she was able to lend a third—not far short of two hundred thousand men—to the neighbouring empire, which was on the point of being overturned by an insurgent province. In his second volume he talks ominously of the result of an anticipated conflict between an Anglo-Indian and a Russian army, predicting victory to the latter, even whilst recognising the justice of the high encomiums passed by another German writer on the corps of British officers in India. “An impartial and competent observer and judge of most of the armies of Europe, Leopold von Orlich, who has written a valuable book of travels in India, assures us that that numerous body of officers (eight hundred and twenty staff officers, and five thousand five hundred of inferior rank) has not its equal in the world with respect to military spirit and efficiency, and that he never witnessed in any army so much mutual self-devotion as amongst the officers and soldiers of the British Indian host. Thirst for action, high spirit, self-confidence and practical good sense, are the special characteristics of the English officers.” Than this, nothing can be truer. Dr Wagner proceeds to theorise on the probable defection of the Sepoys, in the event of a Russian army showing itself on our Indian frontier. Theories referring to such remote and improbable contingencies we need hardly be at the pains to combat; and, indeed, were we to take up the argumentative cudgels every time that Dr Wagner’s frequent political digressions hold out temptation so to do, we should get to the end of our paper and have got never a step from Constantinople. Our present object being the general examination of a book of travels, we prefer accompanying the Doctor on board the Austrian steamer Stamboul, bound for Trebizond. Thence his road was by land, south-eastward to Erzroum, travelling with Turkish post-horses—not in a carriage, but in the saddle and with baggage animals—at first through a garden of azaleas and rhododendrons, of geraniums and ranunculuses; afterwards through an Alpine district, over dangerous mountain-paths, unequalled, he declares, for the hazards of the passage, by anything he ever met with in the European Alps. Whilst traversing these bridle-roads, which are often scarcely two feet broad, with precipices of giddy depth now on the right