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A WORK of very exceptional learning and research, casting, we think, a flood of new light on questions which have long been riddles, to the scholar, is Mr. Chappell's ". History of Music " (Vol. 1. Egypt to the Fanl of the Roman Empire: Chappell and Co.). The music of ancient Greece has by many been regarded as an impenetrable mystery. To study, indeed, the original authorities with any profit one should be at once musician, scholar, and mathematician. Moreover, we have been led astray by incompetent guides. Boethius, " possibly because he wrote in Latin," has been the source from which our chief musical historians have derived their information, and Boethius, unfortunately having no practical knowledge of music, did not even understand " whether a Greek scale began at the top or the bottom." That the Greek scale is the basis of oar own, and is essentially the same as the anoient Egvptian, and most probably, too, the Jewish and Chaldean, Mr. Chappell seems to prove conclusively; also that harmony in the modern technical sense and part-music were by no means unknown to the ancients, but figure in old Egyptian monuments, and are referred to in more than one passage from classical authors. On the musical instruments of Greece and Egypt-a point inseparably connected with the nature of the music itself-Mr. Chappell dwells at great length, and his excellent version of the very difficult descriptions of the hydraulic organ in Heron and Vitruvius will probably tn able most students to understand for the first time these very obscure passages. Mr. Chappell, in fact, whether reproving Burney for lax scholarship, or contending with Helmholtz on the theory of sound, seems armed at all points, and his book-undertaken, we may add, at the instance of the late Mr. Grote-is certainly one which no scholarly musician-we would even say no scholar at all-should venture to overlook. A pretty little volume of Miss Annie Carey, " The History of a Book" (Cassell, Petter, and Galpin) describes with much clearness and simplicity the various processes which books and newspapers pass through from the setting-up of the rough copy to the turning out of the new number or the binding of the completed volume. A glance is cast at everything, even at paper making and engraving, and there is a slight but fairly 'accurate survey of the stages by which we have mounted from the rude types of Gutenberg and the first screw press of Jansen Blaew to the Walter or Marinoni machines, and from the scanty gazettes of two centuries back to the double number of The Tinzes. To those who want a general idea of a field of labour in which human ingenuity has been more than ordinarily busy and successfiul, Miss Carey's succinct little narrative will be especially welcome. A neat edition of " Sheridan's Complete Works "...