The plan of the mediæval chroniclers, who made their narrative of contemporary events begin from Adam and Eve, has been scrupulously followed by Gen. Loring. Having undertaken to detail certain events which took place nine years ago, he goes back to Alexander the Great in speaking of Alexandria, to Thothmes and Rameses in dealing with the Nile Delta, to Mohammed in describing a Cairo mosque. His real narrative cannot be commenced till he has eased his conscience by a long and minute description of Alexandria, Cairo, and the Pyramids, which have already been described almost as frequently and as fully as Naples or Constantinople. Moreover, like the African chief who informed Gen. Gordon five times in a letter of 12 lines that he was “King Mtesa, of Uganda,” our author can never go far without bringing in himself. The sight of an Alexandrian palace reminds him that he once had his head-quarters there. Rosetta suggests the remark that at that place he had often inspected as many as 10,000 men. A ludicrous street scene cannot be described without informing us that the author was “standing beside Tewfik” (the present Khédive) when it occurred—a passage recalling Carlyle's Italian beggar, who, after all his comrades had been paid for carrying some baggage which he himself had never offered to touch, came up and said majestically, “And I also was present.”

All these divergences keep the real gist of the narrative, viz.: the Abyssinian expedition of 1875, flitting before us like a mirage through more than two-thirds of the book, and persistently eluding our grasp till page 289. But even in this first part of the work, faulty though it is, there are not a few passages well worth reading. Considerable power is shown in the elaborate description of grim old Mehemet Ali, (“the Napoleon of Egypt,”) his savage son-in-law, Ahmet Bey, and his cruel and licentious daughter, Neslé-Hanoum, whose gloomy palace, into which so many successive lovers were drawn never to return, copied with terrible exactness the ghastly historical tragedy of Marguerite de Bourgoyne and her fatal Tour de Nesle. Any French novelist might envy the description given at page 37 of Neslé-Hanoum's cold-blooded poisoning of her confiding husband in order to calm the groundless fears of her stern old father, the only man whom she ever really loved. “The next day,” says our author, “she prepared a cup of the finest Mocha coffee and perfumed it with cinnamon, of which the Turk is very fond. Holding it to the lips of her husband, with her beautifully jeweled little hand, she with her sweetest smile asked him to drink it. Its aroma delighted him, and he swallowed it at a single draught. In a quarter of an hour the remedy had its effect, and the beautiful Princess was a widow.”

With the opening chapter of the Egyptian expedition against Abyssinia the best part of the work begins. Imperfectly known as the details of this famous crusade are to most Western readers, they acquire a double interest when related by a military critic who has himself taken part in the scenes which he describes. The celebrated “King John of Ethiopia,” although no longer the dazzling hero of romance who figures in Baron de Cosson's journal, stands out very strikingly as a vivid portrait of a dashing, fearless, iron-hearted Eastern warrior. The passing sketches of Abyssinian customs are at times exceedingly picturesque, and if we miss in some of the more stirring scenes the fire and energy of such artists as Motley and Washington Irving—whose battles may compare with those of any writer of our age from Thiers downward—we are to some extent indemnified by obtaining what not a few historians seem quite unable to give us, viz.: a tolerably clear idea of what actually happened.

The operations recorded by Gen. Loring may be briefly summarized as follows: The Khédive of Egypt 15 or 16 years ago took possession of the Bogos District (which lies between Abyssinia and the Red Sea) in order to secure his hold upon the forts of Massowah and Zeilah, which he had previously purchased from the Sultan of Turkey. Not content with this he sent out several expeditions under the leadership of foreign officers, ostensibly for purposes of trade, but really with the intention of facilitating fresh conquests in Abyssinia itself. Two of these detachments were attacked by the Abyssinians and cut off almost to a man. To avenge these disasters a strong Egyptian force advanced from Massowah in the end of 1875, under Ratib Pasha, whom our author energetically denounces as “one of the most cowardly and incapable of commanders,” and who certainly appears to have done all that combined timidity and ignorance could do to ruin the cause for which he fought. The few Abyssinians who joined them on their toilsome march south-westward into the interior—among whom was a noted chief named Weldo Mikaïl, the “Walad-El-Michael” of Mr. Forbes's “Chinese Gordon”—proved a hindrance rather than a help, while more than one excellent opportunity of striking a decisive blow was lost by the incapacity and disunion of the commanders. At length King John encountered them at Fort Gura with vastly superior forces, won a victory which was rendered easy by the helplessness of the Egyptian officers and the abject cowardice of their men, and virtually ended the campaign at one blow.

Gen. Loring's personal acquaintance with the ex-Khédive of Egypt, Arabi Pasha, and other leading actors in the Egyptian drama gives a special value to his estimate of them. He seems to agree with Dr. Russell, of the London Times, in crediting the ex-Khédive with considerable mental power, and speaks in very strong terms of the wrong which he conceives to have been done to the Egyptian ruler by the European bondholders and their champions. Tewfik, the present Khédive, is spoken of as good-natured and well-meaning, but not equal to his father. Arabi Pasha is summarized as “far superior to the majority of Arab officers in intelligence,” (which is perhaps not saying very much,) “reserved, and secluded, a man of thought, who took care to improve his opportunities, a fanatic in his close attention to the duties of his religion.” Of El Mahdi our author does not appear to think very highly, remarking, justly enough, that “success has had more to do with making him a real prophet than all the asceticism he has practiced.”

To the future of Egypt itself Gen. Loring devotes an entire chapter, speaking in glowing terms of the country's natural capabilities and the extent to which they might be developed by a competent Government. But his solution of this latter problem is an unexpected one indeed. After hearing him denounce with the utmost bitterness, not only in the body of his work but in the preface likewise, the “selfish, cruel policy” of England, it is somewhat startling to find him emphatically declaring (page 283) that “the only hope for Egypt, from the mouth of the Nile to its source, is that England should take possession and govern by her own laws.”

How the laws in question would be likely to suit a creature like the Arab “fellah” of Lower Egypt, sunk in ignorance and barbarism, bigotedly hostile to every form of progress and improvement, filthy as an Australian savage, and fanatical as a mediæval Spaniard, any one who has traversed the Nile Valley can judge for himself. But in this as in many other instances Europe is merely paying the penalty of former errors. The idea of English supremacy in Egypt is no novelty. It was the bribe wherewith the Czar Nicholas attempted to secure England's connivance at his designs upon Turkey in 1852. But the great opportunity of saving Egypt had been offered and neglected 13 years before. When Mehemet Ali arose against the Sultan in 1839, and his gallant son, Ibrahim Pasha, was marching unopposed through the heart of Asia Minor, chasing before him like dust the wrecks of Turkey's last army, the day of salvation came. Then was the time to take the right side instead of the wrong, allow the painted rottenness of Turkey to collapse at once and forever, and let Cairo supersede Constantinople as the metropolis of a new Moslem empire, peopled with the Arabs, who are the true heirs of Mohammed, and guided by the genius of the greatest man whom the East has produced for ages. But all these splendid prospects were blasted by England's superstitious devotion to the most worthless and brutal of all the disciples of Islam, the “unspeakable Turk,” whom she worshiped as ancient Egypt worshiped the beetle and the crocodile. The power which should have sided Mehemet Ali's grand crusade was employed to crush it, and years of misery and bloodshed may not avail to win back the priceless chance which that one day's madness flung away.

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