LIFE OF MAJOR-GENERAL SIR R. MURDOCH SMITH.
Life of Major General Sir Robert Murdoch Smith. By W. R. Dickson. (W. Blackwood and Sons. 15s. net.)—R. M. Smith had the opportunity which has been given to not a few men of late. As Woolwich could not supply the demand made by the Crimean War, commissions were offered to general competition. In August, 1855, he came out first of a list of three hundred and eighty candidates, the second being C. W. (now Major-General Sir Charles) Wilson. To the Crimea, however, he did not go. His first service was to accompany the expedition to excavate Halicarnassus, which started in October, 1856. He was in command of the party of sappers. (He was then in his twenty- second year.) About a third of the volume is given to a narrative of the exploration, very conveniently, as the costly volumes in which the official account is given are not easily accessible. The results were conspicuously successful. The knowledge acquired was great, and the material gains in works of art very large. (We cannot, however, accept the statement that "Greek art was in its zenith when the Mausoleum was erected.") In 1860 he went on his own account to expl )re the Cyrenaica. The Government gave him leave, but not muth else. After this came work in . the Fortifications Department of the War Office, and then the chief employment of his life, the Persian Telegraph. His connection with Persia lasted for many years, and resulted in great benefits to that country and to this. Unhappily it brought about heavy family losses. His wife died in 1883, and he lost six out of his eight children. His own courage under these troubles and the burden of ill-health was unfailing. He retired from the Army in 1887, and shortly afterwards resigned his directorship in the Telegraph Company. The remainder of his life he spent in Edinburgh in a variety of voluntary services to the city and, we may say, to the nation. This is the well-told record of a useful and honourable career.
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