William Jones and Richardson, the Persian lexicographer, amongst the number, regarded as worthless, Richardson maintaining that the texts themselves were forgeries, while Sir William Jones endeavoured to prove that Anquetil had been the victim of priestly fraud and deception. Nearly a century later Eugene Burnouf, an eminent French Sanscrit scholar, proved his countryman's work to be genuine, corrected many of his faults, and placed the study on a sounder scientific basis. Others, especially German and Scandinavian _savants_, followed in the same path, forming, however, different schools of interpretation, until at last Dr. Martin Haug brought order into the confusion, and succeeded in bringing the study of Zend within the limits of exact philological science. The foundation of all these studies must of course necessarily be the traditional interpretation handed down by the Parsi priests, but this would have been comparatively useless without the investigation of European scholars. Many of the Avesta texts are furnished with Pahlavi translations and comments, but the Pahlavi itself was but imperfectly understood, and the whole subject was for a long time in hopeless confusion; the reader may, however, take up Dr. Haug's Essays with the full assurance that he has the most trustworthy account of the Parsis, their Scriptures, history, and religious rites, that can be now ascertained. Anything like a _résumé_ of such a work would be out of place here, but we can cordially recommend it as, with all its recondite erudition, a most readable book. Mr. Bernard Quaritch, of Piccadilly, has published a romance in modern Arabic, entitled, _The Autobiography of the Constantinople Story-teller_, edited by Mr. J. Catafago, a well-known Arabic scholar, and said to be the work of an Englishman, Colonel Rous. It is principally as a curiosity of literature that it will be read, as it does not narrate any very novel or original adventures, and the style is very simple and unpretending. It, however, contains some clear and concise descriptions of many localities in the East which are but little known to the ordinary reader, and will be welcome to the student of Arabic as an easy text-book of the language. * * * * *