[p.xxvi]in a work of description, anecdotes which may appear open to the charge of triviality. The author's object, however, seems to be to illustrate the peculiarities of the people-to dramatise, as it were, the dry journal of a journey,-and to preserve the tone of the adventures, together with that local colouring in which mainly consists "l'education d'un voyage." For the same reason, the prayers of the "Visitation" ceremony have been translated at length, despite the danger of inducing tedium; they are an essential part of the subject, and cannot be omitted, nor be represented by "specimens." The extent of the Appendix requires some explanation. Few but literati are aware of the existence of Lodovico Bartema's naive recital, of the quaint narrative of Jos. Pitts, or of the wild journal of Giovanni Finati. Such extracts have been now made from these writers that the general reader can become acquainted with the adventures and opinions of the different travellers who have visited El Hejaz during a space of 350 years. Thus, with the second volume of Burckhardt's Travels in Arabia, the geographer, curious concerning this portion of the Moslem's Holy Land, possesses all that has as yet been written upon the subject. The editor, to whom the author in his absence has intrusted his work, had hoped to have completed it by the simultaneous publication of the third volume, containing the pilgrimage to Meccah. The delay, however, in the arrival from India of this portion of the MS. has been such as to induce him at once to publish El Misr and El Medinah. The concluding volume on Meccah is now in the hands of the publisher, and will appear in the Autumn of the present year. Meanwhile the Public will not lose sight of the subject of Arabia. Part of El Hejaz has lately been inspected by M. Charles Didier, an eminent name in French literature, and by the Abbe Hamilton,-persuaded, it is believed, by our author to [p.xxvii]visit Taif and Wady Laymum. Though entirely unconnected with the subjects of Meccah and El Medinah, the account of the Sherif's Court where these gentlemen were received with distinction, and of the almost unknown regions about Jebel Kora, will doubtless be welcomed by the Orientalists and Geographers of Europe. Mr. Burton is already known by his "History of Sindh." And as if to mark their sense of the spirit of observation and daring evinced by him when in that country, and still more during his late journeyings in Arabia and East Africa, the Geographical Society, through their learned Secretary, Dr. Norton Shaw, have given valuable aid to this work in its progress through the press, supplying maps where necessary to complete the illustrations supplied by the author,-who, it will be perceived, is himself no mean draughtsman.