The nearer we approach our own time the fewer, it might be anticipated, would be these claimants; but that they have not become an extinct class our pages will show. Not only has there been a numerous and apparently inexhaustible supply of candidates for the name and title of the so-called "Louis the Seventeenth" of France, the little Dauphin who is believed to have perished in the first French revolution, but even quite recently instances have occurred in England of persons claiming to be the hereditary representatives of the royal houses of Stuart and Brunswick. A perusal of the following sketches will prove, however, that only those pretenders have obtained any strong hold upon national feeling who have appeared in times of general dissatisfaction or public calamity, and when the people have been only too willing to swear allegiance to any one having the slightest shadow of authority, and who, at the same time, appeared disposed to rectify their grievances. This will account, to some extent, for a curious phenomenon connected with these claimants, and that is the fact that at certain epochs in history they appear in clusters. In Henry the Seventh's reign it was thus in England; Portugal beheld four Sebastians appear successively; whilst Russia has been quite a hotbed for these mushroom monarchs, having produced, among others, four false Demetriuses and six pseudo Peters. But enough has been said to prove the richness of the ground now broken, and in leaving this book in the reader's hands, it may be remarked that it is the result of several years' research amid "quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore;" amid, in some instances, old tomes of considerable rarity. A small portion of this work it should, moreover, be added, was published in the pages of a magazine about ten years ago, but that portion has been thoroughly revised for the present publication. JOHN H. INGRAM. CLAIMANTS TO ROYALTY. THE FALSE SMERDIS OF PERSIA. B.C. 520. The history of no country is more replete with strange incidents and tragic events than is the history of Persia, and probably none of those romantic episodes are more curious than is that of the pseudo Smerdis.