"Mr. Reade," writes the critic, "puts forth his book as a sort of review, or survey, or abridgement of the general history of the human race, and he has given to it the strange title it bears because he is of opinion that 'the supreme and mysterious Power by whom the universe has been created, and by whom it has been appointed to run its course under fixed and invariable law; that awful One to whom it is profanity to pray, of whom it is idle and irreverent to argue and debate, of whom we should never presume to think save with humility and awe; that Unknown God has ordained that mankind should be elevated by misfortune, and that happiness should grow out of misery and pain.' But, although the work is in the main historical, it is also partly cosmological, partly physiological, and partly polemical. It deals with the past, the present, and the future of the world as well as of humanity.... "In what he has to say on the present occasion Mr. Reade lays no claim to originality. On the contrary, he warns us that he has borrowed, 'not only facts and ideas, but phrases and even paragraphs from other writers.' The purpose he has in view is to illustrate the investigations and enforce the conclusions within a moderate compass of higher and more voluminous authorities. But still there is quite enough of his own handiwork in the volume to entitle him to be regarded as far more than a mere compiler; and we venture to think that many readers will find those portions of it which are the fruits of Mr. Reade's personal experience as an African explorer, and his reflections upon that which he has himself seen, among the most interesting and instructive of all.