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312 SHORT NOTICES April dominion's alleged inherent right to secede (p. 168) ; he estimates highly the value of royal visits (p. 46) ; attaches importance to the oversea sentiment against titles and decorations (p. 285) ; and does not regret the rising feeling against the continuance of appeals to the judicial com- mittee of the privy council (p. 288). The saddest feature of his story is the recrudescence since the war of a narrow and acrid nationalism in almost every quarter of Greater Britain. The book is one of the British series of war monographs published on behalf of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and, like other volumes of the same origin, is handsomely bound and printed. G. B. H. The first edition of Sir Percy Sykes's History of Persia was published in 1915 ; that a second edition (London : Macmillan, 1921) should be called for within the short period of six years is sufficient testimony to the appreciation which this work has received. The second edition has been revised throughout, but it is unfortunate that the author has not obtained the assistance of some orientalist who would have set right the numerous instances of the misspelling of Arabic words scattered through- out the volume. It differs from the first edition mainly in the addition of eight more chapters, carrying on the story of Persia from January 1907 to 1920. Sir Percy Sykes was himself an eyewitness of much that happened in Persia during these recent years, for early in 1916 he was placed in command of a British mission, the object of which was to create a force for the restoration of law and order in the South of Persia. Of the stirring incidents with which he was himself concerned, he gives a vivid and interesting account, and his evidence, as that of an experienced eye- witness, is of great value. But much more material must be made available before a definitive record can be written of events so recent, and the future historian will naturally wish to consult the narrations of other European observers, and study the accounts that Persian annalists may have to give of the last two reigns of the Kajar dynasty. Consequently, from the very nature of the case, the latter chapters of Sir Percy Sykes's book are hardly in keeping with the rest of his account of a country whose history he traces back to so remote a period as 3000 B. c., with the use of sources that have frequently been submitted to critical study. But Sir Percy Sykes's History of Persia is likely to remain for some time the standard work on the subject, and it supplies a continuous record of the troubled annals of this country, such as is not otherwise available in English or in any other European language. T. W. A. Among Indian civil servants of the nineteenth century none devoted himself less sparingly to historical studies than did Captain J. C. Grant Duff, resident at Satara in 1818, in collecting materials and compiling his History of the Makrattas. This book took eight years of such voluntary work as most men would refuse if highly paid : ' I wrote the greater part . . . when otherwise working twelve and fourteen hours daily without intermission ', and often, as he adds, ' with wet cloths girt about my head ', and kept this labour up throughout a sleepless night in some cases, and this in an Indian climate ! He had the reward so familiar in imperial history : ' I lost upwards