the deer and other in the garden, the animals in the park, the birds and insects trees, flowers, and varying aspects of the sky, filled him with enthusiastic admiration.' He died, literally of old age, on Sunday, January 18, 1892. men. It is much to be regretted that one who worked at his own subjects with such untiring zeal should have left behind him almost nothing to perpetuate his name with the great mass of the people. Mr. Huxley remarks that, 'whether we consider the quantity or the quality of the work done, or the wide range of his labours, I doubt if, in the long annals of anatomy, more is to be placed to the credit of any single worker' (ii. 306); but he presently adds this caution: Obvious as are the merits of Owen's anatomical work to every expert, it is necessary to be an expert to discern them' (ii. 332). He gave popular lectures, but they were not printed; he wrote what he intended to be a work for all time, but it has faded out of recollection, and the whole theory of the archetype is now as dead as his own Dinornis. Nor was he at pains to surround himself with a circle of pupils who might have handed down the teaching of the Master to another generation, as Cuvier's teaching was handed down by his pupils. It was one of Owen's defects that he was repellent to younger In a word, he was secretive, impatient of interference, and preferred to be aut Cæsar aut nullus. Credit was to him worth nothing if it was to be divided. Again, brilliant as were his talents and assured as was his position, he could not recognize the truth that men may sometimes err, and that the greatest rather gain than lose by admitting it. During the whole of his long life we believe that he never owned to a mistake. Again, not only was what he said law, but what others ventured to say-especially if it 'came between the wind and his nobility'. -was to be brushed aside as of no moment. We believe that this feeling on his part explains his refusal to accept the Darwinian theory. As we have shown, he went half way with it, and then dropped it, because not hammered on his own anvil. This unfortunate antagonism to other workers, coupled with his readiness to enter into controversy, and the acrimony and dexterity with which he handled his adversaries, naturally discouraged those who would otherwise have been only too happy to sit at the feet of the Nestor of English zoology; and during the last thirty years of his life he became gradually more and more isolated. Moreover, there was, or there was thought to be, a certain want of sincerity about him which no amount of external courtesy could wholly conceal. In a word, he was compact of strange contradictions. He had many noble qualities; and yet could not truly be called great, for they were warped and overshadowed by many moral perversities. In the previous century his portrait might have been sketched by Pope : 'But were there one whose fires True genius kindles and fair fame inspires ; Like Cato, give his little senate laws, ART. V.-HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE HOLY LAND. The Historical Geography of the Holy Land, especially in relation to the History of Israel and of the Early Church. By GEORGE ADAM SMITH, D.D., Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament Exegesis, Free Church, Glasgow. (London, 1894.) IT is with a happily chosen metaphor that a recently published work on one epoch in the history of Palestine begins, when it describes the history of Syria as to some extent a synopsis of the history of the world, and the land as a palimpsest from which the records of later civilization have failed to obliterate entirely those of earlier times.' A palimpsest, indeed, it is, and the characters how ancient, and in many cases how difficult to distinguish from those which later generations have superimposed! What need there is of historical imagination, ballasted by sound judgment, to prevent ourselves from being carried away by the effort of trying to realize all that modern discoveries put before us! How can we calmly contemplate and try to tabulate a history 1 The Story of the Nations: The Crusades, p. 1. which goes back as early as the twelfth dynasty in Egyptthat is to say, about 2000 B.C.—when our earliest evidence of intercourse between that country and Palestine begins? Other fragments of history the stream of time has brought down to us. We have, for instance, such facts as the record of the campaigns of Thothmes III. against the Hittites about 1600 B.C., preserved for us at Karnak, in which stand as it were embalmed the names of many places in Palestine familiar to us in later Biblical narrative. Add to this the cuneiform inscription found by Mr. Bliss at Tell-el-Hesy, and the other results of the careful excavations there, taking us back to the old Amorite town of 1500 B.C. Follow the stream of history a little further, and we come to the wonderful evidence of the Tell-el-Amarna tablets, dating from the end of the fifteenth century before Christ. Whatever difficulties they may bring with them, they throw brilliant light on the picture of Palestine in those days. And what have we learnt, too, in these latter days-and how much still remains to learn-of that strange race of the Hittites, the references to whom in the Bible were so scorned, till the very stones have cried out in protest! How intelligible, too, becomes the Bible narrative of the king which knew not Joseph, and the Israelitish invasion of Palestine, in the light of all we know now of the Shepherd Kings of Egypt, and the relaxed hold of Egypt on Palestine which was consequent on the internal troubles of that country. This invasion of Palestine by Israel brings us down to about the year 1300 B.C. From that date to about 600 we have the history of Israel and Judah to the Captivity, then in 538 the accession of Cyrus and the return from the Captivity, with the narrative of Ezra and Nehemiah and the post-exilic prophets. Then follow the 'four centuries of silence,' as far as the Bible is concerned, which heralded the birth of Christ. But during this silence the world's centre of political power shifted from East to West, and first Greece and then Rome claimed dominion over Palestine, with a short interval, during which the nearer powers of Syria and Egypt alternately laid hands on her. Then the East again reasserted itself in the seventh century, and in the battle of Fihl, in 634, Mohammedan supremacy was established. Then followed the short-lived but thrilling incidents of the Crusades, the story of which has been so well told in the little book to which we have referred; and they in turn were succeeded by the victories of Saladin and Bibars, and the long and comparatively uneventful monotony of Turkish dominion. Such, in brief epitome, is the succession of characters which the historian of Palestine has to disentangle and decipher. Of the languages in which the earlier characters are written, and the problems they present, we cannot now speak. We may, however, in passing refer to a recent article in this Review on a work by Professor Maspero, and also to a very solid contribution by Professor McCurdy,' of which only the first part has as yet appeared. We have already alluded to several sources from which fresh light has been recently derived, and an interesting article from the competent pen of Major Conder 2 in the Contemporary Review summed up some of the results which have so far accrued from these investigations, and pointed to the direction which in his judgment further inquiries ought to take, when the explorers are able to proceed from the examination of the surface of the country to excavations of sites which in very truth embalm for us the remains of some of these earlier historical personages. It is, however, with the examination of the surface of Palestine that the book of which the title appears at the head of this article deals. The study of historical geography is but one of the many methods by which the scientific investigator of the present day seeks to limit the sphere within which chance acts, and to explain the racial, intellectual, and historical characteristics, and the succession of events in the life of this or that people, by a reference to the climate and 'lie' of the country in which their history is enacted. It requires, for its successful pursuit, the combination of many qualifications-a strong imagination, a keen sense of historical perspective, an eager and observant eye these at least are necessary. Professor Smith certainly possesses a strong imagination, and is able to take his reader back with him into the scenes he is describing. It is true that his imaginativeness sometimes carries him away into an overwhelming exuberance of expression; but to this we shall return. As to his historical qualifications, he would not claim to have mastered the long series of events which we have epitomized above, and certainly we think his interest is primarily geographical and only secondarily historical, except in so far as the main narrative of the Bible is concerned. There is no attempt to treat with fulness—indeed, space would hardly have allowed it-any of the great battles, or to work up pictures in the way in which, for example, Dean Stanley did in his Sinai and Palestine. But there is clear History, Prophecy, and the Monuments, vol. i. By Professor McCurdy. (Macmillan and Co., 1894.) Contemporary Review, September 1894. evidence in every page of a careful study of the innumerable first- and second-hand authorities, who have dealt with some part or other of this ever-interesting theme. There is from the Bible at any rate (and it is only fair to remember that Professor Smith limits himself to this as his main subject) a great wealth of illustration drawn from nearly every book. Lastly, as to personal observation, it is abundantly clear that Professor Smith has made very good use of his visits to Palestine, as will, we hope, be clear when we come to review the book in detail, as we now proceed to do. In the first place we must bestow a general word of praise on the printing and get-up of the book and the maps. These render it one in every way pleasant to read, and this is no light matter when we bear in mind the frequent references which have to be made to the maps as the reader goes through the book. Of course these excellences, to which we have referred, make the book necessarily expensive, but we hope that ere long it may be possible to cut down the price, and in that event it is a book which ought to be found on the table of everyone who has anything at all to do with the teaching or study of the Bible. It enables the student of the Bible to recall much more vividly than any other work we know many of the scenes in that book, which are sometimes but a bare succession of proper names, conveying little or no meaning to the reader. What an accession of historic interest the story of Joseph and his brethren at Dothan receives when we discover, as Professor Smith enables us to realize, that it lay on perhaps the most important of the great routes of Palestine, between the great plain of Esdraelon and the plain of Sharon, so that companies of Midianite merchants, no less than the great armies to which we have referred, must often have been passing through on their way down to Egypt! Again, what light is thrown on the successive wars with the Philistines by the detailed knowledge which we acquire from this book of the border land between Philistia and the high ground to the east of it! The book opens with a preface in which the writer states very clearly the sort of help which may be expected from the study of this subject of historical geography in regard to the Bible, and we must be allowed to quote his words : 'What is needed by the reader or teacher of the Bible is some idea of the main outlines of Palestine- its shape and disposition; 1 We have noticed, however, no reference to Röhricht's Bibliotheca Geographica Palestinæ, a useful summary of these authorities, which was noticed in these pages on its first appearance. |