[p.xx]with notes and an Introduction, by George Percy Badger, late Government Chaplain in the Presidency of Bombay.  London.) On the other hand, I have inserted after the Appendix, with the permission of the author, two highly interesting communications from Dr. Aloys Sprenger, the well-known Orientalist and Arabist, concerning the routes of the Great Caravans.  My friend supports his suspicions that an error of direction has been made, and geographers will enjoy the benefit of his conscientious studies, topographical and linguistic.

The truculent attacks made upon pilgrims and Darwayshes call for a few words of notice.  Even that learned and amiable philanthropist, the late Dr. John Wilson of Bombay ("Lands of the Bible,” vol. ii., p. 302) alludes, in the case of the Spaniard Badia, alias Ali Bey al-Abbasi, to the “unjustifiable fanciful disguise of a Mohammedan Pilgrim.”  The author of the Ruddy Goose Theory ("Voice of Israel from Mount Sinai”) and compiler of the “Historical Geography of Arabia” has dealt a foul blow to the memory of Burckhardt, the energetic and inoffensive Swiss traveller, whose name has ever been held in the highest repute.  And now the “Government Chaplain” indites (Introduction, p. xxvii.) the following invidious remarks touching the travels of Ludovico di Varthema-the vir Deo carus, be it remarked, of the learned and laical Julius Caesar Scaliger: 

“This is not the place to discuss the morality of an act involving the deliberate and voluntary denial of what a man holds to be truth in a matter so sacred as that of Religion.  Such a violation of conscience is not justifiable by the end which the renegade (!) may have in view, however abstractedly praiseworthy it may be; and even granting that his demerit should be gauged by the amount of knowledge which he possesses of what is true and what false, the conclusion is inevitable, that nothing short of utter ignorance of the precepts of his faith, or a

[p.xxi]conscientious disbelief in them, can fairly relieve the Christian, who conforms to Islamism without a corresponding persuasion of its verity, of the deserved odium all honest men attach to apostasy and hypocrisy.”

The reply to this tirade is simply, “Judge not; especially when you are ignorant of the case which you are judging.”  Perhaps also the writer may ask himself, Is it right for those to cast stones who dwell in a tenement not devoid of fragility?  The second attack proceeds from a place whence no man would reasonably have expected it.  The author of the “Narrative of a Year’s Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia” (vol. i., pp. 258-59) thus expresses his opinions:-