Mr. SIDNEY LOW has paid some visits to Egypt and the Sudan, has kept his eyes very wide open and has written _Egypt in Transition_ (SMITH, ELDER) in consequence. The Earl of CROMER, who has also been there or thereabouts, introduces the book to the notice of the public with an appreciative preface. Am I then in a position to pass judgment? Yes, I am; for I can claim to be literally more informed on the subject than most people, having above my share of friends and relations who have been there. I have the clearest possible picture of the country--a stretch of sand, some pyramids in the background, and, in the centre foreground, smiling enigmatically--not the Sphinx, but my friend or relation. I at once gave Mr. LOW five marks out of ten upon discovering that none of his illustrations reproduced himself on either on or off a camel. On less personal grounds, I have no scruple in giving him the remaining five for the vastly interesting facts, political, international, social and racial, with which he entertained me. It requires no small skill in a dispenser of such facts to make them entertaining. Twice only was I minded to quarrel with him; once when he expressed a general contempt, based upon one egregious example, for the foreign exports of Oxford and Cambridge, and again when he got on to the subject of tourists, who include my nearest and dearest, and abused them from the standpoint of a "visitor." In the first case he was absurd, in the second, common-place; but he made ample compensation for both by his memorable chapter of "Conclusions," in which he gave me clearly to understand why East, being East, will never be joined to West, always West, but yet how the twain have got within measurable distance of one another. * * * * *