T he substance of this collection of Miss Woolson's sketches of travel in the Mediterranean originally appeared in Harper's Magazine . "At Mentone" was published in that periodical in 1884; "Cairo in 1890," and "Corfu and the Ionian Sea," appeared in 1891 and 1892. As presented in this volume, the two sketches last mentioned contain much interesting material not included in their original form as magazine articles....

I t is of no consequence why or how we came to Mentone. The vast subject of health and health resorts, of balancings between Torquay and Madeira, Algeria and Sicily, and, in a smaller sphere, between Cannes, Nice, Mentone, and San Remo, may as well be left at one side while we happily imitate the Happy-thought Man's trains in Bradshaw, which never "start," but "arrive." We therefore arrived. Our party, formed not by selection, or even by the survival of the fittest (after the ocean and Channel),

"T CONTEMPORARY PORTRAIT OF CLEOPATRA On the wall of the Temple at Denderah.—From a photograph by Sebah, Cairo. HE way to Egypt is long and vexatious"—so Homer sings; and so also have sung other persons more modern. A chopping sea prevails off Crete, and whether one leaves Europe at Naples, Brindisi, or Athens, one's steamer soon reaches that beautiful island, and consumes in passing it an amount of time which is an ever-fresh surprise. Crete, with its long coast-line and soaring mountain-tops,

N ot long before Christmas, last year, I found myself travelling from Ancona down the Adriatic coast of Italy by the fast train called the Indian Mail. There was excitement in the very name, and more in the conversation of the people who sat beside me at the table of a queer little eating-house on the shore, before whose portal the Indian Mail stopped late in the evening. We all descended and went in. A dusky apartment was our discovery, and a table illuminated by guttering candles that flared i