CHAPTER III. MORAL AND POLITICAL. Containing History, Voyages, Travels, Commerce, and Politics. TRAVE RAVELS in various countries of Europe, Asia and Africa. By Edward Daniel Clarke, L. L. D. Part II. Greece, Egypt, and the Holy Land. Sect. the first. 4to. The first volume of this series of travels we have already copied, and with considerable and deserved approbation. On commencing the present comprehensive undertaking, the author proposed to divide it into three portions, and the observa. tions made in Greece, Syria, and Egypt, were reserved for the second part, whether consisting of one or more than one volume. This plan is still pursued; but from the very perplexed state of the geography of the country alluded to by the word Syria, the author, in his second edition of the first volume, exchanged it for the less exceptionable appellation of Palestine. He has since, however, felt a similar perplexity as to the true geographical import of this latter term, and he has hence omitted both Palestine and Syria in favour of the Holy Land. We have copied so largely from these very instructive and agreeable travels in another department of our register, and have consequently afforded the reader so fair an opportunity of appreciating for himself the real amenity of the writer's manner, and facility of his style, that we shall content ourselves with merely pointing out the range to which our author's peregrinations extend, and the dif ferent countries and provinces they include. These are Constantino. ple; the plain of Troy, the district of Troas; a very interesting excur sion from the Hellespont to Rhodes; from Rhodes to the gulph of Glaucus in Asia Minor; from Asia Minor to Egypt; from Rosetta to Zaneca in Cyprus, together with a general description of Cyprus ; from Egypt to Syria; the Holy Land, occupying nearly the latter half of the volume, and forming one of the most instructive and agreeable histories of it we have met with since the days of Mr. Maundrel. The volume is well illustrated, and richly adorned with plates, maps, charts, and vignettes. "A Journey through Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor, to Constantinople, in the years 1808 and 1809; in which is included some account of his Majesty's mission under Sir Harford Jones, Bart, K.C. to the court of Persia. By James Morier, Esq. his Majesty's secretary of embassy to the court of Persia.” With engravings and maps. 4to. 31. 13s. 6d. Mr. Morier is an intelligent and modest traveller, active in inquiry, and perspicuous in his relation of facts; and the work before us is peculiarly marked with the characters of simplicity and truth. It is, however, in many parts deficient in interest, and bears evident internal as well as external proofs of its being written currente calame. Mr. Morier indeed was absent absent from England not much more than two years; having sailed from Portsmouth, as secretary to Sir Harford Jones, Oct. 27, 1807, and having landed at Plymouth Nov. 25, 1809. He reached Bombay towards the close of April 1808; arrived at Bushire Oct. 13, and at Teheran, the present capital of Per sia, Feb. 14, of the ensuing year. In this metropolis he resided about three months; when he left it for Constantinople on his return home, having reached the Turkish capital July 18, 1809. As we have copied somewhat at large from this production in another department of our register, we shall dismiss it, as we dismissed the last article, by referring our readers to the extracts in question for a specimen of Mr. Morier's style. Upon most points it is less full and satisfactory than that of Le Brun, Chardin, or Niebuhr; but he affords us some original mat ter of value in various cases, and especially in regard to the sculptures and ruins of Shapour. The plates are somewhat below mediocrity, and by no means keep pace with the splendour and costliness of the type and paper. "Voyages and Travels in the years 1809, 1810, and 1811: containing statistical, commercial, and miscellaneous observations on Gibraltar, Sardinia, Sicily, Malta, Serigo, and Turkey. By John Galt." 4to. 21. 2s. We cannot pay the same compliment of molesty, or even of intelligence to the present writer as we have just had a pleasure in paying to Mr. Morier. Mr. Galt, who may be a very good home manufacturer, makes sad work of it when he stumbles upon foreign trade and connexions, and does little less than rave when he qu'ts the warehouse, (as he has a Most unhappy itch for doing,) for the cabinet. We have, consequently, not been much enlightened by Mr. Galt's profound speculations, nor feel much disposed to join in his political ventures, notwithstanding that, mounted in the balloon of his own conceit, and taking an extensive survey of the chequered scenery beneath him, he has oracularly observed, that "in every thing that relates to mercantile concerns, all our treaties have hitherto been singular monuments of ficial ignorance and presumption. It is wonderful that men versed ouly in files and precedents, should still have the arrogance to suppose themselves capable of arranging matters, of which, from their education, they can have little knowledge." To do justice, however, to the self-confidence and sanguine temper of this mercantile politician, we will just inform our readers, that he has not confined himself to pulling down systems, but bas in various instances attempted to build up others in their stead: as speci mens of which we may observe, that whilst, with many hard and uncourteous words, he abuses Sir William Drummond for his inac-tive diplomacy in Sicily, he strongly exhorts the British ministry to tie up the hands of all our friends in the Sicilian kingdom, and to prohibit them from importing colonial produce of any kind, excepting by British ships and from British colonics; and he shrewdly persuades himself that "the present circumstances of our connexion with this island, might justify so friendly and liberal an intervention," and in the same bold spirit of mercantile negociation, he tells us, that to him the fortress of Gibraltar had no visible grandeur, and was of very questionable value, till he dreamed of the bright idea of levying a toll upon the the vessels of all the free nations of the world in their passing into and out of the Mediterranean, of the same nature as the Sound duty paid to Denmark. Now, with all possible admiration of the towering genius that could hit upon such sub lime expedients for filling the national treasury, and exalting the national character, we have some qualms of conscience whether we ought to adopt Mr. Galt's new systein of foreign taxation and imposition; and whether admitting the justice of the case, the world would very readily bend to so brilliant a suggestion. It may possibly be adapted to the meridian of the Thuilleries, but, if applied to the straight line of good old politics of St. James's, we are afraid it would conduct us (to borrow a word or two from Mr. Galt himself,) into a labyrinthical turning, from which we should not very clearly see our way out again. "Travels in Greece, Palestine, Egypt, and Barbary, during the years 1800 and 1807. By A. F. de Chateaubriand. Translated by Frederick Schoberl." 2 vols. 8vo. 11. The present traveller is well known as an adventurer of great intrepidity, and a poet of no vulgar imagination. In the latter character we have already introduced him to the notice of our readers; and we have now to observe, that the travels before us evince a highly figurative style, and ardent fancy. M. Chateaubriand arrived at Venice from France, July 23, 1906. On the 10th of August he landed at Modon; whence he travelled by land to Coron; he visited the ruins of Sparta, and successively Athens, Smyrna, and Constantinople: he afterwards sailed to Jaffa, where he landed, and from whence he reached Jerusalem: he afterwards re turned to Jaffa, and from that port sailed for Alexandria in Egypt; he visited Cairo, but not the pyramids; touched at Tunis to contemplate the ruins of Carthage; passed through Spain, and arrived in France by the road of Irun and Bayonne, May 3, 1807. There is a considerable fund of entertainment, and a variety of strong and original remarks in these volumes. They are somewhat hastily translated, and the translator, sensible of these defects, offers in due form a general apology for them. It would have been handsomer, however, to have withheld both the apology and its cause. Our traveller gives evident proofs that he is a good judge of national character; he speaks fechingly of the good English diet of roast-beef and honest port, which he tell us, with much personal gratification, has found its way over a great part of the Morea. "There are always," says he, "some Englishmen to be met with on the roads of the Peloponnese: the papas informed me that they had lately seen some antiquaries and officers of that nation. At Minitra there is even a Greek house called the English Inn, where you may eat roast beef, and drink port vine. In this particular the traveller is under great obligations to the English: it is they who have established good inns all over Europe; in Italy, in Switzerland, in Germany, in Spain, at Constantinople, at Athens, nay even at the very gates of Sparta, in despite of Lycurgus." The following is a better, and still more humourous pourtraiture · of his own countrymen: the national character cannot be extinguished. "Our seamen have a saying, that in founding new colonies, the Spaniards tegin with building a church, the Iroquois, To your places! and the whole troop fell a capering like a band of demons. Such," adds our traveller, "is the genius of nations !" "Letters on the Nicobar Islands; their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives; with an account of an attempt made by the church of the United Brethren to convert them to Christianity Addressed by the Rev. John Gothfried Haensel (the only surviving missionary) to the Rev.C.J. Latrobe," 8vo. The Nicobar Islands are situated at the entrance of the bay of Bengal, in 8o N. lat. and 94° E. long. Ñ. of Sumatra, and by their position form various commodious harbours. The letters before us, which are eight in number, contain a narration of the many unsuccessful though benevolent attempts of the church of the United Brethren, to increase their establishments: and the writer, who is an old and highly esteemed chiet the English a tavern, and the French a fort; and, I would add, a ball room. When I was in America, in the frontiers of the country of the savages, I was informed, that in the next day's journey I should meet with a countryman of mine among the Indians. On my arrival among the Cayougas, a tribe belonging to the Iroquois nation, my guide conducted me into a forest. In the midst of this forest stood a kind of barn, in which I found about a score of savages, of both sexes, bedaubed like conjurers, with their bodies half-naked, their ears cut into figures, raven's feathers on their beads, and rings passed through their nostrils. A little Frenchman, powdered and frizzled in the oldfashion, in a pea-green coat, a drugget waistcoat, muslin frill and ruffles, was scraping away on his kit, and making these Iroquois dance to the tune of Madelon Friquet. M. Violet, for that was his name, followed the profession of dancing-tain in the missionary service, demaster among the savages, by whom he was paid for his lessons in beaver-skins, and bear's hams. He had been a scullion in the service of General Rochambeau, during the American war; but remaining at New York after the return of the French army, he resolved to give the Americans instructions in the fine arts. His views baving enlarged with his success, this new Orpheus resolved to introduce civilization even among the roving hordes of the new world. In speaking to me of the Indians, he always styled themes messieures sauvages, and ces dames sauvages. He be stowed great praise on the agility of his scholars, and in truth never did I witness such gambols in my life. M. Violet, holding his fiddle between his chin and his chest, tuned the fatal (quere irresistible) instrument; he then cried out in voted seven years to this station, out of thirty-eight, which have been occupied in the duties of this arduous profession; and after suffering numberless hardships and dangerous illnesses, is still, as we are informed, a most active, cheerful, and zealous labourer in the same pious cause, at the age of sixty-three. The mission before us was originally undertaken in 1758, at the wishes of his Danish Majesty, under whose auspices a commercial establishment, instituted by the Danish East-India Company in 1756, but soon afterwards abandoned, was intended as speedily as possible to be renewed. The missionaries reached Tranquebar in July 1760, but the new establishment on the Nicobar islands was not formed till 1760, when six of the confraternity immediately repaired thither and settled at Naucanwery. The Danish East India company were soon compel led, by the mortality among their servants and colonists, to abandon their project of a factory. After sustaining great hardships and difficulties, partly arising from the unhealthiness of the climate, and partly from the precarious and inadequate means of communication with Tranquebar for supplying the necessaries of life, the surviving missionaries at length finally abandoned the attempt in 1787 without having been able to master the scanty but difficult language of the country, and without any proofs of that success in the prosecution of their benevolent labours which might have consoled them upon their close. The superintendance of this melancholy duty fell upon Mr. Haensal, who, in taking a final leave of the island, had to abandon the graves of eleven of his brethren. My last farewell," says he, "with the inhabitants who had flocked to me from all the circumjacent islands, was very affecting. They wept and howled for grief, and begged that the brethren might soon return to them. We always enjoyed their esteem and love, and they do not deserve to be classed with their ferocious neighbours the Malays; being in general kind and gentle in their dispositions, except when roused by jealousy or other provocations, when their uncontroled passions will lead them into excesses as some of the Danish soldiers ex perienced We always found them ready to serve us. "An Account of the Gold Coast of Africa, with a brief History of the African Company. By Henry Meredith, Esq. Member of the Council, and Governor of Winne bah Fort," Svo. Mr. Meredith is rather a practical than a scientific observer of the men, the manners, and the country he describes; we have hence but little of natural or moral history, the character of the natives are not very deeply or extensively studied, nor the produc tions of the soil, or the different kinds of native animals brought very minutely, or in any methodic arrangement before us. His observations, however, as built upon facts and personal knowledge, are valuable so far as they go, and his opinions are certainly entitled to respect. The work is addressed to the members of the African institution; and its chief object is to prove that the gold coast of Africa possesses advantages equal or superior to the West India islands for the growth of West India produce. Yet the question of cui bono still returns; for of late years at least the West Indies have sent such a surplus of harvest to the mother country as to reduce the price of the different articles so low as to make the trade, in almost every instance, a losing concern. We are, therefore, in no want of additional settlements for the growth of West Indian produce; and if we were, the islands we at present possess might be cultivated more extensively than they have hitherto been, and the tracts in actual cultivation might be rendered far thriftier. The climate of the Gold Coast, according to the description before us, appears to have an advantage in general temperature, the usual degree of heat in the hottest months being from eighty-five to ninety degrees of Fahrenheit at Cape Coast Castle, which is esteem, ed the hottest part of the coast; while at Sierra Leone and at Sene. gal it rises to ninety-three and ninety-eight; but this advantage seems to be totally lost in the savage and warlike temper of the native tribes, which must for some centuries render an extensive line. of coast settlement extremely doubt ful |