This is no narrative of travel, though evidently written by one who has been for a considerable time an eyewitness of Indian affairs, and by a man of acute mind and quick and comprehensive perception, thoroughly versed in the history and condition of India.

This is not what is commonly called mémoires,to wit, historical recollections modified by the subjective impressions of eyewitnesses to the past; it is rather a novel or romance in the form of mémoires, ridiculing the predominant bourgeoisie of the Old World, and sketching the whole life of a bourgeois, from infancy to green old age.

William Philips Simms, an eyewitness with the Canadian forces, gave a graphic account of the attack, which was typical of much of the fighting on the Somme.