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 :—

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. The Land of Egypt! We hurried panting on, and gazed and were silent. In an hour we reached the village of Hejazi, situated 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, as it fell from the circling pots; and marked all around, scattered individually or in small groups, many people in the fields, oxen and asses grazing, and camels too among them."-Ibid. pp. 80, 81.

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:

"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 which consists of many separate structures, formerly "Before the grand entrance of this vast edifice, side, as if they had been scarped by art; here, again, united in one harmonious design, two lofty obelisks rather broken, and overhanging, as if they were 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. Now you are quite sculptor left them. The sacred figures and hierolandlocked; now again you open on small valleys, fully into the hard granite, and have the sharp finish glyphic characters which adorn them, are cut beautiand see, upon heights beyond, small square towers. It was late in the evening when we came to our of yesterday. The very stone looks not discoloured. ground, a sort of dry bay; sand, burning sand, with You see them, as Cambyses saw them, when he 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 lull the storm-worn mariner. The dew of the night sand; as is the bottom of a choked-up gateway, the ness, or, with the soft voice of their gentlest ripple, symbols of the sacred element of fire.-Behind them are two colossal figures, in part concealed by the before had been heavy; we therefore pitched our tent, and decided on starting, in future, at a very-Very noble are all these remains; and on the base of a massive propylon, and, indeed, their own. early hour in the morning, so as to accomplish our march before noon. It was dark when we moved propylon is a war-scene, much spoken of; but my off, and even cold. Your camel is impatient to rise eyes were continually attracted to the aspiring obeere you are well seated on him; gives a shake, too, lisks, and again and again you turn to look at them, to warm his blood, and half dislodges you; marches with increasing wonder and silent admiration." rather faster than by day, and gives occasionally, a Ibid. pp. 86, 87. 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 travelier, 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

With a quick-beating heart, and steps rapid as my thoughts, I strode away, took the path to the village of Karnac, skirted it, and passing over loose 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 under one more lofty, or, to my eye, of a more imcalled triumphal; certainly triumph never passed posing magnificence. On the bold curve of its beautifully projecting cornice, a globe, coloured as of fire, stretches forth long over-shadowing wings 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. I walked slowly up to it, through the long lines of sphinxes 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 de caying, shapeless heads, the huge worn paws, the little image between them, and the sacred tau grasp ed in its crossed hands, there is something which disturbs you with a sense of awe. In the locality you cannot err; you are on a highway to a heathen

temple; one that the Roman came, as you come, to lightens labour, twenty centuries ago? or may it visit and admire, and the Greek before him. And not have been carried with a sigh to the tiring-mes you know that priest and king, lord and slave, the of the temple by one who brought it to swathe the festival throng and the solitary worshipper, trod for cold and stiffened limbs of a being loved in life, and centuries where you do: and you know that there mourned and honoured in his death? Yes, it is a has been the crowding flight of the vanquished to-relic; and one musing on which a warm fancy might wards their sanctuary and last hold, and the quick find wherewithal to beguile a long and solitary trampling of armed pursuers, and the neighing of the walk."-Ibid. p. 100, 101. war-horse, and the voice of the trumpet, and the "We then returned across the plain to our bost, 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, spread and where their material has been fine, their suring, 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, "There are no ruins like these ruins. In the like the shaft of a mine. At the entrance, you oband you 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 oneand-twenty like it. You pause awhile, and then ridor. On either side are small apartments which lights your wax torch, and you pass into a long cormove slowly on. You enter a wide portal, and find you stoop down to enter, and the walls of which you yourself surrounded by one hundred and fifty co- find covered with paintings: scenes of life faithfully 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.

"We passed the entire day in these ruins; each wandering about alone, as inclination led him. Detailed descriptions I cannot give; I have neither the skill or the patience to count and to measure. I ascended a wing of the great propylon on the west, and sat there long. I crept round the colossal statues! I seated myself on a fallen obelisk, and gazed up at the three, yet standing erect amid huge fragments of fallen granite. I sauntered slowly round every part, examining the paintings and hieroglyphics, and listening now and then, not without a smile, to our polite little cicerone, as with the air of a condescending savant, he pointed to many of the symbols, saying, this means water,' and that means land, this stability,' that life.' and 'here is the name of Berenice.'-Scenes in Egypt, pp. 88-92.

From hence we bade our guide conduct us to Bome catacombs; he did so, in the naked hill just above. Some are passages, some pits; but, in general, passages in the side of the hill. Here and there 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.

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;
among the furrows. You have the making of bread,
the cooking for a feast; you have a flower garden,
and a scene of irrigation; you see couches, sofas,
chairs, and arm-chairs, such as might, this day,
adorn a drawing-room in London or Paris; you
have vases of every form down to the common jug,
(ay! such as the brown one of Toby Philpot); you
have harps, with figures bending over them, and
others seated and listening; you have barks, with
large, curious, and many-coloured sails; lastly, you
bow, the arrow, the quiver, spears, helmets, and
have weapons of war, the sword, the dagger, the
dresses of honour.-The other scenes on the walls
represent processions and mysteries, and all the
There is a small chamber with the cow of Isis, and
apartments are covered with them or hieroglyphics.
there is one large room in an unfinished state,-
designs chalked off, that were to have been com
pleted on that to-morrow, which never came !

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 lun

power and pride ever raised by man, and has looked | scene of the Sicilian cottage, than for the out and round to the far horizon, where Lybia and sketch of the mighty mountain :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.

44

"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 harcharm 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 "For about four miles, your mule stumbles along a range of apartments all round; open doors showed 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; Bome 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 smoking cone, where I was seated.

"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- vellow-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 off below, and capes, and hills, and towns, and the ropean books, almost all French,-the most wide ocean are seen as through a thin unearthly 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. 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 Light ascent to Ætna-and that rather for the

Ibid. pp. 253-257.

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, I and refresh the sight with a view of earth and ocean 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.

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 universty ages. I turned aside that I might not intrude a them, and went to take my gaze when they cam away from the little balcony. I saw no features; but the dress, the gentle talking, and the quierade 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 billets among that loved and injured people. Ah! delight, improve, and protect their children; yourga I will not dwell on it; but this only I will venture ones at home perhaps, who will sit next summer ea 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; 8 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 aira cannot make you happy; may gratify the gaze of taste, but never suit the habits of your mind. I here 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 1 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 thirst. ing 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 unexcep tionable. 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 directed, and the grinning domestique de place led verse dangling about them, which we often 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 i 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 and brilliant passages which he has furnished at abroad in peace, make us feared in war, and any for our delight, has contrived to breathe over de of whom is worth to his country far more than all his work a spirit of kindliness and contenta dozen mere sentimental wanderers." ment, which, if it does not minister (as it ought) to our improvement, must at least disarm our censure of all bitterness.

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

(January, 1809.)

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