This grand work, which in almost everychapter shows the masterly hand of Raleigh himself, needs no comment here. It is however no disparagement of the book (but the contrary) to say that in the collection, arrangement and condensation of its materials; that in unlocking the muniment room of antiquity and perusing the chief authors of the Greek and Latin classics from Heroditus to Livy and Eusebius, covering a period of near four thousand years, he must have had at cheerful beck powerful and competent aid. To collect, read, collate, note down, and digest these vast and scattered treasures into reasonable and presentable shape for the master mind, required not a bevy of poets and parsons, but one masterly scholar of scientific, analytic, mathematical, philosophical and religious training. Such a man was Hariot. We read of Gibbon’s twenty years’ fag and toil on the materials of the History of the Roman Empire alone, and at a time when there were many aids not existing in Raleigh’s day. Gibbon personally ransacked the libraries of Europe. Raleigh had scarcely four years to cover the four most ancient empires and a much longer period, and was himself confined to Tower Hill. But he had at command a Hariot, a sort of winged Mercury, who was neither entowered nor hide-bound with conceit or ignorance. He was a marvellously good Greek and Latin scholar, who wrote Latin with almost as much ease as English. One has but to read the vast number of notes, citations and particular references in the History of the World to see the height, depth, and perfect modelling of the structure. Raleigh was unquestionably the designer, the architect and the finisher of his History of the World. To him is due the honor and credit of the work. But who was the builder ? The answer manifestly is Thomas Hariot of Sion on Thames, learned, patient, self-forgetting, painstaking, long-waiting, devoted Hariot. Many writers have claimed to be, or have been named as, Sir Walter’s assistants and polishers. Ben Jonson, Rev. Dr Burhill, John Hoskins the poet, and others have each had their advocates,but without sufficient evidence. It may well be questioned if any one of them possessed either the ability, the time, the access to the Tower, or the opportunity to perform such herculean labors of love. These claims are apparently all based on pure conjecture, or unrectified gossip, as shown by Mr Bolton Corney in his razorly reply to Mr Isaac D’israeli. But Thomas Hariot, on the contrary, possessed abundantly what they all lacked, the necessary credentials. For proof of this assertion the doubter, as well as the lover of confirmed historical accuracy, is referred to the Hariot papers still preserved partly at Petworth and partly in the British Museum.