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tent to make a proper selection of persons for such duties-and that in consequence of the want of a church establishment, both bigotry and infidelity are making alarming progress.

Note.

WE ventured to say, in the preceding article, that Captain Hall's book was calculated to do much good in America, provided the people of that country received the instruction it contains in the proper spirit; and our opinion that it would be so received in at least one extensive circle of American society, derives strong confirmation from a letter written by a gentleman of high standing in the United States, which is put into our hands as this sheet is passing through the press.

Captain Hall's Travels,' says the writer, have, of course, been reprinted here, and are, by this time, in the hands of every man, woman, and child in the country. Their political cast is the cause that an impartial judgment can hardly be formed upon them, as party spirit has seized upon the book, and marked it for her own. That spirit must be allowed time to subside, before a cool judgment can be obtained. For my part, my mind is taken up with other subjects than politics, and I have long since adopted the opinion of the poet:

"Aime l'Etat, tel que tu le vois être :
S'il est Royal, aime la Royauté;

S'il est de peu, ou bien Communauté,
Aime le aussi, car Dieu l'y a fait naître."

There is much sense in these lines, and I find that Captain Hall aime
la Royauté sufficiently; for my part it is natural I should be attached
to la Communauté; but, after all, these things are relative, and I do
not see why they should interrupt good humour between men. You
recollect, no doubt, the answer of the great Frederick of Prussia to
certain ministers of Neufchatel, who wanted some of their brethren to
be punished because they preached against the doctrine of eternal
punishments" Mes sujets de Neufchâtel ont le droit d'être damnés
aussi long temps qu'il leur plait." And so we have a right to be
mob-ruled, or priest-ruled, or king-ruled, as we think it most agree-
able. You also know the answer which a wife gives, in one of
Molière's plays, to one who wanted to prevent her husband from
beating her" Je veux être battue, moi!" But what is the best-
to be beaten or not to be beaten? I say, ask the back. To be serious
-the permanency of states, like the life of individuals, is, in my opinion,
the first thing to be considered. The constitution of a state, like that of
a man, after it is once formed, cannot, without danger-or, rather,
cannot materially be changed-but by death. It must, therefore, after
it has taken a certain root, at all events be allowed to remain. Some
constitutions are more liable to disease than others; that is a great
misfortune;

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misfortune; but all that is to be done is to cure the disease, or prevent it by an hygienic course. But the constitution is not to be tampered with. Nature will sometimes effect changes, but art cannot. The constitution of England is an example of this. Great changes have taken place in it; but always by the course of things-never by premeditated design. There are, no doubt, peccant humours in our constitution, as there are in others; nature will throw them off-(for the body is strong)-but in what manner it is impossible to foretell. Disturbances and revolutions are the diseases of states; we have no right to expect to be free from them, more than others--I hope they will not produce death.

But, be that as it may, opinion is a great and most powerful agent in political events, and it should have the greatest possible freedom. Therefore, far from putting to death, as the Athenians did, a foreigner who freely expresses his sentiments respecting our affairs, we ought to thank him, if it were only for making us think on these important subjects. That he should prefer his own form of government to ours is to be expected. He has a strong interest in the permanency of his own state, and, unless he be a disappointed or a discontented man, he loves what ensures safety to his person and property. The strength of this feeling is astonishing; I have known a Turkish subject, a native of Jerusalem, but a Christian, and, of course, a rayah or slave, who thought the Turkish form of government the best in the world.

"But," said to him, "a Turk may strike you and you cannot resent it." "Oh," answered he, "there's our glorious privilege. If a Turk insults me, I complain to the judge; he sends for the Turk, and says to him-What! you rascal, do you dare to insult a woman? (for you must know, sir, that we have the prerogatives of women, as the priests have in Christian countries;) and the Turk is reprimanded or punished as the case may be." I told him that I thought it was shocking they should cut off their sultans' heads without ceremony, "Oh," said he, "that's beautiful! Look at France, how much blood it has cost them to get rid of one sultan! We, on the contrary, cut off the head of our own at once, and no more is said about it; the tranquillity of the state is not disturbed."

To every objection I made to him, he answered in the same manner; and at last concluded by saying-" I would rather live in Jerusalem upon bread and water, than in your country upon the best that the land affords!". . Thus, also, the Spaniard boasts that the Inquisition has saved his country from the miseries of religious wars. For my part, I love the government under which I live, and I honour those who love their own-I don't except my poor Turk.'

ᎪᎡᎢ,

ART. VII-1. Narrative of a Journey from Constantinople to England. By the Rev. R. Walsh, LL.D., M.R.I.A. 12mo.

London.

1828.

2. Travels in Turkey, Egypt, Nubia, and Palestine, in 1824, 1825, 1826, and 1827. By R. R. Madden, Esq., M.R.C.S. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1829. 3. Travels to and from Constantinople, in the Years 1827 and 1828 or Personal Narrative of a Journey from Vienna, through Hungary, Transylvania, Wallachia, Bulgaria, and Roumelia, to Constantinople; and from that City to the Capital of Austria, by the Dardanelles, Tenedos, the Plains of Troy, Smyrna, Napoli di Romania, Athens, Egina, Poros, Cyprus, Syria, Alexandria, Malta, Sicily, Italy, Istria, Carniolia, and Styria. By Captain Charles Colville Frankland, R. N. 2 vols. 8vo. London. London. 1829.

4. Révolutions de Constantinople en 1807 et 1808, précédées d'Observations générales sur l'Etat actuel de l'Empire Ottoman. Par A. de Juchereau de Saint-Denys. Paris. 1819. N the state of tottering decay, towards which the Ottoman Empire has for some time past been progressing, and which, in the opinion of all men, is likely to terminate in a total dissolution, it is not surprising that a number of volumes treating on Turkish affairs should issue from the press; and among all that have fallen under our observation, we know not that we could pitch upon any one that contains a more clear, comprehensive, and, at the same time, concise description of the countries and people on which it treats, than the little unpretending duodecimo volume of Doctor Walsh. It is so perspicuously written that, even without the accompanying map, there would be no difficulty in following the author's footsteps; as little in comprehending his graphic descriptions; and we find no hesitation in acknowledging the justness of his observations, and in expressing our conviction of the correctness of his facts. A book like this is at all times valuable, and more particularly so at the present eventful period. His residence at Constantinople for several years as chaplain to the British embassy, and a journey from thence to England, afforded Dr. Walsh more favourable opportunities for collecting information with regard to the Turkish provinces, as well as some of the most important events which ever occurred in their capital, than fell to the lot of the other travellers, whose title-pages we have transcribed. These were merely casual visitors; with the exception, indeed, of the last on the list, who was resident in Constantinople at a most interesting period.

We

We do not feel that we could, with truth, pay a similar compliment to Mr. Madden's book. In it we at once perceive that the writer is ambitious to say smart things on trite occasions, and to convert every little incident into a perilous adventure; and these so frequently occur, that the reader, who expects a sober book of travels, will be apt to imagine that he has stumbled on a romance, full

of most disastrous chances,

Of moving accidents by flood and field,
Of hair-breadth 'scapes, &c.

For all this, indeed, he prepares us in his preface:-' It has been my fate,' says he, to have been taken for a spy in Syria-to have endangered my life in Candia, for refusing to administer poison to have been shot at in Canea twice, and once on the Nile, by Turkish soldiers-to have been accused of changing the fragments of a broken statue into gold at Thebes-to have been charged with sorcery in Nubia, for showing an old woman her own frightful image in a pocket mirror-and to have been a captive with Greek pirates, for wearing a long beard, when taken in a vessel bearing Turkish property.' If this gentleman descends into a Tomb of the Kings, the candle is sure to go out, and he is in danger of being lost in the subterranean chambers; if he ventures into a pyramid, the Arabs roll stones against the mouth of the passage, and he is in danger of being suffocated: these are the sort of hair-breadth 'scapes which other travellers, some of them women and children even, have run the same risk of encountering, without danger or molestation. This gentleman has besides the bad taste, to say nothing more, to sneer at Herodotus; because his description of the pyramids of Egypt, made four hundred years before Christ, does not correspond with their appearance eighteen hundred years after Christ. He also charges Bruce with habitually sacrificing veracity to vanity. On this particular point we would just hint to Mr. Madden, that vanity is not at all events the chief characteristic of Bruce's work; moreover, that vanity makes her appearance under a variety of shapes; and that the full-length portrait of the author in his Syrian costume,' stuck in front of the title-page of his own book, in the act of feeling the pulse of something like a lady's hand, is, perhaps, as strong an instance of it, as any that could be pointed out in the Abyssinian. On the present occasion, however, the painter has happily supplied a corrective well calculated to chasten personal conceit.

The volumes of Captain Colville Frankland are just such as we should have been led to expect from the pen of a naval officer; containing, in the form to which seamen are most accustomed,

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namely,

namely, that of a journal, plain matters of fact, told in plain language. It is nothing more, he tells us himself, than a simple relation of what he himself saw, heard, and felt.' His account of the defences of Constantinople, and particularly of the forts and castles of the Dardanelles, with the number and nature of their enormous pieces of ordnance, would have been interesting, if the Russians had not, by crossing the Balkan, rendered them useless for defence on the land side.

The work of Colonel A. de Juchereau de Saint-Denys contains a detailed account of the revolutions that took place in Constantinople, and of many of the horrors of which he was an eye-witness, in the years 1807 and 1808, when the most amiable, as far as a Turk can be amiable, and the best-intentioned of Turkish sultans, Selim, was deposed, and both he and his successors lost their lives, In this work will also be found some sensible observations on the state of Turkey, and its probable future destiny.

We have no intention of occupying the reader's time by a detailed description of the once splendid capital of the eastern empire, which has so often been described by travellers of all nations, and by none, perhaps, in more glowing colours and eloquent language, than by a modern Greek, as quoted by Gibbon. But, observes the historian, a sigh and a confession escape from the orator, that his wretched country was the shadow and sepulchre of its former self; that the works of ancient sculpture had been defaced by Christian zeal or barbaric violence; that the fairest structures were demolished; and the marbles of Paros or Numidia burnt for lime, or applied to the meanest uses. Of many a statue the place was marked by an empty pedestal; of many a column the size was determined by a broken capital; the tombs of the emperors were scattered on the ground; the stroke of time was accelerated by storms and earthquakes; and the vacant space was adorned, by vulgar tradition, with fabulous monuments of gold and silver.' He admits, however, that this fairest daughter of imperial Rome could not vie with the venerable beauties of the mother; that she could not say, matre pulchra filia pulchrior;' but he expatiates, says Gibbon,with zeal and truth on the eternal advantages of nature, and the more transitory glories of art and dominion which adorned, or had adorned, the city of Constantine.'

Alas! the eternal advantages of nature' are now nearly all that remain. The turreted walls, with the towers, palaces, churches, statues, aqueducts, cisterns, columns, fountains, baths, and hippodromes, have long been mouldering into decay, and many of them have altogether perished. But the superlative beauty of the situation of Constantinople can never perish, which, to use the words of Aaron Hill, bespeaks it built upon

the

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