I would have eaten it had it been ten times as dirty as it undoubtedly was. It was an act as friendly as any man could perform, and I was pleased to find such a feeling of pure charity and benevolence in a native." Nor does his nationality prevent him from doing justice to the English character as it came under his observation in the East. He recognizes the benevolence of the English rule in India, and considers Sarawak under Rajah Brooke "the model of a good government." With individual Englishmen--who, he considers, are seen to the best advantage out of their own country--he found no difficulty in forming the most cordial relations. We have no doubt that his own qualities, his good humor, frankness, intelligence, and vivacity, coupled with his enthusiasm for pursuits in which almost all Englishmen take a strong interest, rendered him a very attractive and agreeable companion, and caused the "Britishers" with whom he came in contact to set him down at once for what he evidently is, an uncommonly good specimen of the Yankee. Mr. Hornaday has the good sense to spare us the tedium of reading any fresh descriptions of regions and places sufficiently well known or only casually visited in the course of his travels. The few and slight exceptions prove, indeed, that he would hardly be a safe guide when off his own ground. His criticism of the Taj Mahal, than which "no other structure in the world has been so greatly overpraised," may be accepted as an instance of an independent impression and an offset to the extravagance of some of its admirers, but will scarcely testify to his competency to pass judgment on works of art in the tone of a recognized authority. Nor does his notion that Cairo was the capital of ancient Egypt, that "we may take pleasure in thinking that the city is to-day very like what it was when the Pyramids were new," (!) and "believe that these are the same cramped and crooked streets, the same latticed windows and overhanging upper stories, the same bazaars and workshops and wells, that were here when the brethren of Joseph came down, as envoys extraordinary, to practise the arts of diplomacy in the court of Pharaoh," suggest any profound acquaintance with the history of the country and the mutations it has undergone. But it would be very unfair to dwell on such points as these. In general, as has been intimated, Mr. Hornaday sticks to his last with a rare and commendable closeness. The sights which he finds most attractive in famous seaports are the fish-markets and the natural-history museums. The themes on which he loves to dilate are the habits of the crocodile, the elephant, and the orang-utan, the modes of hunting and killing them, and, above all, the process of skinning and dissecting them. But he does not delight in slaughter for the sake of sport, nor regard the forest or the river as simply the habitat of uncouth monsters, nor make the account of his journeys the record of a mere business enterprise.