were a dozen or more. I saw nothing like this after, not even in Egypt; for Djidda is an excellent government, both on account of its port, and its vicinity to Mecca; and Rustan Aga had a large establishment, and was something of a magnifico. He has the power of life and death. A word, a sign from him, and these men, who stand before you in an attitude so respectful, with an aspect so calm, so pale, would smile-and slay you!-Here I first saw the true scribe; well robed, and dressed in turban, trowsers, and soft slipper, like one of rank among the people: his inkstand with its pen-case has the look of a weapon, and is worn like a dagger in the folds of the sash; it is of silver or brass-this was of silver. When summoned to use it, he takes some paper out of his bosom, cuts it into shape with scissors, then writes his letter by dictation, presents it for approval; it is tossed back to him with a haughty and careless air, and the ring drawn off and and passed or thrown to him, to affix the seal. He does every thing on his knees, which are tucked up to serve him as a desk."-Scenes in Egypt, pp. 47-49.

They embark a third time, for Kosseir, and then proceed on camels across the Desert to Thebes. The following account of their progress is excellent-at once precise, picturesque, and poetical:

679

as the sun was beginning to give his rich colouring of golden yellow to the white pale sand, that as I was walking alone at some distance far ahead of my companions, my eyes bent on the ground, and lost in thought, their kind and directing shout made me stop, and raise my head, when lo! a green vale, looking through the soft mist of morning, rather a vision than a reality, lay stretched in its narrow length before me. hurried panting on, and gazed and were silent. In an hour we reached the village of Hejazi, situated The Land of Egypt! We on the very edge of the Desert. We alighted at a cool, clean serai, having its inner room, with a large and small bath for the Mussulmans' ablutions, its kiblah in the wall, and a large brimming watertrough in front for the thirsting camel. We walked forth into the fields, saw luxuriant crops of green bearded wheat, waving with its lights and shadows; stood under the shade of trees, saw fluttering and chirping birds; went down to a well and a waterwheel, and stood, like children, listening to the sound of the abundant and bright-flashing water. around, scattered individually or in small groups, as it fell from the circling pots; and marked all and camels too among them."-Ibid. pp. 80, 81. many people in the fields, oxen and asses grazing,

All this, however, is inferior to his first eloquent account of the gigantic ruins of Luxore, and the emotions to which they gave rise We know nothing, indeed, better, in its way, than most of the following passages:

propylon is a war-scene, much spoken of; but my eyes were continually attracted to the aspiring obelisks, and again and again you turn to look at them, with increasing wonder and silent admiration."— Ibid. pp. 86, 87.

"The road through the desert is most wonderful in its features: a finer cannot be imagined. It is wide, hard, firm, winding, for at least two-thirds of the way, from Kosseir to Thebes, between ranges of rocky hills, rising often perpendicularly on either side, as if they had been scarped by art; here, again, which consists of many separate structures, formerly "Before the grand entrance of this vast edifice, rather broken, and overhanging, as if they were united in one harmonious design, two lofty obelisks the lofty banks of a mighty river, and you travers- stand proudly pointing to the sky, fair as the daring ing its dry and naked bed. landlocked; now again you open on small valleys, glyphic characters which adorn them, are cut beautiNow you are quite sculptor left them. The sacred figures and hieroand see, upon heights beyond, small square towers. fully into the hard granite, and have the sharp finish It was late in the evening when we came to our You see them, as Cambyses saw them, when he ground, a sort of dry bay; sand, burning sand, with of yesterday. The very stone looks not discoloured. rock and cliff, rising in jagged points, all around-a stayed his chariot wheels to gaze at them, and the spot where the waters of ocean might sleep in still- Persian war-cry ceased before these acknowledged ness, or, with the soft voice of their gentlest ripple, symbols of the sacred element of fire.-Behind them lull the storm-worn mariner. The dew of the night are two colossal figures, in part concealed by the before had been heavy; we therefore pitched our sand; as is the bottom of a choked-up gateway, the tent, and decided on starting, in future, at a very base of a massive propylon, and, indeed, their own. early hour in the morning, so as to accomplish ourVery noble are all these remains; and on the march before noon. It was dark when we moved off, and even cold. Your camel is impatient to rise ere you are well seated on him; gives a shake, too, to warm his blood, and half dislodges you; marches rather faster than by day, and gives occasionally, a hard quick stamp with his callous foot. Our moon was far in her wane. She rose, however, about an hour after we started, all red, above the dark hills on our left; yet higher rose, and paler grew, till at last she hung a silvery crescent in the deep blue sky. "Who passes the desert and says all is barren, all lifeless? In the grey morning you may see the common pigeon, and the partridge, and the pigeon of the rock, alight before your very feet, and come upon the beaten camel-paths for food. They are tame, for they have not learned to fear, or to distrust the men who pass these solitudes. The camel-driver would not lift a stone to them; and the sportsman could hardly find it in his heart to kill these gentle tenants of the desert. The deer might tempt him; I saw but one; far, very far, he caught the distant camel tramp, and paused, and raised and threw back his head to listen, then away to the road instead of from it; but far ahead he crossed it, and then away up a long slope he fleetly stole, and off to some solitary spring which wells, perhaps, where no traveller, no human being has ever trod."Ibid. pp. 71-74.

The emerging from this lonely route is given with equal spirit and freshness of colouring.

"It was soon after daybreak, on the morrow, just

44

With a quick-beating heart, and steps rapid as village of Karnac, skirted it, and passing over loose my thoughts, I strode away, took the path to the sand, and, among a few scattered date trees, I found myself in the grand alley of the sphinxes, and directly opposite that noble gateway, which has been called triumphal; certainly triumph never passed under one more lofty, or, to my eye, of a more imposing magnificence. On the bold curve of its of fire, stretches forth long over-shadowing wings beautifully projecting cornice, a globe, coloured as of the very brightest azure. This wondrous and giant portal stands well; alone, detached a little way from the mass of the great ruins, with no columns, walls, or propylæa immediately near. slowly up to it, through the long lines of sphinxes I walked which lay couchant on either side of the broad road (once paved), as they were marshalled by him who planned these princely structures—we know not when. They are of stone less durable than granite: their general forms are fully preserved, but the detail of execution is, in most of them, worn away.In those forms, in that couched posture, in the delittle image between them, and the sacred tau graspcaying, shapeless heads, the huge worn paws, the ed in its crossed hands, there is something which you cannot err; you are on a highway to a heathen disturbs you with a sense of awe. In the locality

lightens labour, twenty centuries ago? or may it not have been carried with a sigh to the tiring-men of the temple by one who brought it to swathe the cold and stiffened limbs of a being loved in life, and mourned and honoured in his death? Yes, it is a relic; and one musing on which a warm fancy might find wherewithal to beguile a long and solitary walk."-Ibid. p. 100, 101.

temple; one that the Roman came, as you come, to visit and admire, and the Greek before him. And you know that priest and king, lord and slave, the festival throng and the solitary worshipper, trod for centuries where you do: and you know that there has been the crowding flight of the vanquished towards their sanctuary and last hold, and the quick trampling of armed pursuers, and the neighing of the war-horse, and the voice of the trumpet, and the We then returned across the plain to our boat, shout, as of a king, among them, all on this silent passing and pausing before the celebrated sitting spot! And you see before you, and on all sides, statues so often described. They are seated on ruins!-the stones which formed wells and square thrones, looking to the east, and on the Nile; in temple-towers thrown down in vast heaps; or still, this posture they are upwards of fifty feet in height; in large masses, erect as the builder placed them, and their bodies, limbs, and heads, are large, spreadand where their material has been fine, their sur-ing, and disproportioned. These are very awful faces and corners smooth, sharp, and uninjured by monuments. They bear the form of man; and time. They are neither grey nor blackened; like there is a something in their very posture which the bones of man, they seem to whiten under the touches the soul: There they sit erect, calm: sun of the desert. Here is no lichen, no moss, no They have seen generation upon generation swept rank grass or mantling ivy, no wall-flower or wild away, and still their stony gaze is fixed on man toil fig-tree to robe them, and to conceal their deformi-ing and perishing at their feet! 'Twas late and ties, and bloom above them. No;-all is the na- dark ere we reached our home. The day following kedness of desolation-the colossal skeleton of a we again crossed to the western bank, and rode giant fabric standing in the unwatered sand, in soli- through a narrow hot valley in the Desert, to the tude and silence." tombs of the kings. Your Arab catches at the head of your ass in a wild dreary-looking spot, about five miles from the river, and motions you to light. On every side of you rise low, but steep hills, of the most barren appearance, covered with loose and crumbling stones, and you stand in a narrow bridleravine; you would fancy that you had lost your path, which seems to be the bottom of a natural way; but your guide leads you a few paces forward, and "There are no ruins like these ruins. In the like the shaft of a mine. At the entrance, you obyou discover in the side of the hill an opening first court you pass into, you find one large, lofty, serve that the rock, which is a close-grained, but solitary column, erect among heaped and scattered soft stone, has been cut smooth and painted. He fragments, which had formed a colonade of one- lights your wax torch, and you pass into a long corand-twenty like it. You pause awhile, and then ridor. On either side are small apartments which move slowly on. You enter a wide portal, and find yourself surrounded by one hundred and fifty co-find covered with paintings: scenes of life faithfully you stoop down to enter, and the walls of which you lumns, on which I defy any man, sage or savage, represented; of every-day life, its pleasures and lato look unmoved. Their vast proportions the bet-bours; the instruments of its happiness, and of its ter taste of after days rejected and disused; but the still astonishment, the serious gaze, the thickening breath of the awed traveller, are tributes of an admiration not to be checked or frozen by the chilling rules of taste.

This we think is very fine and beautiful: But what follows is still better; and gives a clearer, as well as a deeper impression, of the true character and effect of these stupendous remains, than all the drawings and descriptions of Denon and his Egyptian Institute.

4

crimes! You turn to each other with a delight, not however unmixed with sadness, to mark how much the days of man then passed, as they do to this very hour. You see the labours of agriculture and the artist has playfully depicted a calf skipping -the sower, the basket, the plough; the steers;

"We passed the entire day in these ruins; each wandering about alone, as inclination led him. De-among the furrows. You have the making of bread, tailed descriptions I cannot give; I have neither the the cooking for a feast; you have a flower garden, skill or the patience to count and to measure. I as- and a scene of irrigation; you see couches, sofas, cended a wing of the great propylon on the west, chairs, and arm-chairs, such as might, this day, and sat there long. I crept round the colossal statues! adorn a drawing-room in London or Paris; you I seated myself on a fallen obelisk, and gazed up at have vases of every form down to the common jug, the three, yet standing erect amid huge fragments (ay! such as the brown one of Toby Philpot); you of fallen granite. I sauntered slowly round every have harps, with figures bending over them, and part, examining the paintings and hieroglyphics, others seated and listening; you have barks, with and listening now and then, not without a smile, to large, curious, and many-coloured sails; lastly, you our polite little cicerone, as with the air of a con- have weapons of war, the sword, the dagger, the descending savant, he pointed to many of the sym-bow, the arrow, the quiver, spears, helmets, and bols, saying, this means water,' and that means dresses of honour.-The other scenes on the walls land,' this stability,' that life.' and 'here is the represent processions and mysteries, and all the name of Berenice.'-Scenes in Egypt, pp. 88-92. "From hence we bade our guide conduct us to There is a small chamber with the cow of Isis, and apartments are covered with them or hieroglyphics. some catacombs; he did so, in the naked hill just there is one large room in an unfinished state,above. Some are passages, some pits; but, in gene- designs chalked off, that were to have been com. ral, passages in the side of the hill. Here and there pleted on that to-morrow, which never came!" you may find a bit of the rock or clay, smoothed and painted, or bearing the mark of a thin fallen coating of composition; but, for the most part, they are quite plain. Bones, rags, and the scattered limbs of skeletons, which have been torn from their coffins, stripped of their grave-clothes, and robbed of the sacred scrolls placed with them in the tomb, lie in or around these open sepulchres.' We found nothing; but surely the very rag blown to your feet is a relic. May it not have been woven by some damsel under the shade of trees, with the song

that

The central row have the enormous diameter of eleven French feet, the others that of eight.

Ibid. pp. 104-109.

But we must hurry on. We cannot afford to make an abstract of this book, and indeed can find room but for a few more specimens. He meets with a Scotch Mameluke at Cairo; and is taken by Mr. Salt to the presence of Ali Pacha. He visits the pyramids of course, describes rapidly and well the whole process of the visit and thus moralises the conclusion:

"He who has stood on the summit of the most ancient, and yet the most mighty monument of his

power and pride ever raised by man, and has looked out and round to the far horizon, where Lybia and Arabia lie silent, and hath seen, at his feet, the land of Egypt dividing their dark solitudes with a narrow vale, beautiful and green, the mere enamelled setting of one solitary shining river, must receive impressions which he can never convey, for he cannot define them to himself.

'It was near ten o'clock when the youth who led the way stopped before a small dark cottage in a by-lane of Nicolosi, the guide's he said it was, and hailed them. The door was opened; a light struck; and the family was roused, and collected They are the tombs of Cheops and Cephrenes, round me; a grey-headed old peasant and his wife; says the Grecian. They are the tombs of Seth and two hardy, plain, dark young men, brothers (one Enoch, says the wild and imaginative Arabian; an of whom was in his holiday gear, new breeches, English traveller, with a mind warmed, perhaps, and red garters, and flowered waistcoat, and clean and misled by his heart, tells you that the large py- shirt, and shining buttons ;) a girl of sixteen, handramid may have contained the ashes of the patriarch some; a mountain-girl beaten with winds,' lookJoseph. It is all this which constitutes the very ing curious, yet fearless and chaste as the har charm of a visit to these ancient monuments. You dened rock on which she dwelt ;' and a boy of smile, and your smile is followed and reproved by twelve, an unconscious figure in the group, fast a sigh. One thing you know-that the chief, and the slumbering in his clothes on the hard floor. Glad philosopher, and the poet of the times of old, men were they of the dollar-bringing stranger, but surwho mark fields as they pass with their own prised at the excellenza's fancy for coming at that mighty names,' have certainly been here; that Al-hour; cheerfully, however, the gay youth stripped exander has spurred his war-horse to its base; and off his holiday-garb, and put on a dirty shirt and Pythagoras, with naked foot, has probably stood thick brown clothes, and took his cloak and went upon its summit.-Scenes in Egypt, pp. 158, 159. to borrow a mule (for I found, by their consultation, that there was some trick, this not being the Cairo is described in great detail, and fre-regular privileged guide family. During his ab. quently with great feeling and eloquence. He sence, the girl brought me a draught of wine, and saw a live cameleopard there-very beautiful all stood round with welcoming and flattering and gentle. One of his most characteristic laughings, and speeches in Sicilian, which I did sketches, however, is that of the female slave not understand, but which gave me pleasure, and made me look on their dirty and crowded cottage market. as one I had rather trust to, if I knocked at it even without a dollar, than the lordliest mansion of the richest noble in Sicily.

"We stopped before the gate of a large building, and, turning, entered a court of no great size, with a range of apartments all round; open doors showFor about four miles, your mule stumbles along ed that they were dark and wretched. At them, or safely over a bed of lava, lying in masses on the before them, stood or sat small groups of female road; then you enter the woody region: the wood slaves; also from within these chambers, you might is open, of oaks, not large, yet good-sized trees, catch the moving eyes and white teeth of those who growing amid fern; and, lastly, you come out on a shunned the light. There was a gallery above with soft barren soil, and pursue the ascent till you find other rooms, and slave girls leaning on the rail-a glistering white crust of snow of no depth, cracklaughter, all laughter!-their long hair in numerous falling curls, white with fat; their faces, arms, and bosoms shining with grease. Exposure in the market is the moment of their joy. Their cots, their country, the breast that gave them suck, the hand that led their tottering steps not forgotten, but resigned, given up, as things gone for ever, left in another world. The toils and terrors of the wide desert, the hard and scanty fare, the swollen foot, the whip, the scalding tear, the curse; all, all are behind: hope meets them again here; and paints some master kind; some mistress gentle; some babe or child to win the heart of;-as bond-women they may bear a son, and live and die the contented inmates of some quiet harem."-Ibid. pp. 178, 179.

ing under your mule's tread; soon after, you arrive
at a stone cottage, called Casa Inglese, of which
my guide had not got the key; here you dismount,
and we tied up our mules close by, and scrambling
over huge blocks of lava, and up the toilsome and
slippery ascent of the cone, I sat me down on
ground all hot, and smoking with sulphureous
vapour, which has for the first few minutes the
effect of making your eyes smart, and water, of
oppressing and taking away your breath. It yet
wanted half an hour to the break of day, and I
wrapped my cloak close round me to guard me
from the keen air which came up over the white
cape of snow that lay spread at the foot of the
where I was seated.
smoking cone,

"The earliest dawn gave to my view the awful He does not think much of Ali's new Insti- crater, with its two deep mouths, from one whereof tute-though he was assured by one of the tu- there issued large volumes of thick white smoke, tors that its pupils were to be taught "every- pressing up in closely crowding clouds; and all thing!" We have learned, from unquestion-yellow-mouthed small cracks, up which came little, around, you saw the earth loose, and with crisped, able authority, that from this everything, all light, thin wreaths of smoke that soon dissipated in that relates to Politics, Religion, and Philoso- the upper air, &c.-And when you turn to gaze phy, is expressly excluded; and that little is downwards, and see the golden sun come up in proposed to be taught but the elements of the light and majesty to bless the waking millions of useful arts. There is a scanty library of Eu- your fellows, and the dun vapour of the night roll ropean books, almost all French,-the most wide ocean are seen as through a thin unearthly off below, and capes, and hills, and towns, and the conspicuous backed, "Victoires des Français; veil; your eyes fill, and your heart swells; all the -and besides these, "Les Liaisons Dange- blessings you enjoy, all the innocent pleasures you reuses!"—only one book in English, though find in your wanderings, that preservation, which not ill-chosen-"Malcolm's Persia." He was in storm, and in battle, and mid the pestilence was detained at Alexandria in a time of plague mercifully given to your half-breathed prayer, all and, after all, was obliged to return, when rush in a moment on your soul." Ibid. pp. 253-257. four days at sea, to land two sick men, and perform a new quarantine of observation.

There is an admirable description of Valetta, and the whole island-and then of Syracuse and Catania; but we can give only the night ascent to Etna-and that rather for the

The following brief sketch of the rustic auberges of Sicily is worth preserving, as well as the sentiment with which it closes:

"The chambers of these rude inns would please, at first, any one. Three or four beds (mere planks

upon iron trestles), with broad, yellow-striped, coarse mattresses, turned up on them; a table and chairs of wood, blackened by age, and of forms belonging to the past century; a daub or two of a picture, and two or three coloured prints of Madonnas and saints: a coarse table cloth, and coarser napkin; a thin blue-tinted drinking glass; dishes and plates of a striped, dirty-coloured, pimply ware; and a brass lamp with three mouths, a shape common to Delhi, Cairo, and Madrid, and as ancient as the time of the Etruscans themselves.

and refresh the sight with a view of earth and ocean. The view from the Belvidere, in the garden of St. Martino, close to the fortress of St. Elmo, is said to be unequalled in the world. I was walking along the cloister to it, when I heard voices behind me, and saw an English family-father, mother, with daughter and son, of drawing-room and university ages. I turned aside that I might not intrude on them, and went to take my gaze when they came away from the little balcony. I saw no features; but the dress, the gentle talking, and the quietude To me it had another charm; it brought Spain of their whole manner, gave me great pleasure. A before me, the peasant and his cot, and my chance happy domestic English family! parents travelling to billets among that loved and injured people. Ah! delight, improve, and protect their children; younger I will not dwell on it; but this only I will venture ones at home perhaps, who will sit next summer on to say, they err greatly, grossly, who fancy that the the shady lawn, and listen as Italy is talked over, Spaniard, the most patiently brave and resolutely and look at prints, and turn over a sister's sketchpersevering man, as a man, on the continent of book, and beg a brother's journal. Magically varied Europe, will wear long any yoke he feels galling is the grandeur of the scene the pleasant city; its and detestable."-Scenes in Egypt, pp. 268, 269. broad bay; a little sea that knows no storms; its garden neighbourhood; its famed Vesuvius, not The picture of Naples is striking; and re-looking either vast, or dark, or dreadful—all bright minds us in many places of Mad. de Staël's and smiling, garmented with vineyards below, and splendid sketches from the same subjects in its brow barren, yet not without a hue of that ashen Corrinne. But we must draw to a close now er slaty blueness which improves a mountain's aspect; and far behind, stretched in their full bold with our extracts; and shall add but one or forms, the shadowy Appenines. Gaze and go back, two more, peculiarly characteristic of the gen- English! Naples, with all its beauties and its tle mind and English virtues of the author. pleasures, its treasury of ruins, and recollections, and fair works of art; its soft music and balmy airs cannot make you happy; may gratify the gaze of taste, but never suit the habits of your mind. There are many homeless solitary Englishmen who might sojourn longer in such scenes, and be soothed by them; but to become dwellers, settled residents, would be, even for them, impossible."

"I next went into the library, a noble room, and a vast collection. I should much like to have seen those things which are shown here, especially the handwriting of Tasso. I was led as far, and into the apartment where they are shown. I found priests reading, and men looking as if they were learned. I was confused at the creaking of my boots; I gave the hesitating look of a wish, but I ended by a blush, bowed, and retired. I passed again into the larger apartment, and I felt composed as I looked around. Why life, thought I, would be too short for any human being to read these folios; but yet, if safe from the pedant's frown, one could have a vast library to range in, there is little doubt that, with a love of truth, and a thirsting for knowledge, the man of middle age, who regretted his early closed lexicon, might open it again with delight and profit. While thus musing, in stamped two travellers,-my countrymen, my bold, brave countrymen-not intellectual, I could have sworn, or Lavater is a cheat

Ibid. pp. 301-303.

We must break off here-though there is much temptation to go on. But we have now shown enough of these volumes to enable our readers to judge safely of their characterand it would be unfair, perhaps, to steal more from their pages. We think we have extracted impartially; and are sensible, at all events, that we have given specimens of the faults as well as the beauties of the author's style. His taste in writing certainly is not unexceptionable. He is seldom quite simple or natural, and sometimes very fade and affected. He "Pride in their port, defiance in their eye :"has little bits of inversions in his sentences, They strode across to confront the doctors, and and small exclamations and ends of ordinary demanded to see those sights to which the book verse dangling about them, which we often directed, and the grinning domestique de place led them. I envied them, and yet was angry with wish away-and he talks rather too much of them; however, I soon bethought me, such are the himself, and his ignorance, and humility, men who are often sterling characters, true hearts. while he is turning those fine sentences, and They will find no seduction in a southern sun! but laying traps for our applause. But, in spite back to the English girl they love best, to be liked of all these things, the books are very interestby her softer nature the better for having seen Italy, ing and instructive; and their merits greatly and taught by her gentleness to speak about it pleasingly, and prize what they have seen!-Such outweigh their defects. If the author has are the men whom our poor men like,-who are occasional failures, he has frequent felicities: generous masters and honest voters, faithful hus--and, independent of the many beautiful bands and kind fathers; who, if they make us smiled at abroad in peace, make us feared in war, and any one of whom is worth to his country far more than a dozen mere sentimental wanderers."

Ibid. pp. 296-298. "Always on quitting the museum it is a relief to drive somewhere, that you may relieve the mind

and brilliant passages which he has furnished for our delight, has contrived to breathe over all his work a spirit of kindliness and contentment, which, if it does not minister (as it ought) to our improvement, must at least disarm our censure of all bitterness.

(January, 1809.)

Letters from a late eminent Prelaie to one of his Friends. 4to. pp. 380. Kidderminster: 1808.