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Licence applies to this document. From Edinburgh Review volume 30, June 1818, p. 140-172 The A Question of Style project's aim is to gain new insights on the writing and
editorial practices of the Edinburgh Review during the editorship of Francis Jeffrey.
The Edinburgh Review was the main literary journal in early nineteenth-century
Britain. It reviewed the most significant publications in literature, history,
politics and science and its contributors included some of the most prominent figures
of the age. Authors believed that a review from the Edinburgh Review could make or
break the fortunes of a publication. Style focuses on the period 1814-1820 and
employs methods from periodical studies, book history, computational linguistics and
computational stylistics. It was awarded the inaugural Field Development Grant by the
Research Society for Victorian Periodicals from the bequest of the Eileen Curran
estate. Manual curation assisted by semi-automated scripts. All soft end of line hyphenations within a page have been removed, and the word
consolidated on its first line. Associated punctuation moved too. Where a word breaks over a page, the page break has been recorded with the
None - we need the original spellings. Has been retained, with superfluous surrounding spaces removed. All quotation marks converted to their simple equivalent, prime or double prime
accordingly. Marks that begin each line of a multi-line quotation have been removed. Marks within Punctuation within quotations is recorded inside block THE object of this work is to trace the progress of Europe
from the middle of the fifth to the end of the fifteenth
century; from the establishment of Clovis in Gaul, to the invasion
of Italy by Charles VIII.; from the final settlement of
the Barbarians in the Western empire, to the consolidation of
It would be difficult to appreciate exactly the merits, and invidious
to point out the defects, of the numerous precursors of
Mr. Hallam in this branch of historical investigation. It is sufficient
to remark, that the plan of his work is more extensive
than that of our countryman Dr. Robertson, its arrangement
more strictly historical, its views more comprehensive, and its
information more copious and critical. Mr. Hallam appears to
have bestowed much time and reflection on his subject. He
has availed himself, without scruple, of the labours of those who
had preceded him in the same career; but he has not servilely
adopted their opinions, nor carelessly copied their errors. On
every disputable point he has exercised his judgment freely,
and examined the conclusions of his predecessors with diligence
and impartiality. But, though he has not disdained the aid of
modern abridgments, he has not trusted implicitly to the extracts
of compilers and system makers. On the contrary, he
appears to have had recourse habitually to the original authors,
who describe the transactions and exhibit the sentiments of their
own age. This, it must be owned, is often an ungrateful labour.
Many pages must sometimes be perused of these worthies,
before a single fact or observation occurs that repays the
toil. But to an historian of the present day, who wishes to be
imbued with the real spirit and feeling of ages that are past,
the study of their writings is indispensable. To a familiar acquaintance
with the early chronicles and original histories of
the Barbarians, Mr. Hallam has added a diligent examination
of their laws; and wherever records throw their steady
and certain light on the progress of events, he has consulted
them with care. But it is not the labour and industry employed
by Mr. Hallam in the composition of his work, nor even the
valuable and interesting information it contains, that constitute
its chief or peculiar merit. It is written throughout with a spirit
of freedom and liberality, that do credit to the author. A
firm but temperate love of liberty, an enlightened but cautious.
philosophy, form its distinguished excellence. We never find
the author attempting to palliate injustice. or excuse oppression:
To give a full analysis of Mr. Hallam's labours, in the short
compass of a review, would be a task impossible to execute.
To those who wish to follow the progress of Europe from rudeness
to refinement,-from turbulence and violence to order and
tranquillity,—from poverty and ignorance to wealth and knowledge,
we recommend his book as one of the most valuable additions
made in our time to the stock of our historical information.
We must content ourselves with a short notice of the
principal subjects which he treats, giving extracts to show the
spirit in which he writes, and occasionally interspersing observations
of our own on particular points where we think him
mistaken, or happen to differ from him in opinion. The first chapter of Mr. Hallam's book is employed in giving
an abridgment of the history of France, from its conquest by
Clovis to the invasion of Naples by Charles VIII. This is a
rapid but masterly sketch of the revolutions of that great kingdom.
The principal events are selected with judgment, and related
with spirit. It was no part of the author's plan to follow,
with minute and tedious exactness, the succession of princes, or
to expatiate on undecisive wars and fruitless victories. His object
was, to mark those important events which led to permanent
changes in the internal state and political institutions of
France. He passes slightly over the degradation and deposal
of the first dynasty; dwells with complacence on the splendid
character of Charlemagne; describes the anarchy that led to the
usurpation of the Capets; and traces with precision the successive
encroachments by which the princes of that ambitious family
gradually extended their dominions and increased their
power, till the feudal constitution, of which they were at first
only the superior lords, disappeared from sight, and left an absolute
and arbitrary monarchy in its place. In his review of
the Capetian race, Mr. Hallam bestows that eulogy on St. Lewis
which his solitary virtue so justly merits. The wars with England, arising from the claim of Edward
III. to the French crown, occupy a considerable part of this
abridgment, and are related with great fairness and candour.
The magnificent character of Edward and his son, the splendour
of their victories, and the chivalrous spirit of their court,
are themes that still warm the imagination, and excite no unnatural
exultation in every English bosom. Charles V. of France, having expelled the English, We have no hesitation in condemning, with Mr. Hallam, the
pretension of Edward III. to the Crown of France. The
claim of Philip had been recognised by the States and people
of France, and confirmed by his peaceable possession of the
throne for several years. He had been guilty of no errors of
government, or encroachments on his subjects' rights, that
could justly absolve them from their allegiance. Whether he was
the nearest heir to the preceding monarch or not, seems to us,
in these circumstances, a matter of mighty indifference. He
had the best of all titles, the willing acquiescence of his subjects,
and their firm determination to support him against all
competitors. But, if the claim of Edward is to be considered
as a mere question of hereditary right, we are not sure that Mr.
Hallam has either stated the argument in his favour correctly,
or decided with justice against its validity. Edward and his antagonist
agreed in admitting, that females were excluded from
the French throne. What Edward contended was, that this
exclusion did not extend to their male posterity; and, of these,
that he was the nearest male relation to the last King, and
Mr. Hallam's abridgment of the history of France, is an excellent
preparation for the chapter that follows on the feudal
system, one of the most valuable and instructive parts of his
book. In his dissertation upon this subject, he traces the rise
and progress of that singular form of polity,—explains its principles,
—and distinguishes what was original and essential to the
system, from that which was incidental and confined to particular
times and countries. Its effects on society and government,
he appreciates with sagacity and candour; and explains,
with great judgment and perspicuity, the causes that led to its
establishment, and the changes that gradually undermined its
principles, and finally subverted its institutions. It is the previous state of society, he observes, under the
grandchildren of Charlemagne, which we must always keep in mind,
if we would appreciate the effects of the feudal system upon the welfare
of mankind. The institutions of the eleventh century must be
compared with those of the ninth, not with the advanced civilization
of modern times. The state of anarchy, which we usually term
feudal, was the natural result of a vast and barbarous empire, feebly
administered, and the cause, rather than the effect of the general establishment
of feudal tenures. These, by preserving the mutual relations
of the whole, kept alive the feeling of a common country, and
common duties; and settled, after the lapse of ages, into the free
constitution of England, the firm monarchy of France, and the federal
union of Germany. The utility of any form of policy may be estimated, by its effects
upon national greatness and security, upon civil liberty and private
rights, upon the tranquillity and order of society, upon the increase
and diffusion of wealth, or upon the general tone of moral sentiment
and energy. The feudal constitution was little adapted for the defence
of a mighty kingdom, far less for schemes of conquest. But as
it prevailed alike in several adjacent countries, none had any thing to
If we look at the feudal polity as a scheme of civil freedom, it
bears a noble countenance. To the feudal law it is owing, that the
very names of right and privilege were not swept away, as in Asia,
by the desolating hand of power. The tyranny, which, on every favourable
moment, was breaking through all barriers, would have rioted
without control, if, when the people were poor and disunited, the
nobility had not been brave and free. So far as the sphere of feudality
extended, it diffused the spirit of liberty, and the notions of private
right. Every one will acknowledge this, who considers the limitations
of the services of vassalage, so cautiously marked in those
law books which are the records of customs; the reciprocity of obligation
between the lord and his tenant; the consent required in every
measure of a legislative or general nature; the security, above all,
which every vassal found in the administration of justice by his peers,
and even (we may in this sense say) in the trial by combat. The bulk
of the people, it is true, were degraded by servitude; but this had no
connexion with the feudal tenures. The peace and good order of society were not promoted by this
system. Though private wars did not originate in the feudal customs,
it is impossible to doubt that they were perpetuated by so convenient
an institution, which indeed owed its universal establishment
to no other cause. And, as predominant habits of warfare are totally
irreconcilable with those of industry, not merely by the immediate
works of destruction which render its efforts unavailing, but through
that contempt of peaceful occupations which they produce, the feudal
system must have been intrinsically adverse to the accumulation of
wealth, and the improvement of those arts which mitigate the evils or
abridge the labours of mankind. But, as a school of moral discipline, the feudal institutions were
perhaps most to be valued. Society had sunk, for several centuries
after the dissolution of the Roman empire, into a condition of utter
depravity; where, if any vices could be selected as more eminently
characteristic than others, they were falsehood, treachery and ingratitude.
In slowly purging off the lees of this extreme corruption, the
feudal spirit exerted its ameliorating influence. Violation of faith
It is in France, chiefly, that Mr. Hallam contemplates the
feudal system, and therefore, in describing its decay, he is naturally
led to the consequences that ensued, in that kingdom, on
its fall. He traces the gradual encroachments of the Crown, as
the power of the nobility was reduced; its usurpation of the legislative
authority, which had lain dormant for centuries; its
assumption of the right of taxation, in opposition to the remonstrances
of the States; its success in wresting from the Barons
their territorial jurisdiction, and in placing the administration
of justice in judges appointed by the king. He shows, in the
course of this inquiry, that it was to the dissolution of all but
the feudal government, at the accession of the third dynasty,
and to the independence effected, and for many ages maintained
by the feudal nobility, that the kings of France were indebted
for the absolute authority which they at last acquired.
When Hugh Capet usurped the throne, France was The States General were first assembled by Philip the Fair,
for the purpose of obtaining money from his subjects. After a long and unequal struggle to maintain their independence,
the territorial courts of the Barons were brought under
the authority of the royal tribunals. This change, in many
respects beneficial to the people, was completed in the fourteenth
century, by the establishment of the Parliament of Paris
and other sovereign courts. But these tribunals, after contributing
to the exaltation of the royal prerogative, attempted to
set up barriers against the power they had created. It had become
usual to promulgate in the Parliament of Paris, the royal
edicts prepared in the Council, or to send them thither for
registration. The decline of the feudal system in France, Mr. Hallam ascribes
to the aggrandizement of the Crown by the annexation
of Normandy, Toulouse, and other great fiefs; to the institution
of free and chartered towns; and to the introduction of hired
soldiers in place of the feudal militia. The emancipation of
the towns he refers to the necessities, rather than to the policy
of the Court; and doubts whether the Crown derived any substantial
addition of power from this innovation, till the reign of
Lewis VIII., when the king claimed Mr. Hallam finds instances of hired soldiers in the 10th and
11th centuries. In the 12th and 13th, the practice became
common; and, in the 14th, nearly universal. But these soldiers
were disbanded at the conclusion of hostilities; a standing
army in time of peace being unknown in France, till the ordinance
of Charles VII. in 1444. The employment of hired soldiers
led to another innovation, that of escuage or scutage;
which was a compensation in money paid by the feudal vassals
to their sovereign, in lieu of the military service to which they
were bound by their tenures. Madox cannot trace the existence
of scutage in England beyond the time of Henry I. But there
is a transaction recorded of William Rufus, that bears a great
resemblance to it, and appears to us to throw considerable light
upon its origin. We are informed in the Annals of Waverly,
that in 1094, Before taking leave of this part of Mr. Hallam's book, we
must observe, that some doubtful positions are maintained in it,
to which we should have been desirous of calling his attention,
if we had not been afraid of fatiguing our readers by the minuteness
and prolixity of the discussion. We shall therefore
content ourselves with expressing our doubts of the correctness
of his statement, Mr. Hallam controverts the opinion of Montesquieu, adopted
by Robertson and Mably, that the benefices granted by the
Merovingean kings of France, were originally precarious, and
resumable at the pleasure of the Sovereign; and he has certainly
shown, that the authorities cited by Montesquieu do not warrant
him in that conclusion. It is probable, that benefices were
granted on different terms by different nations. There is reason
to believe, that among the Burgundians they were from the
first hereditary. It appears from the laws of that nation, that
those who held benefices from the Crown, had no share in the
distribution of the alodial lands taken from the Romans. The revolutions of Italy, which, according to the plan adopted
by Mr. Hallam, follow his account of the feudal system
in France, are too numerous and too complicated to be treated
with interest and perspicuity in an abridgment like this. Mr.
Hallam may be forgiven for not accomplishing, in 150 pages,
what it has cost M. Sismondi ten volumes to execute. There
are, nevertheless, fine passages and interesting details in this
chapter; and throughout we find the same spirit of liberality
and impartial regard to justice, which are so conspicuous in the
other parts of his book. His account of the great struggle between
Frederick Barbarossa and the Lombard cities, is given
with spirit and animation; and the concluding remarks exhibit
an admirable specimen of the true lessons to be drawn from history. The successful insurrection of Lombardy, he observes, is a
memorable refutation of that system of policy to which its advocates
give the appellation of vigorous, and which they perpetually hold
forth as the only means through which a disaffected people are to be
restrained. By a certain class of statesmen, and by all men of harsh
and violent disposition, measures of conciliation, adherence to the
spirit of treaties, regard to antient privileges, or to those rules of
moral justice which are paramount to all positive right, are always
treated with derision. Terror is their only specific; and physical inability
to rebel, their only security for allegiance. But if the razing
of cities, the abrogation of privileges, the impoverishment and oppression
of a nation could assure its constant submission, Frederick
Barbarossa would never have seen the militia of Lombardy arrayed against
him at Legnano. Whatever may be the pressure on a conquered
people, there will come a moment of their recoil. Nor is it
material to allege, in answer to the present instance, that the acci His account of the feuds and internal dissensions of the Italian
republics, is written in the same excellent spirit. Their
implacable animosities—their merciless proscriptions—the partiality,
violence, and ingratitude of their factions, he censures
as they deserve; but in comparison with the benefits which liberty
conferred upon them, Florence, the most democratic of the great Italian republics,
preserved her freedom, and maintained her station as protector
of the general liberties of Italy; while neighbouring cities, less
fortunate, or less wisely administered, sunk under the yoke of tyrants,
or shrunk into jealous oligarchies. Her turn came at last.
Her free constitution fell a sacrifice to the cunning arts of the
Medici, whose patronage of letters and encouragement of the
arts cannot redeem their name from the infamy of having subverted
the most splendid republic that has existed since the days
of Athens. It was by the exercise of some virtues, and the affectation
of others, that the Medici obtained that fatal popularity
which enabled them to cheat their fellow-citizens of their
liberties. The hour of their victory was the last of the moderation
they had affected. No revolution at Florence was followed
by more numerous exiles, polluted by more extensive
Mr. Hallam seems to have considered the annals of the Visigoths
as unworthy his attention; and to this prepossession we
must ascribe the mistakes and omissions, into which he has fallen,
in his account of Castile. He tells us, for instance, that
Roderic of Toledo, In this part of his book, Mr. Hallam has made excellent use
of the valuable works of Marina, of which we gave some account
in our former Numbers. He has not scrupled, however,
to dissent from that author, when he thinks him in the wrong.
Marina, led away by the popular humour prevalent at Cadiz
when he published his book, has exerted himself to prove, that
after the 13th century, the nobility and clergy ceased to be constituent
parts of the Cortes. Mr. Hallam combats this opinion
as highly improbable, and contrary to the general spirit of the
mixed monarchies of Europe. The supreme legislative power in Castile was vested in the
king, with advice and consent of his subjects; but there seems
to have been no fixed or certain rule to determine the class or
description of-persons, with whose advice and consent he was
to exercise this authority. We find, in fact, the greatest possible
irregularity in the composition as well as in the forms of
proceeding of the legislative assemblies of that kingdom. In
early times, after a recital of the persons present in Cortes, the
laws are said to have been enacted by the king de universorum
consensu;
At the accession of Peter the Cruel, we meet with the first
clear and well-marked division of the Cortes into three separate
estates. That monarch held Cortes at Valladolid in 1351, in
which the clergy, nobles, and deputies of the towns, met and
deliberated separately, presented their petitions separately to
the king, and had separate answers. It is impossible to peruse
these petitions, without perceiving, that these three orders, with
the king, did not form one indivisible legislature, requiring the
common consent of all to the exercise of its authority; but that
each, with the king, had complete powers of legislation, so as
to form three separate bodies, with different, and often opposite
interests and pretensions, of which the king was the common
regulator and moderator. In consequence of this legislative
power, exercised by the king, in conjunction with any one
of the three estates, we find, in the Cortes held at Medina del
Campo in 1370, several laws repealed by the king, at the petition
of the towns, which had been enacted the preceding year
at Toro, with consent of the three Estates, con acuerdo de los
perlados, e de ricos omes, e procuradores de las cibdades e villas. Under the three first Princes of the house of Frastamare,
who, like our Lancastrian kings, owed their crown to a successful
usurpation, the government seems to have been well administered,
and the constitutional rights of the subject duly respected.
The nobles and the clergy were, in general, summoned
to the Cortes; though, on some occasions, none but deputies
from the towns appear to have been assembled. Petitions
for grievances were, in general, presented in the name of
the deputies; but the old practice was still occasionally maintained,
of bringing them forward in the name of the whole
Cortes; and, in one instance, there was a separate list of grievances
presented by the clergy. The petitions were answered by
the king, sometimes de proprio motu, or with advice of his council;
but, more frequently, with consent of the nobles and prelates.
When laws were promulgated, they were said to be enacted
by advice of the Cortes; and grants of money were made
in the name of the clergy and nobles, as well as of the deputies.
The constitution was still irregular; but it seemed fast verging
to the same form with our own. The accession of John II. to
the throne, the first legitimate prince of the house of Frastamare,
in right of Constance of Lancaster, his mother, may be
fixed upon as the era from which public liberty began to decline.
The practice, introduced by Alonso XI., was revived,
of discontinuing letters of convocation to the absent nobles and
prelates. None but deputies of towns had writs of summons;
and the number of towns, to which writs were sent, was gra During the reigns of John II. and Henry IV., we have found
but one instance of the prelates and nobles assembling on public
business; and that meeting resembled more the congress of
two hostile powers, than the convocation of a deliberative assembly.
It was held at Cabezon, in the open fields, like the meeting
of John and his barons at Runnimede. After a conference
between Henry IV. and the Marquis of Villena, and other chiefs
of the malcontents, it was agreed to appoint a committee of five
to reform the State; two on the part of the king, two on the
part of the nobles, and one to have a casting voice in case of
need. This committee met at Medina del Campo; and, after
much deliberation, prepared a body of ordinances, which were
confirmed and promulgated by the royal authority, but not carried
into execution in consequence of the disturbances that ensued.
The meeting at Cabezon is termed by the king, in the
public instrument recording and ratifying its proceedings, the
ayuntamiento, which he held with the prelates, ricos omes, and
knights of his kingdom. Ayuntamiento was at that time the word
usually employed to designate the meeting of Cortes. Among
the ordinances made on this occasion, there is one (the 19th)
which declares, that no money shall be levied on the subject,
without consent of the prelates and nobles, as well as of the
deputies of the towns; a proof, that, though seldom exercised,
it was still held to be the constitutional right of the two superior
orders of the State, to concur in grants of money to the Crown. From the congress of ayuntamiento of Cabezon in 1465, there
was no convocation of the nobles or clergy till 1527, when they
were assembled by the Emperor Charles V., to obtain a supply
against the Infidels. This application having been unsuccessful,
they were not summoned again to Cortes, though several meet We have been led into these details by the difference of opinion
between Mr. Hallam and Marina. We have not quoted
our authorities, because they are the manuscript acts of the
Cortes which we have consulted on this point. It appears, that
in Castile, as in most European monarchies, the supreme legislative
power was supposed to be vested in the king, but not to
be legally exercised without the consent of his subjects. It appears,
however, there was no fixed or established usage that determined
the particular description of persons, whose consent
was necessary to give validity to his legislative acts; and that
the practice was exceedingly variable, not only from one age to
another, but in the same age. We have, in the same reign,
laws with consent of the whole Cortes, and laws with consent of
one branch of the Cortes only. This irregularity led, in the
15th century, to the general practice of summoning no persons
to Cortes, except the deputies of the towns, with whose consent
and the advice of his council the king made laws and ordinances
for the better government of his kingdom. At a still later period,
an abuse, which had begun in the reign of John II., was
converted into an engine for superseding entirely the legislative
control of the Cortes. Pragmaticas were issued by the King
in Council, which were declared to have the force of laws, till
they should be confirmed in Cortes: And as the power of the
Crown increased and the spirit of the people declined, these
pragmaticas were at length declared to have the same force as if
they had been passed in Cortes. Such has been the state of
Spanish legislation since the accession of the house of Bourbon. The deputies of the towns in Castile were persons of rank
and consideration at a very early period, and may, with greater
propriety, be compared to the knights of the shires, than to the
citizens and burgesses of England. In the thirteenth century,
they are styled omes buenos in the acts of the Cortes; but in
Mr. Hallam, misled by a passage in the Partidas, denies the
existence of territorial jurisdictions in Castile. If he had looked
into the ordenamiento of Alcalà, he would have found ample
proof to the contrary.
After so much time bestowed on Castile, it will be impossible
for us to enter at length on the constitution of Arragon. We
must therefore content ourselves with recommending to our
readers the observations of Mr. Hallam on this singular form of
government. They will find, in particular, an excellent account
of the office and functions of the Justiza, and a deserved
eulogium on the admirable institutions of the Arragonese,
for the protection of individual liberty. It was the boast of
Arragon, as it used to be the glory of England, that no stranger
could set his foot upon her soil, without enjoying the equal
benefit of her laws. Arragon was, in these ages, the only spot
in Europe, that afforded refuge to the persecuted, and gave security
to the oppressed. So fully was this principle established,
that it was usual for the kings of Arragon, when they took strangers
into their service, to make a private bargain with them—
that they should not appeal to the protection of the Justiza. A
saying of Alonzo IV. shows the different spirit of the government
in Arragon and Castile. That prince had taken for his second
wife a sister of the king of Castile; and, yielding to her importunities,
had, contrary to law, alienated in favour of her son,
certain possessions annexed to the Crown. The Valencians remonstrated
against these grants; and, declaring they would
die sooner than consent to them, threatened to punish the advisers
of this illegal transaction. The King excused himself
feebly; but the Queen, who was present at the council, rose in
a fury and exclaimed, that her brother, the King of Castile,
would not have suffered such language to be used to him, but
would have cut off the head of any one who had opposed him
with such insolence. On which the King said, We must pass over the two following chapters on the German
and Greek empires, with a general recommendation to
our readers, of their contents. The chapter on ecclesiastical power is written with great
care, and composed in a truly liberal and philosophical spirit.
Mr. Hallam traces the gradual usurpations of the ecclesiastical
on the civil authority, favoured sometimes by the mistaken policy
or devotion, and sometimes submitted to by the weakness
and pusillanimity of Princes. He shows by what steps the
Church acquired an exclusive jurisdiction over its own members,
and by what artifices its tribunals made such extensive
encroachments on the civil courts. He exposes the impudent
pretensions of the bishops, in the ninth and tenth centuries,
and hardly regrets the subjugation to which they were reduced
by the Roman see in the eleventh and twelfth. With some
bias in favour of the Throne, he relates the contests between
the Crown and the Papal tiara; but expatiates with just indig Throughout this chapter, Mr. Hallam is animated with a
laudable zeal against the impostures and usurpations of the
Church; and, in relating the measures taken in different countries
to restrain the enormous jurisdiction once possessed by
the hierarchy, he makes this sensible observation, We shall not enter into an examination of some doubtful
points, concerning which we might, perhaps, differ from Mr.
Hallam; but we cannot dismiss this chapter without remarking,
that he hardly does justice to the Church in the dispute about
investitures. The open simony practised by kings and princes;
their scandalous nominations to vacant benefices; their spoilation
of the lands and property of the clergy committed to their
custody; the number of years they kept abbeys and bishopricks
The chapter that follows, on the Constitution of England, is
the most valuable and interesting part of the book. We have
no hesitation in stating it to be the most full, accurate, and impartial
history of the constitution, that has yet appeared. In
addition to other sources of information, Mr. Hallam has made
careful and diligent use of the rolls of Parliament; by the as It would be idle to attempt any abstract or abridgment of
this part of Mr. Hallam's book. We shall content ourselves
with a few critical remarks, and some extracts, to show the
spirit and principles of the work. Mr. Hallam is inclined, with Carte, to doubt the story told
by Mathew Paris of the election of John to the Crown of England,
after the death of his brother Richard. The speech put
in the mouth of Archbishop Hubert by the historian, is certainly
Mr. Hallam admires, with reason, that equality of civil rights
enjoyed by all the Commons of England. It is a proud distinction;
and, till the French revolution, we believe, peculiar
to this island. But we apprehend he is mistaken in supposing,
We agree, with Mr. Hallam, that We were inclined to have entered into some discussion with Mr.
Hallam concerning the state of the English boroughs at the time
of the Conquest; but the subject is too extensive for our limits.
We are apprehensive, that, notwithstanding his well-founded
suspicions of Brady, he has confided too implicitly in that author's
history of boroughs, the most imperfect and unfair of all
his works. He is inclined, we perceive, to doubt the existence
of municipal jurisdiction among the Saxons. He quotes indeed
the charter of Lincoln, which We are not in the least disposed to enter on the controversy
concerning the origin of the House of Commons. We are inclined,
in the main, to agree with Mr. Hallam; but we cannot
help remarking to him, that the villani mentioned in the 16
Henry III. were not villeins, but townsmen, as he will at once
perceive, if he takes the trouble to peruse the writ.
But, without searching further for errors and omissions unavoidable
in a work like this, we shall proceed to the more pleasing
task of giving some extracts, as specimens of the tone and
spirit of Mr. Hallam's constitutional remarks. After relating
the impeachment of Suffolk, and the appointment of a parliamentary
commission for reform, in the tenth of Richard II., he
makes the following observations. Those, who have written our history with more or less of a Tory
bias, exclaim against this parliamentary commission as an unwarrantable
violation of the King's sovereignty; and even impartial men are
struck at first sight by a measure that seems to overset the natural
balance of our constitution. But it would be unfair to blame either
those concerned in this commission, some of whose names at least
have been handed down with unquestioned respect, or those high-spirited
representatives of the people, whose patriot firmness has been
hitherto commanding all our sympathy and gratitude, unless we could
distinctly pronounce by what gentler means they could restrain the
excesses of government. Thirteen Parliaments had already met
since the accession of Richard; in all, the same remonstrances had
been repeated, and the same promises renewed. Subsidies, more frequent
than in any former reign, had been granted for the supposed
exigencies of the war; but this was no longer illuminated by those
dazzling victories, which give to fortune the mien of wisdom. The
coasts of England were perpetually ravaged, and her trade destroyed;
while the administration incurred the suspicion of diverting to
private uses that treasure which they so fully and unsuccessfully applied
to the public service. No voice of his people, until it spoke in
The best plea that could be made for Richard was his inexperience,
and the misguiding suggestions of favourites. This, however,
made it more necessary to remove those false advisers, and to supply
that inexperience. Unquestionably, the choice of ministers is reposed
in the sovereign; a trust, like every other attribute of legitimate
power, for the public good; not, what no legitimate power can ever
be, the instrument of selfishness or caprice. There is something
more sacred than the prerogative, or even than the constitution; the
public weal, for which all powers are granted, and to which they must
all be referred. For this public weal, it is confessed to be sometimes
necessary to shake the possessor of the throne out of his seat: could
it never be permitted to suspend, though but indirectly and for a time.
the positive exercise of misapplied prerogatives He has learned in
a very different school from myself, who denies to Parliament, at the
present day, a preventive as well as vindictive control over the
administration of affairs; a right of resisting, by those means which
lie within its sphere, the appointment of unfit ministers. These
means are now indirect; they need not be the less effectual, and they
are certainly more salutary on that account. After this opinion of the conduct and character of Richard,
the reader of Mr. Hallam will not be surprised to find him approving
of his subsequent deposition, and of the elevation of
Henry of Lancaster to the throne. His government, for nearly two years, was altogether tyrannical;
and, upon the same principles that cost James II. his throne, it was
unquestionably far more necessary, unless our fathers would have
abandoned all thought of liberty, to expel Richard II.—The revolution
which elevated Henry IV. to the throne, was certainly so far
accomplished by force, that the king was in captivity; and those who
might still adhere to him, in no condition to support his authority.
But the sincere concurrence, which most of the prelates and nobility,
with the mass of the people, gave to changes that could not have
In discussing the claim of the House of York, he does justice
to the moderation and humanity of the excellent person who
first brought forward that pretension; and remarks, that the
sanguinary violence of Margaret left him not the choice of remaining
a subject with impunity. But with us, who are to weigh these antient factions in the balance
of wisdom and justice, there should be no hesitation in deciding,
that the House of Lancaster were lawful sovereigns of England.
'I am indeed astonished,' says Mr. Hallam, 'that not only such historians
as Carte, who wrote undisguisedly upon a Jacobite system;
but even men of juster principles, have been inadvertent enough to
mention the right of the house of York. If the original consent of
the nation,—if three descents of the throne,—if repeated acts of
parliament, if oaths of allegiance from the whole kingdom, and
more particularly from those who now advanced a contrary pretension,
—if undisturbed, unquestioned possession during sixty years,
could not secure the reigning family against a mere defect in their
genealogy, when were the people to expect tranquillity? Sceptres
were committed, and governments were instituted, for public protection
and public happiness, not certainly for the benefit of rulers,
or for the security of particular destinies. No prejudice has less
in its favour; and none has been more fatal to the peace of mankind,
than that which regards a nation of subjects as a family's
private inheritance. For, as this opinion induces reigning princes
and their courtiers, to look on the people as made only to obey them;
so, when the tide of events has swept them from their
thrones, it begets a fond hope of restoration, a sense of injury and imprescriptible
rights, which give the show of justice to fresh disturbances
of public order, and rebellious against established authority. On the Regency question we have the misfortune to differ
from Mr. Hallam. The narrative on the rolls of Parliament, to
which he refers, (p. 398), does not, in our opinion, prove, that,
during the infancy or infirmity of the King, the Mr. Hallam's last chapter contains a variety of miscellaneous
information on the state of society in Europe in the middle ages.
It is full of curious and entertaining matter, but obviously
incapable of abridgment. This publication received the support of a Field Development Grant awarded by the
Research Society for Victorian Periodicals from the bequest of the Eileen Curran
estate. The Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Licence applies to this document. The Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church. The Edinburgh review, 1802-1929; Oct 1815;
vol. 25 pp. 346-354 The A Question of Style project's aim is to gain new insights on the writing and
editorial practices of the Edinburgh Review during the editorship of Francis Jeffrey.
The Edinburgh Review was the main literary journal in early nineteenth-century
Britain. It reviewed the most significant publications in literature, history,
politics and science and its contributors included some of the most prominent figures
of the age. Authors believed that a review from the Edinburgh Review could make or
break the fortunes of a publication. Style focuses on the period 1814-1820 and
employs methods from periodical studies, book history, computational linguistics and
computational stylistics. It was awarded the inaugural Field Development Grant by the
Research Society for Victorian Periodicals from the bequest of the Eileen Curran
estate. Manual curation assisted by semi-automated scripts. All soft end of line hyphenations within a page have been removed, and the word
consolidated on its first line. Associated punctuation moved too. Where a word breaks over a page, the page break has been recorded with the
None - we need the original spellings. Has been retained, with superfluous surrounding spaces removed. All quotation marks converted to their simple equivalent, prime or double prime
accordingly. Marks that begin each line of a multi-line quotation have been removed. Marks within Punctuation within quotations is recorded inside block Of all the virtues of an historian, impartiality is the most rare. Contemporary authors
are exposed to bias by their enmities or their affections; and, among general
historians, we meet with none who are entirely exempt from national partiality, or
completely divested of the deep-rooted prejudices communicated by sect or party. Even
the candid temper and philosophic mind of Hume were not proof against the influence of
those passions. It would be unreasonable, then, to expect that a Catholic clergyman,
zealously attached to his communion, should be able to write, with impartiality, the
history of a period obscured and perplexed by the controversies of Catholic and
Protestant. Let us do justice, however, to Mr Lingard. His work is the fruit of great labour and
research. He has frequently detected, and exposed with success, though not without
asperity, the errors of Protestant historians; and if he has sometimes treated his
adversaries with flippant and offensive petulance, he has on many occasions pointed out
and corrected their misrepresentations and mistakes. We find no fault with the opinions,
expressed with freedom and supported with learning, which he has advanced and defended
in his history. His subject naturally led him to topics of discussion between Catholic
and Protestant; and we cannot blame him for espousing the interests, and maintaining the
doctrines, of his own church. The usefulness of confession, the merits of penance, and
the advantages of absolution, we leave him to settle with our divines. We cannot say we
feel much interest or curiosity about the form of words, in which our barbarous
ancestors chose to clothe their ignorance of the mystery of transubstantiation; but we
can understand that Mr Lingard annexes importance to such inquiries. We can excuse his
admiration of monks, and listen with patience to his eulogies of celibacy. We neither
believe in the miracles, nor can give our implicit assent to the virtues and merits of
his saints and confessors; but we agree with him in reprobating the rash and illiberal
censures of modern historians, who stigmatize them in a body as a collection of knaves
and hypocrites. To the clergy of the dark ages, Europe owes much of her civilization,
her learning, and her liberty. But though we admire the warmth with which Mr Lingard
vindicates the character of these men from unjust aspersions and indiscriminate abuse, we
The story of Edwy and Elgiva has been told by Hume with his usual felicity of
narration; and no one, we will venture to say, has ever perused the history of their
misfortunes, in the pages of that inimitable writer, without being inflamed with
indignation against the rude violence of Dunstan, and the savage ferocity of Odo. We
must confess that Mr Lingard has somewhat dispelled the charm. After the minute
investigation he has bestowed on the subject, little remains of the romantic story of
Edwy and Elgiva that is deserving of credit. The lady banished to Ireland by Archbishop
Odo, and murdered on her return from exile, was the mistress, not the wife of Edwy. Of
this fact we can bring evidence more direct and conclusive than that produced by Mr
Lingard. In the history of St Oswald by Eadmer, there is the following decisive passage,
which seems to have eluded the researches of Mr Lingard, as it had escaped the notice of
all our former historians. He has told us, in the first place, that the great council of the nation had attempted
in vain to interrupt the commerce of this woman with the king The unfortunate woman, banished in this manner to Ireland, having ventured at a
subsequent period to return to England, the retainers of the Archbishop intercepted her
at Gloucester; and, to render her further escape impossible, they had the cruelty to
divide the nerves and sinews of her legs, and to leave her
Mr Lingard imputes the prosecution and banishment of Dunstan to the resentment and
vengeance of this woman, whom he calls Ethelgiva. But, in the first place, he ought to
have told us, that, according to the testimony of many respectable historians, Dunstan
was exiled, not for his rudeness and violence to Edwy, but on a charge of having
embezzled the treasures of King Edred, which had been entrusted to his care. Florence of
Worcester, Simeon of Durham, and Roger Hoveden, state expressly, that Mr Lingard is confident that But it is not in the history of Edwy and Elgiva only, where we find Mr Lingard a
disingenuous advocate and partial historian, wherever the reputation of saints is
concerned. We shall, give a few more examples of the same spirit from other parts of the
life of Dunstan. The catastrophe at Calne, which bestowed a final victory on the monks over the secular
clergy, has been imputed by Mr Turner to the contrivance of Dunstan. Mr Lingard
ridicules Mr Turner for the discovery, as he is pleased to call it, of In a council held at Winchester Mr Lingard is disposed to triumph over Hume, on account of some trifling inaccuracies,
into which that historian has fallen, in his narrative of an infamous act of sacrilege
and brutality, perpetrated by Edgar, the great patron of the Monks. That prince carried
off a lady by force from a convent, and committed violence on her person; for which
offences he was sharply rebuked by Archbishop Dunstan, and compelled to do penance. Hume
his taken his account of this transaction from Malmsbury; and has very nearly given an
exact transcript of the words of that author.— We must now take leave of Mr Lingard. We can safely recommend his book for the curious
matter it contains, and the agreeable style in which it is written. Its defects are
perhaps inseparable from the nature of his subject. Candour and impartiality are least
of all to be expected from ecclesiastical historians. The contests of theologians have
few attractions. Their disputes, though acrimonious, are unintelligible. Their
victories, when not supported by fire and faggot, are always dubious. Their records are
dull,— their volumes heavy,— their style and matter equally repulsive. No one can wade
through such difficulties, and gain a competent knowledge of their controversies, who is
not impelled and supported by a spirit of bigotry, which renders his labours altogether
useless; because, even though it were possible his intentions could be honest, no
confidence can be reasonably placed in the accuracy of his discernment. This publication received the support of a Field Development Grant awarded by the
Research Society for Victorian Periodicals from the bequest of the Eileen Curran
estate. The Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Licence applies to this document. John Allen, “Napoleon Bonaparte”, Edinburgh Review, Vol. 27 December 1816,
pp. 459-492 The A Question of Style project's aim is to gain new insights on the writing and
editorial practices of the Edinburgh Review during the editorship of Francis Jeffrey.
The Edinburgh Review was the main literary journal in early nineteenth-century
Britain. It reviewed the most significant publications in literature, history,
politics and science and its contributors included some of the most prominent figures
of the age. Authors believed that a review from the Edinburgh Review could make or
break the fortunes of a publication. Style focuses on the period 1814-1820 and
employs methods from periodical studies, book history, computational linguistics and
computational stylistics. It was awarded the inaugural Field Development Grant by the
Research Society for Victorian Periodicals from the bequest of the Eileen Curran
estate. Manual curation assisted by semi-automated scripts. All soft end of line hyphenations within a page have been removed, and the word
consolidated on its first line. Associated punctuation moved too. Where a word breaks over a page, the page break has been recorded with the
None - we need the original spellings. Has been retained, with superfluous surrounding spaces removed. All quotation marks converted to their simple equivalent, prime or double prime
accordingly. Marks that begin each line of a multi-line quotation have been removed. Marks within Punctuation within quotations is recorded inside block This is a short and amusing little book, full of entertaining gossip and chit-chat,
exempt from baseness, and untainted with malignity. The author, a Navy surgeon by
profession, who seems to have passed the greater part of his life on board of ship,
happened to serve, in his medical capacity, in the Northumberland, at the time when
Napoleon Bonaparte was transferred to that vessel from the Bellerophon, in order to be
conveyed to his prison of St Helena. When this accident brought Mr Warden unexpectedly
in contact with the Ex-emperor of the French, he appears to have entertained against
that extraordinary personage, all the common prepossessions so industriously diffused in
England, and so generally imbibed by persons of his situation in life. That Napoleon had
adminis According to the laudable practice of the Navy, Mr Warden had kept a regular journal of
all the occurrences during his voyage, in which he had inserted his observations on
Napoleon as they arose; and made notes of the conversations he had held with him, and
the persons of his suite, at the time they happened. These notes and observations he has
thrown into the form of Letters; and, by the persuasion of his friends, he has been
induced to publish them. We heartily approve of this advice, but should have been better
pleased if we had had his observations in their original simplicity, without comment or
connexion, as affording a more authentic, and probably a more lively and natural picture
of his impressions at the moment. But such as it is, we have found his book very
entertaining, and we can safely recommend it to our readers as one
But favourably as we think, on the whole, of Mr Warden's performance, we cannot but
lament, that one, who had such opportunities of conversing with Napoleon, on the most
remarkable events of his life, was not better prepared to derive advantage from such
communications, by a more accurate acquaintance with the history and chronology of his
own times. We are far from imputing any blame to Mr Warden for his deficiencies in this
respect. In his situation, it was not to be expected, that he should have the history of
Europe so fresh in his recollection, as to enable him to cross-question Napoleon, on the
numerous and important topics that formed the subject of their conversations. We suspect
also that, previous to this voyage, Mr Warden's opportunities of conversing in French
had not been frequent; and that, in some of his most interesting communications with
Napoleon, he was compelled to have the aid of an interpreter. From these two causes
conjoined, we must seek an explanation of some errors and inaccuracies that occur in his
historical statements, of which cavillers will no doubt avail themselves, to throw a
general discredit upon his book. He tells us, for instance, on the authority of the
followers of Napoleon, that Talleyrand approved of the Spanish war. He ought to have
said, that Talleyrand first suggested to Napoleon the expulsion of the Bourbons from
Spain; and he should have added, that though Talleyrand suggested this measure, he
disapproved of the plan which Napoleon adopted for its execution, because he thought it
one that could not succeed,—a greater proof, it must be owned, of his sagacity, than of
his attachment to the House of Bourbon. In another part of his book, Mr Warden relates a
conversation with Napoleon, about the death of Captain Wright, which implies, that
Captain Wright died in the Temple, while the trials of Pichegru, Moreau and Georges,
were still depending. But Captain Wright, if we are not mistaken, was not made prisoner
till after the death of Pichegru; and his death is not said to have taken place till
after the surrender of Ulm. Mistakes of this nature certainly detract from the value of
Mr Warden's historical recollections; but his descriptions of Napoleon's personal
conduct and manners are not affected by his blunders in chronology; and there is an air
of plainness and sincerity in his account of what he saw and heard, that recommends it
strongly to the confidence of his readers. As a specimen of the graphical powers of Mr Warden, we shall take the following account
of one of his interviews with Napoleon at Longwood. We have heard that he had a similar conversation on suicide with one of his generals at
Fontainebleau, after his first abdication of the empire, in which he expressed the same
sentiments, and concluded with these words— When the Northumberland came in sight of the frightful rock of St Helena, the
attendants of Napoleon assembled on the deck, to contemplate their future prison, and
were variously affected by the spectacle. Napoleon himself did not leave his cabin for
an hour after the ship had anchored in the bay. He then ascended the poop, and stood
there, with his glass in hand,
examining the numerous cannon that bristled in his view. At the Briars, a house midway up the mountain, belonging to Mr Balcombe, a merchant of
the island, Napoleon took up his residence, at the request of the master of the mansion,
while the house at Longwood was preparing for his reception. There happened to be a
small Gothic building, about fifty yards from the house, having one small room below and
two small apartments above, which was fitted up for his habitation. There was no choice
in the arrangement of this confined abode: the ground floor was occupied by him, while
De Laze Caze, with is son, who was a page, and the valet in waiting, were to possess the
upper story, (p. 104.) Mr Warden, while visiting Mr Balcombe, accidentally met Napoleon,
while in this situation. Taking a walk before dinner, he The account that Mr Warden gives of the appearance and
habits of Napoleon, is striking and descriptive. His forehead is thinly covered with dark hair, as well as the top
of his head, which is large, and has a singular flatness. What hair
he has behind is bushy; and I could not discern the slightest mixture
of white in it. His eyes, which are grey, are in continual motion,
and hurry rapidly to the various objects around him. His
teeth are regular and good; his neck is short, but his shoulders
of the finest proportion. The rest of his figure, though blended
with the Dutch fulness, is of a very handsome form. His face
is uncommon; large, full and pale, but not sickly. In conversation,
the muscles suffer little or no exertion; with the exception of
those in the immediate vicinity of the mouth, the whole seem fixed,
and the forehead particularly smooth. That of a Frenchman is generally
wrinkled, from the habitual muscular exertion of the countenance,
which we call grimace; but however earnest Napoleon may
be in conversation, he discovers no distortion of feature. When he
wishes to enforce a question, he sometimes employs his hand, but
that alone. He sometimes smiles, but I believe he seldom laughs. The only occasion, indeed, where Mr Warden appears to
have seen him laugh, was on hearing a story about the Abbé de
Pradt, whose ridiculous self-sufficiency We have preferred these extracts as a specimen of Mr Warden's book, though to some of
our readers they may appear trifling, because they relate to particulars that fell under
his immediate observation, and depend neither on the accuracy of his historical
reminiscences, nor on the truth of the information communicated to him by others. The
remaining space we have allotted to the present article, we shall employ in a short and
general review of the public and political life of Napoleon, with such facts and
anecdotes interspersed, as have been furnished to us, on good authority, from persons
familiarly connected with him at different periods of his fortune, or obtained from some
of our countrymen, who saw and conversed with him during his residence in the Isle of
Elba. Napoleon Bonaparte is the son of Charles Bonaparte and Letitia Ramolini. His father, who
was a man of talents, served under Paoli; and, after the submission of Corsica to the
French, he was more than once deputy of the Noblesse. The family was originally Tuscan,
and had been settled for many centuries at San Miniato. In Mazzuchelli, mention is made
of several Bonapartes of San Miniato, who had distinguished themselves in the republic
of letters; and, so late as 1796, one of the family still survived, a Chevalier de St
Etienne, rich and respectable, who claimed, and was proud to acknowledge his
relationship with the young conqueror of Italy. At the height of Napoleon's fortune,
there were flatterers, who found or fabricated proofs of his descent from the ancient
princes or tyrants of Treviso. But there was probably as little foundation for this
genealogy, as for the miserable impostures of the Emigrants, who represented him as
sprung from the lowest dregs of the people. His eldest sister was educated at Saint Cyr;
which fact alone, independent of the place held by his father in the deputation of
Corsica, would be proof sufficient that his family belonged to the ancient order of
Noblesse. The name of Napoleon, by which he was christened, is common in Italy. It was
one of the family names of the Orsini, and was introduced into the family of Bonaparte
by
At an early age, Napoleon was sent to the Military College of Briennes, where he
distinguished himself by bis proficiency in mathematics, and his love of reading, but
gave offence to his instructors, by his obstinacy in refusing to learn Latin by the
usual routine. He would neither get the rules of grammar by heart, nor commit verses to
memory; nor compose nor speak in Latin. As a punishment for this perverseness, he was
detained a year or two longer than usual in that seminary, but was at length admitted
into the For some years after his admission into the army, Napoleon appears to have divided his
time between garrison-duty with his regiment and residence on furlough with his family
in Corsica. He composed at this period a History of Corsica, and sent it to the Abbé
Raynal, then residing at Marseilles, who received this juvenile performance with
approbation, and advised him to publish it, saying it was a work that would last. He
afterwards cast it into the form of a Memorial for the Government; but public events
followed so rapidly, that it was never printed, and is now probably lost. In 1790, he
conducted his sister home from Saint Cyr; and on the quay of Toulon, had a narrow escape
from the mob, who assailed them with cries of The first service on which he was employed, after his return to France, was to
superintend, as artillery officer, the batteries between Saint Remo and Nice. From this
duty, he was despatched, by his commanding officer, on a mission to Marseilles, and
other neighbouring towns, to procure supplies for the army; after which, he was directed
to proceed to Auxonne, La Fere, and Paris, for ordnance stores and artillery
officers.
If we could forget,
says Mr. Hallam, what never should be forgotten, the
wretchedness and devastation that fell upon a great kingdom,
too dear a price for the display of any heroism, we might
count these English wars in France among the brightest periods
in history
.—A good lesson,
he continues, may be
drawn by conquerors, from the change of fortune that befel
Edward III. A long warfare, and unexampled success, had
procured for him some of the richest provinces of France.
Within a short time, he was entirely stripped of them, less
through any particular misconduct, than in consequence of
the intrinsic difficulty of preserving such acquisitions. The
French were already knit together as one people; and even
those, whose feudal duties sometimes led them into the field
against their sovereign, could not endure the feeling of dismemberment
from the monarchy
. In the provinces ceded
to Edward, by the peace of Breligny, the inhabitants submitted,
with sullen reluctance, to the English yoke. Such unwilling
subjects might, perhaps, have been won by a prudent
government; but the temper of the Prince of Wales, which
was rather stern and arbitrary, did not conciliate their hearts
to his cause.
The war was soon after renewed; and, in a
few campaigns, the English were deprived of almost all their
conquests, and even, in a great degree, of their original possessions in Guienne
.became
a sagacious statesman, an encourager of literature, a
beneficent lawgiver. But all the fruits of his wisdom were
lost in the succeeding reign. In a government essentially popular,
the youth or imbecility of the sovereign creates no material
derangement. In a monarchy, where all the springs of
the system depend upon one central force, these accidents,
which are sure, in the course of a few generations, to recur,
can scarcely fail to dislocate the whole machine
. The States
General interfered, with success at first, to restrain the prodigality
of the court; but the partisans of royalty ultimately prevailed.
The city of Paris, which had shown a spirit of democratic
freedom, offensive to its rulers, was treated as the spoil
of conquest; its immunities abridged; its most active leaders
continues
Mr. Hallam, to name a limit beyond which taxes will not be
borne without impatience, when they appear to be called for
by necessity, and faithfully applied. But the sting of taxation
is wastefulness. What high-spirited man could see,
without indignation, the earnings of his labour, yielded ungrudgingly
to the public defence, become the spoils of parasites
and peculators: It is this that mortifies the liberal hand
of public spirit; and those statesmen, who deem the security
of government to depend, not on laws and armies, but on the
moral sympathies and prejudices of the people, will vigilantly
guard against even the suspicion of prodigality
. Such were
not the statesmen, unhappily for France, who then presided over
her destinies. The outrageous dissoluteness of the Court, its
enormous extravagance, and shameless contempt of public opinion,
aggravated the discontent, and embittered the distresses of
the people. Assassination openly perpetrated, and publicly
vindicated, destroyed all confidence between the hostile factions.
Henry V. of England, profiting by these dissensions,
contrived, by war and negotiation, to be declared the successor
to the French monarchy. His premature death, fortunately for
both countries, frustrated his plans. England in her turn
became distracted by domestic dissensions, and patriotism and superstition
combined to expel her armies once more from France.rather a
collection of states, partially allied to each other, than a single
monarchy. The kingdom was as a great fief, or rather as a
bundle of fiefs, and the king little more than one of a number
of feudal nobles, differing rather in dignity than in power
from some of the rest
. The vassals of the Crown had the
right of coining money, and of waging private war; they enjoyed
exemption from all public tributes, except the feudal aids;
were free from legislative control; and possessed the exclusive
exercise of original jurisdiction in their dominions. The
king,
says St. Lewis in his establishments, cannot make proclamation,
that is, declare any new law, in the territory of a
baron, without his consent, nor can the baron do so in that of
a vavassor. If legislative power, therefore, be essential to sovereignty,
we cannot, in strictness, assert the king of France
to have been sovereign beyond the limits of his own do
.
their ill-judged confidence
in the stability of their feudal privileges
. In these and other
encroachments of prerogative, the king had the never-failing
support of the lawyers and the clergy, who were disgusted with
the violence of the nobles, and had found, in the civil and canon
law, a system of political maxims very different from those of
the feudal code. A new theory of absolute power
and unconditional obedience was introduced;
and Frenchmen were
taught, that all feudal privileges were encroachments
on the imprescriptible rights of the monarchy
.At no
period, and in no instances did they possess a co-ordinate legislative
authority with the Crown, or even a consenting voice,
Mably, Boulainvilliers, and Montlosien are as decisive on this
subject, as the most courtly writers of that country. It follows,
says Mr. Hallam, that France never possessed a free
constitution; nor had the monarchy any limitations in respect
of enacting laws, save those which, until the reign of Philip
the Fair, the feudal principles had imposed
. The sole privilege
possessed by the States was, to grant money, and to regulate
the collection of it. But, notwithstanding the narrow limits
of their constitutional authority, they made various efforts to redress
the grievances, and reform the government of the State.
These attempts, however, though renewed at intervals, from the
time of John to the reign of Charles VIII., were constantly defeated,
either by the dissensions of the different orders, or by
the disturbances and popular excesses to which they gave rise.
The authority of the States, even in grants of money, was extremely
limited. They were held to have no power of imposing
taxes without the specific consent of their constituents.
Whether it was the timidity of the deputies, or false notions
of freedom, which produced this doctrine, it was evidently
repugnant to the stability and dignity of a representative asthe formality of consent,
whether by general or provincial States, ceased to be reckoned
indispensable. Charles VII. levied money by his own authority.
Lewis XI. carried this encroachment to the highest
pitch of exaction. It was the boast of courtiers, that he first
released the kings of France from dependence; or, in other
words, that he effectually demolished those barriers, which,
however imperfect and ill placed, had opposed some impediment
to the establishment of despotism
.This formality was deemed essential to render
them authentic and notorious, and thus indirectly gave them the
sanction and validity of law.
In the fifteenth century,
the Parliament began to claim a right of judging the expediency
of the edicts transmitted to it for registration; and this pretension,
extraordinary and anomalous as it appears, it maintained
to the period of the Revolution. Subsequent regulations
rendered its members independent of the Court; and, from the
spirit of resistance which they afterwards displayed, this body
of lawyers became, in later times, the sole depositary of public
spirit, and attachment to justice, in France. Doubtless,
says Mr.
Hallam, the Parliament of Paris, with its prejudices and narrow
views; its high notions of loyal obedience, so strangely mixed up
with remonstrances and resistance; its anomalous privilege of objecting
to edicts, hardly approved by the nation who did not participate
in it, and overturned with facility by the king, whenever he thought
fit to exert the sinews of his prerogative, was indeed poorly substituted
for that co-ordinate sovereignty, that equal concurrence of na
.the immediate sovereignty
over all chartered towns, in exclusion of their original lords
.
By the establishment of this pretension, and the prudent use
made of it by the government, a deadly blow was given to the
feudal aristocracy, which, from other causes, was going rapidly
to decay. It is worthy of remark, that as soon as the independence
of the Barons had completely yielded, the Court
began to give into a new policy, which was ever after pursued;
that of maintaining the dignity and privileges of the noble
class against those attacks which wealth and liberty encouraged
the plebeians to make upon them
. It was by this variable,
but uniformly selfish policy, skilfully adapted to circumstances
as they arose, that the kings of France were enabled to
trample by turns on every class of their subjects, and erect an
arbitrary despotism on the ruins of their liberty. To humble
his nobles, the king condescended to become the protector of
his towns, and dispenser of equal justice to his people. When
his nobles were sufficiently humbled, he espoused their cause,
and crushed their plebeian adversaries with his sceptre of iron.
The lawyers, after contributing to his victory, and corrupting
public opinion by their doctrines, when they attempted to raise
their feeble voice against his power, found their own slavish
maxims and lessons of obedience turned against themselves.
Had these different orders of men possessed sagacity to discern
their real interests, and sense to unite against their common enemy,
France, like England, might have settled into a limited
monarchy, instead of being for ages the scourge of Europe abroad,
and victim of arbitrary power at home.rex Willielmus misit ad hanc terram (Angliam scil.)
et jussit summoneri viginti millia Anglorum qui venirent illi in
auxilium in Normanniam; sed postguam ad mare venerunt, jussi
sunt redire, et mittere regi pecuniam quam deferebant, scilicet
unusquisque viginti solidos, quod ipsi fecerunt
.
soldier-like principles of indiscriminate obedience, still more
than their courage and field discipline, render them dear to
kings, who dreaded the free spirit of a feudal army
.that the exclusion of females from inheritance
in fixed possessions was very common among the Teutonic
nations
.
Inter Burgundiones
id volumus custodiri, ut si quis filium non reliquerit, in loco
filii filia in patris matrisque hereditate succedat.
Si quis
.
Post quintam autem
(generationem) filia ex toto, sive de patris sive matris parte, in
hereditatem succedat, et tunc demum hereditas ad fusum a lancea
transeat.
Licet
codem tempore, says the Burgundian lawgiver, quo populus noster
mancipiorum tertiam et duas terrarum partes accepit, ejusmodi
a nobis fuerit emissa præceptio, ut quicumque agrum cum mancipiis,
seu parentum nostrorum, sive largitate nostra perceperat;
the disorders that ruffled their
surface appear slight and momentary. The men and institutions
of the fourteenth century are to be measured by their
contemporaries. Who would not rather have been a citizen
of Florence, than a subject of the Visconti? In a superficial
review of history, we are sometimes apt to exaggerate the vices
of free states, and to lose sight of those inherent in tyrannical
power. The bold censoriousness of republican historians, and
the cautious servility of writers under an absolute monarchy,
conspire to mislead us as to the relative prosperity of nations.
Acts of outrage and tumultuous excesses in a free state, are
blazoned in minute detail, and descend to posterity; the deeds
of tyranny are studiously and perpetually suppressed
. So
strongly is he impressed with the evils attendant on slavery, that,
in a subsequent passage, he states it as a doubtful problem,
whether the sum of general happiness has lost more in the last
three centuries, through arbitrary power, than it has gained
through regular police and suppression of disorder
.ad in general respected the legal
forms of their free republic; the Medici made all their government
conducive to hereditary monarchy
. From the moment
this family of profligate hypocrites obtained the supreme authority,
the character of Florence was as much changed as that of
Rome by the dominion of the Cæsars. The external politics
of the State became low and selfish. To secure their own power
was the sole object of its new rulers. The republic had been
the constant enemy of the Visconti. The Medici became the
friends and allies of the Sporzas. The degradation of individuals
followed the decline of public principle in the State; and
Florence sunk into that abyss of infamy and corruption, from
which it has never since emerged.one of the earliest Spanish historians,
flourished in the beginning of the 13th century. But, if he
had taken the same trouble with the history of Spain, which he
has bestowed on the transactions of France, he would have
known, that there is a regular succession of Spanish chronicles,
and some of them curious and valuable, from Idatius in the 6th
century, to the annals of Compostella, and the Latin chronicle
of Alonso VIIth in the 12th. He would also have avoided a
mistake in his chapter on ecclesiastical usurpations, where he
relates the deposal of one Wamba, a King of the Visigoths
in Spain
, as the first instance of the deposition of a sovereign
Prince, by authority of the Church. If he had consulted the
Spanish historians, he would have found, that Wamba, being
supposed on the point of death, had received the tonsure as a
preparation for a better world; and that having submitted to
this ceremony, he was rendered incapable of resuming the
sceptre by a previous law of the 6th council of Toledo, which
enacted, that no person sub religionis habitu detonsus
should
wear the crown. The successor of Wamba was suspected of
having caused his illness, by administering to him certain poisonous
drugs; and it was even said, that when Wamba submitted
to the tonsure, he was unconscious of what was done to him.
It might have been a question, therefore, whether the transaction
was not fraudulent, and on that ground Wamba might
have reclaimed the crown, if he had been so disposed; but there
can be no doubt, that by the existing law, supposing him to
master of the whole Hispano-Gothic
monarchy
. But, so far from this being true,
there were at that time independent Spanish Kings in Navarre,
Sobrarbe and Arragon; and, so far from a cessation of hostilities
between the Christian States
, enabling the latter to direct
their united force against the Moors, there was a sanguinary
contest between Ferdinand and his brother Garcia, King of
Navarre, in which the latter lost his life, and a considerable
part of his dominion.The exclusion of the prelates
and nobility from the Cortes, can hardly have been defensible
on any constitutional rule, and must, one would imagine, have
affected the legality of those few assemblies where it occurred.
This reasoning is plausible, and not entirely to be
rejected; but Mr. Hallam is not aware of certain peculiarities
in the constitution of Castile, which makes it less applicable to
that State, than to any other monarchy founded on the free
principles brought from the woods of Germany by our ancestors.Queen, our
people are free, and not so submissive as the Castilians; they
have respect for us as their lord, but we must treat them as our
; and then rising from his seat, he
ordered the grants to be recalled.
All,
says the historian, were unanimous in this determination; the ricos
omes and knights were not more jealous of their liberties than
the common and inferior persons; all were of opinion, that the
being and existence of Arragon depended, not on the strength
of the kingdom, but on its liberty; all were resolved, that if
their liberties must perish, the kingdom should perish with them
.
Peter was compelled at length to give way, and to grant the
Privilegio general, or, as Mr. Hallam justly calls it, the Magna
Charta of Arragon.The great moral,
he observes,
to be drawn from the condemnation of Huss is, that no breach
of faith can be excused by our opinion of ill desert in the party,
or by a narrow interpretation of our own engagements.
Every capitulation ought to be construed favourably for the
weaker side. In such cases it is emphatically true, that if the
letter killeth, the spirit should give life
.that ecclesiastical,
and not merely papal encroachments, are what civil governments,
and the laity in general, have to resist; a point
which some very zealous opposers of Rome have been willing
to keep out of sight. The latter arose out of the former, and perhaps
were in some respects less objectionable. But the true
enemy, is what are called High-Church principles—be they
maintained by a pope, a bishop, or a presbyter
.in a strain beyond the constitution
; but there is a circumstance, unnoticed by historians, that gives some probability
to his account of a more formal election than ordinary. It has
been usual for the Kings of England to date their accession to
the throne from the death of their predecessor. But it will be
found in Rymer, that John, in his public instruments, dates
the commencement of his reign, not from the death of his brother,
but from his own coronation. Inattention to this peculiarity
has led the modern editors of the Fœedera to misplace
some of the most important documents of his reign; those, in
particular, that relate to the occupation of London by the
Barons.from the reign of Henry III. at least, the legal equality
of all ranks below the peerage was, to every essential purpose,
as complete as at present
. He has surely forgotten the statute
of Morton, which declares, that lords shall not marry those
they have in ward to villeins or others, as burgesses, where they
be disparaged. It is quite clear, that when this act was passed,
burgesses were considered an inferior class to freeholders.we read very little of
private wars in England
; but we are not satisfied that they
were never legal
. He quotes a passage from Glanvil, where
that author expresses his doubts, whether a lord was entitled to
demand an aid from his vassal ad guerram suam manutenendam,
but thinks this expression must relate to the military service
due from the lord to his sovereign
. If such had been the
meaning of Glanvil, he would not have expressed himself
doubtfully; for there can be no question, that the military tenants
of a tenant in chief were bound to assist him in performing
his military service to the Crown, either by their personal
attendance in the field, or by contributing, according to the extent
of their fees, to the scutage imposed on him. But the following
passage, from the same author, which seems to have escaped
Mr. Hallam, places beyond a doubt the right of private war in
England; and, notwithstanding the dubious expressions in the
former quotation, establishes the principle, that vassals were
bound to assist their lords in their private quarrels. Si quis
plura homagia pro diversis feodis suis fecerit diversis dominis, qui se
invicem infestant, si capitalis dominus ejus ei preceperit, quod secum
in propria persona sua eat contra alium dominum suum, oportet
eum ejus precepto in hoc obtemperare, salvo tamen servitio alterius
domini de feodo quod de eo tenet.
et si inter dominos
suos capitales oriantur inimicitæ, in propria persona semper stabit
cum eo cui fecit ligeantiam, et per attornatum cum aliis
.
The most prominent instance,
says Mr. Hallam, of what
may be deemed a private war in England, arose out of a contention
between the Earls of Gloucester and Hereford, in the
reign of Edward I., during which acts of extraordinary violence
were perpetrated; but, far from its having passed for lawful,
those powerful nobles were both committed to prison, and paid
heavy fines
. This statement is not quite correct. These noblemen
were not fined and imprisoned, because they made war
simply, but because they made war after they had been prohibited
by the king in Parliament. The punishment that attendamounting in
effect to a private war
.
refers to municipal privileges
of jurisdiction enjoyed by the citizens under the Confessor
;
but supposes, that as Lincoln was one of the five Danish towns,
it might be in a more advantageous situation than the generality
of boroughs. If he had looked to the charter of
Henry II. to the burgesses of Wallingford, published by Brady
himself, he would have found a similar recognition of municipal
jurisdiction under the Confessor, and, in particular, a confirmation
of their mercantile gild, with all its laws and customs,
as then enjoyed, among which was this privilege, ne prepositus
meus, vel aliqua justicia mea de gilda eorum se intromittat, nisi
proprie aldermannus et munister eorum.
right of determining
the persons by whom, and fixing the limitations under
, understanding by that phrase the two houses of
Parliament without the King, or some one to represent his person.
Mr. Hallam's mistake arises from his not adverting to the
fact, that the Parliament which met at the accession of Henry
VIth, was a full and complete Parliament, being held by the
Duke of Gloucester under a commission from the Great Seal.Edwius, qui quartus a
præfato Æthelstano regni Anglorum sceptra tenebat, voluptatum
amator magis quam dei, luxuriæ quam sobrietatis, libidinum
quam castitatis, regiam dignitatem obscœnis operibus
dehonestabat; ac viros virtutum parvipendens, contra
æquum exasperabat. Unde beatus Dunstanus tunc temporis
Abbas Glastoniensis, eo quod ad suggestionem et imperium
sæpe fati Odonis ipsum regem illicitis amplexibus violenter
abstraxit, e patria pulsus est; et demum innumera per Angliam
mala ab eodem rege patrata. Contra quem Odo armatura
Spiritus Sancti præcinctus exurgens, iniquitatum illius
publicus hostis effectus est; neb destitit, donec sopitis incestibus
reguum ab infandæ mulieris infamia, cui rex idem omissa
conjuge sua sæpius commiscebatur, expurgaret. Eam siqui
suspendii
comminatione;
though he knew, that this menace proceeded not from the
Witenagemote, or from any other judicial tribunal, but from the riotous and drunken
party of prelates and nobles, whom the king left at table, when he retired to his
private apartment after his coronation dinner.Pontificali authoritate usus (i. e. Odo) unam de
præscriptis mulieribus, missis militibus a curia regis, in qua mansitabat,
violenter adduxit; et eam in facie deturpatam ac candenti ferro denotatum perpetua
in Hiberniam exilii relegatione detrusit
. not disposed to justify this murder; though he believes, that, according
to the stern maxims of Saxon jurisprudence, a person returning without permission
from banishment, might be executed without the formality of a trial
; but
he doubts whether the Archbishop was privy to her death
. What were
the stern maxims of Saxon jurisprudence, that could authorize so atrocious an act of
cruelty, we leave Mr Lingard to explain, when he has discovered them; but, with respect
to the participation of Odo in her murder, we have only to quote the words of his
biographer. Having told us, that after the recovery of her beauty, this unfortunate
woman returned to England, he adds, that at Gloucester, ab hominibus
servi dei comprehensa, et ne meretricio more ulterius vaga discurreret,
subnervata, post dies aliquot mala morte præsenti
vitæ sublata est. Erat quippe summus Pontifex
Odo vir virtutum
robore et grandævitatis maturitate ac constantia fultus.
.
primo expulsione, post succisura poplitis
:beatus Odo missis militibus mulierem fornicariam a curia
regis violenter abstraxit, et in facie candenti ferro deturpatam in exilium misit.
Quæ cum obducta cicatrice in Angliam rediret, per eundem Archiepiscopum iterum
rapta et subnervata est
.pro
justicia ascriptus mare transiit;
and Wallingford adds, suspectus
enim erat Eadwino omni tempore Dunstanus eo quod tempore Eadredi thesauros patrum
suorum custodisset, sub cujus obtentu suspicionis etiam ipsa mulier impudens
licentiam a rege acceperat omnes facilitates et
.vel causa consanguinitatis, vel quia illam ut adulteram
adamavit
.impudens illa
mulier
who inflamed the animosity of Edwy against Dunstan and the monks; it
was the hand of the Queen which Dunstan found every where raised against him; it was the
hatred of the Queen which stirred up discord in the convent of Glastonbury, and excited
the greater part of the monks against their abbot: And it was the malevolence of the
Queen, as well as of the King, which struck terror in his friends, and left him without
aid or advice in his afflictions.the woman;
and, having prepared his readers by this phraseology
for what follows, he ingeniously quotes, in illustration of his story, a passage from
Wallingford, in which that historian says, parentela mulieris prosequens—sancti
oculos eruere disponebat
. But he could not be ignorant, in making this
quotation, that the mulier
of Wallingford was not his
woman,
but the Queen.Edwy was not married to Elgiva at the time of his
coronation;
but he is willing to admit,
after
the banishment
of Ethelgiva, the King took Elgiva to his bed, as
his mistress, or married her within the prohibited degrees
. Of these two
positions the first is doubtful; and the second, as far as relates to the date of the
marriage, certainly erroneous. That Edwy was married at the time when Odo broke into his
palace with a band of soldiers, we are expressly told by Eadmer, in the passage formerly
quoted from the life of St Oswald. That he was married before the exile of Dunstan,
appears from the narrative of Wallingford, who repeatedly mentions the Queen among the
enemies of that holy personage. Malmsbury informs us of his marriage before he gives an
account of his coronation; from which it seems reasonable to infer, as modern historians
have done, that his marriage preceded that event. Mr Lingard, it is true, calls the
expression ambiguous, which speaks of the marriage; and finds fault with Mr Carte for
the boldness of his translation of it.Proxime cognatam invadens
uxorem,
is the phrase of the historian, and Mr Carte renders it,
the King had married a wife nearly related to him
. We have nothing to urge
for the latinity of Malmsbury; but we confess there seems to us no doubt of his meaning.
The monk of Ramsay had used almost the same phrase to express the same marriage.
Speaking of Edwy, he says, cujusdam cognatæ suæ eximiæ speciei juvenculæ
illicitum invasit matrimonium
.the active and
inflexible Odo waited three years before he performed that, which he must daily
have considered as an imperious and indispensable duty
.a
secret which, during almost eight centuries, had eluded the
observation of every historian;
; and, among other objections
to the charge against the primate, he urges the impolicy of
involving in the same fate his friends as well as his adversaries
.
To confirm the impression he wishes to give of this transaction,
he quotes the simple narrative of the Saxon Chronicle, the
most faithful register of the times.—This year the prinipal
nobility of England fell at Calne from an upper floor, except
the holy Archbishop Dunstan, who stood upon a beam. And
some were grievously hurt, and some did not escape with their
lives
. But why does he suppress the account of Osbern?
"To
Christ as judge (exclaimed Dunstan to the assembly) I commit
the care of his church."—Dixit et quod dixit irati dei censura
firmavit. Mox enim concussa est domus, cœnaculum sub
pedibus solutum, hostes solo præcipitati ac ruentum trabium
pondere oppressi sunt; ubi vero cum suis sanctus accubitabat,
ibi nulla ruinæ suffusio fiebat
.
an injudicious biographer...
,
the same objection cannot be made to Eadmer, one of the best
and most sensible of monkish historians. But Eadmer informs us, that Dunstan having
concluded his speech against the secular clergy by saying
Domino deo causam ecclesiæ suæ contra insurgentes hostes
tuendam committo. Dixit; et ecce solarium sub pedibus
eorum, qui adversus virum convenerant, e vestigio cecidit, omnesque
pariter præcipitatos in suo casu non modicum læsit.
Ubi vero Dunstanus cum suis consistebat, nulla ruina domus,
nullus emerserat casus. Hoc igitur modo calumnia clericorum
est sopita
.
ascribed the misfortune of Calne
, as Mr Lingard gently terms it,
to a conspiracy between the devil and the monks
.it is said that a voice issued
from a crucifix, exclaiming, "All is well; make no change."
Mr Turner, with his usual fidelity and candour,
says Mr
Lingard, describes this voice as an artifice of the primate: I
would rather say, that the whole history is no more than a
popular tale, adopted and perhaps improved by later writers:
it was unknown to the more ancient historians
. Who are the
Tunc subito crucifixi dei
imago signo crucis in edito domus affixa audientibus cunctis
dixit, "Non fiet, non fiet. Judicastis bene, mutaretis non
bene." Tremefacto in his simul universo conventu, intulit
pater Dunstanus, et ait: Quid amplius vultis, fratres mei?
Divina sententia definitum audistis negotium præsens. Aiunt, audivimus vere
.But it was his duty,
says Mr Lingard, to
have collated the different passages; and not to have incautiously
imposed on himself, and insulted the credulity of his
readers
.—The name of the lady, it seems, was not Editha, but Wulfrith; and
in this correction, Mr Lingard is in the right.—She was not a nun, but pupil to the
nuns; but though she is so described by Eadmer, and, in one place, by Malmsbury, Mr
Lingard is quite aware, that she is called by Osbern deo devota virgo
and sponsa Christi
; and that Malmsbury, in his history, speaks of her
as being virginis deo dicatæ
.—Hume has said, the king was
not obliged,
by Dunstan, to separate himself from his
mistress
; to which Mr Lingard tartly replies, they did
separate
; and refers for the fact to Malmsbury. When we look to Malmsbury, we
find the following passage, on the separation of the king from his mistress—
Illa quoque partu explicito voluptati frequentandæ non inhæsit;
sed doluit potius et sprevit, sanctaque pro vero asseritur
;—from
which it is quite clear, that the Archbishop did not separate the king from his
mistress, but that Edgar continued to cohabit with her, or, as Malmsbury expresses it,
Non semel in thoro suo collocavit
, till she had brought him a child;
after which, she retired of her own accord to a convent, like another Sœur Jeanne, to
edify or provoke its inmates with her repentance. The merit of the separation is,
therefore, due to the lady, and not to the prelate, who seems to have tolerated the
scandal for the sake of the penance. Hume, it must be owned, has not related all the
particulars of the expiation prescribed by the Archbishop for this offence. But how does
it happen, that Mr Lingard, who reproaches him with so much petulance for his
carelessness in that respect, should himself have overlooked, or kept out of sight, one
of the most important articles of the penance?—Clericos etiam male actionales
de ecclesiis propelleret, monachorum agmina introduceret
.
the honours of a reformer
. It was surely incumbent on the historian of the
Anglo-Saxon Church, not to have neglected so favourable an opportunity of showing how
skilfully St Dunstan could extract good from evil, and build on the sins of the king the
salvation of his subjects.the brutal monster
, the insensible
tyrant
, he had heard described. An incarnation of the evil
principle
, an incarnate Moloch
might be dreaded and
abhorred, but could not be loved and followed. The change begun by the companions of
Napoleon's exile, was completed by himself. His constant good humour and unvarying
affability, his patience and equanimity under misfortunes which no mind of ordinary
strength could bear, his thirst for knowledge, and eager but rational curiosity, and
that fascination of manner, which all who have ever approached his person admit he can
exert at pleasure on those around him, made a gradual, and, at length, an entire
conquest of Mr Warden; eradicated every unfavourable impression from his bosom, and
substituted the opposite sentiments in their places. Some visits which he made at
Longwood, after the arrival of the party at St Helena, put the finishing hand to his
conversion, and sent him back to Europe, full of admiration for the talents of Napoleon,
and zealous, to clear his reputation from the unjust aspersions attached to his
character.On entering the room, I
observed the back of a sofa turned towards me; and, on advancing, 1 saw Napoleon
lying at full length on it, with his left arm hanging over the upper part. The glare
of light was excluded by a Venetian blind; and before him there was a table covered
with books. I could distinguish among them some fine bound volumes on the French
Revolution. The heat of the day had occasioned him to dismantle himself of his coat
and waistcoat. The moment his eye met mine, he started up and exclaimed, in English,
in a tone of good-humoured vivacity, 'Ah ! Warden; how do you do ?' I bowed in return;
when he stretched out his hand, saying, 'I have got a fever.' I immediately applied
my hand to the wrist, and observing, both from the regularity of the pulsation and
the jocular expression of his countenance, that he was exercising a little of his
pleasantry; I expressed my wish that his health might always remain the same. He
then gave me a familiar tap on the cheek, with the back of his hand; and desired me
to go into the middle of the room, as he had something to say to me. I now
congratulated him on the preservation of his health; and complimented him, at the
same time, on the progress he appeared to have made in the English language. 'I
certainly enjoy, he said, a very good state of health, which I attribute to a
rigorous observance of regimen. My appetite is such, that I feel as if I could eat at
any time of the day; but I am regular in my meals; and always leave off eating with
an appetite; besides, I never, as you know, drink strong wines.—With respect to the
English language, he continued, I have been very diligent: I now read your newspapers
with ease; and must own, that they afford me no inconsiderable amusement. They are
occasionally inconsistent, and sometimes abusive.—In one paper I am called a liar, in
another a tyrant, in a third a monster,and in one of them, which I really did not
expect, I am described as a coward: but it turned out, after all, that the writer
did not accuse me of avoiding danger in the field of battle, or flying from an enemy,
or fearing to look at the menaces of fate and fortune; it did not charge me with
wanting presence of mind in the hurry of battle, and in the suspense of conflicting
armies:—no such thing. I wanted courage, it seems, because I did not coolly take a
dose of poison, or throw myself into the sea, or blow out my brains. The editor most
certainly misunderstands me; I have, at least, too much courage for that. (p. 133.)
On another occasion, he expressed himself on suicide in the following terms.
Suicide is a crime the most revolting to my feelings; nor does any reason suggest
itself to my understanding by which it can be justified. It certainly originates in
that species of fear which we denominate poltronerie. For what claim can that man
have to courage who trembles at the frowns of fortune?—True heroism consists in
being superior to the ills of life,
aussi je ne suis pas tout à
fait etranger aux sentimens religieux
.I
observed him,
says Mr Warden, with the utmost attention,
as I stood beside him for near half an hour; and could
not discover, in his countenance, the least symptom of strong
or particular emotion
. Mr Warden
takes this opportunity
of remarking, that during the whole voyage from England to
St Helena, he never saw any change in the placid countenance
and unassuming manner of their distinguished shipmate; nor
did he hear of a discontented look, or a peevish expression,
being remarked by any other person in the ship (p. 101.)
.
The only occasion, indeed, on which Napoleon appears to have betrayed a momentary feeling of
irritation, was in consequence of Sir Hudson Lowe having invited him, for the first
time, to dine at the Plantation-house, on the arrival of the Countess of Loudon in the
island. On Bertrand inquiring, what answer it was his Majesty's pleasure he
should return to this invitation?'
Napoleon replied, Say, the Emperor gave no answer
. And when Mr Warden alluded to the disappointment
of the people of the town, who had expected to see him pass by as he went to dinner, he
exclaimed with some impatience, What, go to dinner with a file of soldiers to guard me
.
In a few minutes, however, says Mr Warden, he resumed his usual
cool manner, and continued the subject. After all, he
said, they could not expect me to accept the invitation. The
distance is considerable, and the hour unseasonable; and I have almost relinquished the idea of exceeding my chain, accompanied,
as I must be, by an officer.
Some days afterwards, when he
had heard that the Countess of Loudon had left the island, disappointed at not having
seen him, he observed, had the Countess of Loudon expressed herself fatigued by the
voyage, or had she been indisposed from any other cause,
I should have been happy to have waited on her (p. 175.)
.
that, considering the active life he had led, it did not
appear that he took sufficient exercise to preserve himself in a
right state of health;
he replied,
My rides, indeed, are too
confined; but the being accompanied by an officer
is so disagreeable to me, that I must be content to suffer the consequences of
abridging them. You know, continued he, the island of St Helena, and must be sensible
that a sentinel, placed on either of these hills, can command the sight of me from
the moment I quit this house till I return to it. If an officer or soldier, placed on
that height, will not satisfy your Governor, why not place ten, twenty—a troop of
dragoons. Let them never lose sight of me; only keep an officer from my side (p. 171.)
. This small indulgence to a patient but indignant spirit, might, we
think, have been granted by one soldier to another. The foreign Commissioners had not
yet reached St Helena, whose presence in the island may justly have alarmed Sir Hudson,
in more ways than one, for the safety of his prisoner.met Napoleon cluttering
down from among the rocks in his heavy military boots. He
accosted me, says Mr Warden, with an apparent mixture
of satisfaction and surprise; and reproached me in terms of
great civility for my long absence. There was a rough deal
board placed as a seat between two stones, on which, after
having brushed away the dust with his hands, he set himself
down, and desired me to take my place by him. On all sides
of the spot where we were seated, rocks were piled on rocks
to the height of a thousand feet above our heads, while there
was an abyss of equal depth at our feet. Nature seems, in a
sportive mood, to have afforded this level space for a semi-aerial
dwelling; and while I was gazing with some astonishment on
brought his risible faculties
into complete exertion
. The composure of his manner
dissatisfied Mr Warden, who complained of it to Bertrand;
and wished to know, whether he discovered, at any time, the
Be assured he does,
replied Bertrand. He is not
without a heart, in your sense of the expression; but he does not, cannot, will not
make a parade of it.
When Mr Warden mentioned the arrival of news of the
trial and sentence of Marshal Ney, Napoleon advanced a step nearer to him, but without
the least change of countenance. What, said he, Marshal Ney has been sentenced to
be shot?
The particulars of the trial were then related to him, but he made no comment on them.
One solitary expression only escaped him;
and that was, Marshal Ney was a brave man.
.Ma molti piu furono i Napoleoni, perche in
tutti i tempi gli orecchi Italiani, o nella pace o nella guerra, udirono
questa nobilissima voce in nomini segnalati. Lib. II. p. 20.
. Per
On his return to the army of Italy, he was invited to assist in the siege of Toulon;
and, by his services on that occasion, he contributed materially to the reduction of the
place. When he first joined the besieging army, he found it still under the command of
Cartaux, who was as obstinate and jealous of others, as he was ignorant and incapable
himself. Some time after the evacuation of the town by the Allies, as Napoleon was
showing his brother Lewis the works and operations of the siege, he pointed out to him a
spot, where an unskilful attack on one of the forts had occasioned a great and
unnecessary slaughter of the soldiers. The mounds, under which their bodies had been
interred, and other marks of the transaction, were still fresh. Tenez, jeune
homme
, said Napoleon to his brother, learn from this scene, that it is not
less a matter of conscience, than of prudence, for a military man to study well his
profession. For, had the wretch, who led these brave fellows to the fort, understood his
duty, many of them would be now enjoying life, and serving their country. His ignorance
has murdered them, and hundreds besides, in the flower of youth, and in the prospect of
honour and happiness. These words he uttered with great emotion, and with the tears
standing in his eyes. How strange it seems, that one, who had naturally these strong
sentiments of humanity, should have been the cause of so much havoc and destruction in
the world! The officer at Toulon sacrificed hundreds to his ignorance. How many
thousands have perished in Spain, Russia and Germany, victims to the ambition and
wilfulness of Napoleon!
The arrival of Dugommier with reinforcements, changed the aspect of affairs at Toulon.
In a letter of that able General
It is not our intention to follow Napoleon through the brilliant history of his Italian
campaign, the most splendid and least exceptionable period of his political career. In
one year he drove the Germans from the shores of the Mediterranean to the heart of
Carinthia, defeated and dispersed their armies, and gave peace to the Continent.
Criticisms we have heard of military men on his skill and conduct as a General in that
ever memorable campaign, of the justness of which we have no pretension to form an
opinion. But this we know, that no General, in ancient or modern times, ever obtained so
many splendid victories, in so short a time, with means so inconsiderable, and with such
powerful enemies opposed to him. But his least glory was tint of a conqueror. Not to
speak of the civil institutions in Lombardy, by which he did all that in him lay to
secure the happiness and independence of the new republick he had created; he showed
himself, on every occasion, the sincere and earnest friend of peace; and merited, if he
has not ob
But, splendid as were the achievements, and great as were at this time the merits of Napoleon as a warrior, a legislator, and a peace-maker, it is impossible to bestow upon them, even then, our unmixed commendation. The tone in which he offered liberty to the Italians, was that of Khaled propagating his religion by the sword. Converts were praised, protected, and encouraged; but infidels, that rejected his mission and resisted his arms, were given up without mercy to military execution. The great stain, however, on his character at this period, was his conduct towards Venice. There is great reason to believe, that the cession of the Venetian States to the House of Austria, was stipulated by a secret article of the preliminaries of Leoben,—that the causes afterwards alleged for making war on the Venetian republic, were mere pretexts for an unjust invasion,—and that negociations were entered into with the disaffected at Venice, to get possession of the capital without resistance; not for the purpose of restoring liberty to the people, but with an intention of coolly and deliberately delivering them over to the harsh, haughty, and rapacious gripe of the Austrians. In this complicated act of treachery and injustice, it may be difficult to say whether Napoleon or the Emperor of Germany was most to blame. The one betrayed, the other accepted the spoils of a friend. The difference was, that the Austrian had no character to lose, no reputation to forfeit. If such was the price of peace, the world paid dear for its short-lived tranquillity.
Napoleon has been also reproached with having corrupted, during his Italian campaign,
not the discipline, but the tone and character of his army, by protecting and
encouraging his generals in the most scandalous pillage and extortion, and in
That his republicanism was already of a doubtful character,
The character of Napoleon, at this period, appears to have been that of an enterprising
soldier, with extraordinary talents and genius, but of no fixed political principles or
opinions; full of aspiring thoughts, but without any settled plan to gratify his
ambition. It was impossible, said Meerfeldt, for any one to converse with him for ten
minutes, without perceiving that he was a man of great views and great capacity. His
language, his manner, his conceptions, said Melzi, were striking and peculiar. In
conversation, as in war, he was fertile and full of resource; quick in discerning, and
prompt in pressing the weak points of his adversary. His information from books was
small, and he had made little progress in any branch of study, except in Mathematicks;
but he had great quickness of apprehension, and wonderful powers of application. Of all
his qualities, continued Melzi, the most remarkable was his capacity of long continued
and unremitted attention. His projects were vast and gigantick, conceived with genius,
but sometimes impracticable, and not unfrequently abandoned from temper, or defeated by
his own impatience. He was naturally hasty, decisive, impetuous and violent; but could
make himself very agreeable in con
, was one of his sayings, and savours of that fatalism so
natural to men whose lives are daily exposed to the chances of war, or to the dangers of
the ocean. His figure was at this time pale and thin; and with so slender a frame, his
activity and endurance of fatigue appeared quite incredible. We quote Melzi with the
greater confidence, because he was a man competent to judge of the attainments, as well
as the talents of others; and, at the time we received our information from him, he was
retired from the world, and had no motive whatever for extenuating or exaggerating the
truth.
Such was Napoleon at his return to France, after the conquest of Italy,—an object of
admiration to the world, and of jealousy and suspicion to the government he had served.
He was received, however, with every external appearance of confidence and respect; and
nominated, even before his arrival at Paris, one of the Commissioners to Rastadt, for
the final pacification of the Continent. But he soon discovered, that the negotiation
was a mere farce, and that the Directory had no serious intentions of peace. He was
appointed to command the expedition against England; but he saw the folly of the
enterprise, and withdrew from it. His situation was now become critical. There was no
opening for him at home, nor security in a private station, to which, in the early
periods of his life, he appears, in moments of despondence, to have frequently looked
forward with anxious desire. In 1796, a project had been sent to him for the invasion of
Egypt, which he had examined and returned, with his opinion of it, to the Directory. It
was now resumed, and the command of the expedition was proposed to him. To have refused
a third appointment, would have exposed him to suspicion, and, most probably, to
destruction. The expedition to Egypt was calculated, besides, to dazzle his ardent and
ambitious mind, full of romantick plans, and fond of extraordinary enterprises. No war
could be more unjust. France was at peace with the Ottoman Porte, the nominal sovereign
of Egypt; and had no pretence of quarrel with the Beys, the real masters of the country.
But this consideration was not sufficient to deter the General, and was little
calculated to make impression on the government that employed him. The expedition
sailed; and, by most extraordinary luck, it arrived at Alexandria, after the reduction
of Malta, without encountering the fleet under Nelson,
In Egypt, Napoleon made war on the same principles as in Italy, but in a style more
oriental and despotic. He bad to deal with treacherous and ferocious enemies; and he
punished their perfidy and inhumanity with a severity and cruelty borrowed from
themselves. The inhabitants of Cairo having risen against his garrison, he was not
content with punishing those taken with arms in their hands; but, suspecting their
priests to have been the secret movers of the insurrection, he collected them, to the
number of two hundred, and ordered them to be shot, Such enormities are plainly
unjustifiable; yet some palliation may be found, in the indignation of both general and
soldiers at the cruelty and brutality of their enemies, who not only murdered all the
prisoners that fell into their hands, but mutilated and abused their bodies in a manner
too horrible to be related. Policy had also its share in these severities. The miserable
inhabitants of the East know no principle of government but fear. The execution of Cairo
struck terror into their minds; et depuis ce tems là, said Napoleon,
ils n'ont été fort attachés, car ils voient bien, qu'il n'y avoit pas de mollesse dans
ma maniere de gouverner.
.
Without entering on the minor accusations against Napoleon, for his conduct in Egypt, the following are commonly mentioned as the deepest and most heinous of his offences;— the massacre of his prisoners at Jaffa;—the poisoning of his sick at Acre;—his pretended conversion to Mahometanism;—his desertion of his army. On these charges we shall bestow a few words, in the order in which they have been enumerated.
Of the massacre of the Turks at Jaffa, Napoleon gave the
following account to Lord Ebrington, one of the most candid
and intelligent of the travellers with whom he conversed at Elba
on the history and past transactions of his life. On Lord Ebrington
asking him about the massacre of the Turks at Jaffa,
he answered—C'est vrai; j'en fis fusiller à peu pres deux mille.
Vous trouvez ça un peu fort; mais je leur avois accordé une capitulation
à El Arisch, à condition qu'ils retourneroient chez eux.
Ils l'ont rompu, et se sont jettés dans Jaffa, et je les pris par
assaut. Je ne pouvois les emmener prisonniers avec moi, car je
manquois de pain, et ils etoient des diables trop dangereux pour
les lacher une seconde fois; de sorte que je n'avois d'autre moyen
que de les tuer.
. We quote from the notes of Lord Ebrington,
which he has permitted us to use, in preference to the account
of Mr Warden, which is less concise.
According to this statement, the breach of parole in the gar
Whether a General is entitled, from regard to the safety of his own army, and to the
execution of the service on which he is employed, to put his prisoners to death, or
confine them in a situation where they must inevitable perish, or deliver them over to a
barbarian, in whose hands they have no mercy to expect, are questions we are unwilling
to discuss. Our readers will perceive, that on the determination of this point depends
not only the reputation of Napoleon at Jaffa, but of Henry V. at Agincourt, of Lord
Anson in the South Sean, and of the Bailli Suffrein on the coast of Coromandel. This
much at least is certain, that the necessity must be clear and urgent, which can justify
acts so repugnant to the feelings of humanity, and so contrary to the practice of
civilized nations; and, that there was some appearance of necessity in the case of
Jaffa, cannot be denied. It was not safe to dismiss the prisoners on their parole, after
the conduct of the garrison of El Arisch. No one could doubt, after such experience of
the enemy, that on whatever terms they might be liberated, they would throw themselves,
without scruple, into the first place of arms they found open to recieve them; or remain
behind, and harass the flanks and rear of the French army in its advance into Palestine.
The force under Napoleon was too weak to furnish an escort sufficient to convey them to
a place of security. It consisted of only 6000 men, and the prisoners amounted to 3000,
of whom 1800 were
That the intention of administering opium as a poison, to a few of the sick of his
army, was entertained by Napoleon, he has related to many, and with this addition, that
it was owing to his physician, the design was not carried into execution. But this
suggestion arose from a mistaken judgment, not from a bad heart, and least of all, from
indifference about the fate or fortunes of his soldiers. All accounts agree, that his
attention to his sick and wounded, during his Syrian Campaign, was most exemplary. He
visited the hospitals in person, exposed himself to the most imminent danger of
infection, conversed with the sick, listened to their complaints, saw that his medical
officers did their duty; and at every movement of his army, and more particularly at the
retreat from Acre, his chief solicitude was about his hospital; and the skill and care
with which his sick and wounded were removed, drew praises even from his enemies. On
those points, all the medical men of his army concur in one evidence in his favour.
Desgenettes, who was chief physician to his army in Syria, is a royalist, but at no
time, not even since the restoration of the Bourbons, has he ever mentioned the conduct
of Napoleon to his sick and wounded, without the just encomiums which his care and
tenderness had deserved. We happened lately to meet with the celebrated Assolini at
Munich, who was one of his Medical Staff in Syria. Though no friend of Napoleon, he
joined in the universal testimony in his favour upon this subject. Having stated to
Napoleon at Acre, that the means of transport provided for the sick were insufficient,
he was directed to stop all the baggage horses as they passed, and even to make the
officers dismount and give their horses for this service. These orders were punctually
executed, and not a sick person was left behind, who in the judgment of his medical
attendants could be removed with safety. But let us hear the story of the poisoning, in
the words of Napoleon himself. When Lord Ebrington visited him in the isle of Elba, he
repeatedly and earnestly requested his guest to question him freely about the past
incidents of his life; and when, in consequence of this permission, Lord Ebrington
alluded to this report, he answered without hesitation, Il y a
dans cela un fond de verité. Some soldiers of the army had
the plague. They could not have lived 24 hours. I was about
to march. I consulted Desgenettes as to the means of
The truth of this simple and ingenuous confession,
we see no reason whatever to question. That this suggestion was most properly rejected
by Desgenettes, every one will agree; but he must have a mind strongly biassed by
prejudice, who can represent the proposal of Napoleon as arising from a callous
insensibility to the sufferings and fate of his soldiers. It had its source, on the
contrary, the strong but ill-directed feelings of humanity, which neither he nor
Desgenettes had a right to indulge in the manner proposed.
The apostasy of Napoleon in Egypt, we cannot regard in a more serious light, than the
feigned Mahometanism of Major Horneman, or of any other traveller, whom the African
Association have employed to explore the secrets of the Desert. No one imagines, that
Napoleon was a sincere convert to Islamism, or that he adopted the language and
sentiments of the Koran, for any other purpose than that of gaining the confidence and
conciliating the good will of the natives. He might also hope, by his mystical and
prophetic denunciation, to terrify and confound his enemies, and diffuse a superstitious
awe around his person; but that he should have seriously intended to set up for a second
Mahomet, is an idea that could only have entered into the head of a crazy visionary, who
might in other circumstances have been his first disciple. This piece of hypocrisy,
according to his own account, answered completely his purpose.
You can hardly imagine,
said he to Lord Ebrington, the
advantages I gained in Egypt from the adoption of their worship.
.
But, after all, it was a low
artifice, the device of a cunning, not the resource of an elevated mind. The language of
his proclamations has given scandal, and, to a pious ear, it
His desertion of his army was a military offence against his own government, for which
he was liable to be punished. But it was no crime against his army, whom he left in a
flourishing condition, as appeared by the footing he was able to maintain in Egypt, and
by the resistance they afterwards opposed to the English arms. Whether he was invited
back to France by any party at home, or induced by his own reflections to take that bold
and decided step, we cannot inform our readers. We rather incline to the opinion, he had
no positive invitation from France; but that, hearing of the disasters of the armies,
the loss of Italy, and discontent of the interior, he concluded the Directorial
Government could not last, and hurried home to profit by the confusion, and secure a
place in the new Government to himself. Certain it is, that for some time after he
landed, he was doubtful in what manner he should be received; and, till his enthusiastic
reception by the Lyonese, it seemed a question whether a scaffold or a diadem would be
the reward of his audacity. We have heard, that when the news of his return reached
Paris, the Directory ordered Fouché, their Minister of Police, to arrest his person; but
Fouché declined the office, saying, il n'est pas homme à se laisser arrêter;
aussi ne suis-je pas l'homme qui l'arrêtera.
. At Paris he was courted by the
different factions that distracted the Republick, and closing with that of Syeyes, he
overturned, as is well known, the existing Government, on the 18th of Brumaire, and laid
the foundation of a military despotism in its place. He had now his foot in the stirrup,
and soon convinced both friends and enemies, that it was not a short way he meant to
go.
France was at that time beset with greater difficulties than at any period since 1793.
Her armies were defeated and dispirited. Her Italian conquests were reduced to the
mountains and coast of Genoa. The greater part of Switzerland was occupied by the
Allies. Her own injustice and rapacity had estranged the inhabitants of that country;
and, by destroying their neutrality, had exposed her most vulnerable frontier to
invasion. Her resources were exhausted, and the enthusiasm of her people was gone. Her
Government was without union or authority; torn by factions, and contemned by its
subjects. All her attempts to establish a free constitution had proved abortive. The
Jacobins were feared and detested for the cruelties they had
The first measures of his reign, for it is idle to talk of the Republick after the 18th
of Brumaire, were wise and salutary. Every one acknowledged the necessity of a strong
Government. A strong Government they had. Every one exclaimed against the corruption and
injustice of their late rulers. Napoleon repressed peculation, and enforced a due
administration of justice. All lamented the party divisions, which weakened and
distracted their country. Napoleon sought men of talents from every party, and employed
them in the public service. All men dreaded what the French call a reaction. Napoleon
checked every symptom of reaction, and extended protection to all who obeyed the laws,
and punished impartially all who infringed them. Persecution had revived the spirit of
devotion. Napoleon took religion under his protection, and restored the priests to their
altars. The western departments were desolated by civil war, which the abominable law of
hostages had rekindled. Napoleon abolished the law of hostages—closed the list of
Emigrants,—and, by a judicious mixture of mildness and severity, restored
tranquillity to those departments. All France joined in an unanimous cry for peace.
Napoleon offered peace to his enemies; and, when his proffer was scornfully rejected by
England and Austria, he reduced Austria to a submission, and then generously pardoned
her. England, the most formidable and in
Napoleon had now reached the summit of glory; and if he had been disposed to give
liberty to his country, there was no obstacle to the execution of his design. He had
restored peace to the Church by his Concordat; and though he had made great concessions
to the Court of Rome in that negotiation, he had maintained, and while he remained in
France he preserved inviolate, the most complete toleration to his Protestant subjects.
He had wished to stipulate for the marriage of the Romish clergy; but found, as he told
Mr Fox, that if he had insisted on it, on auroit crié au
pur protestantisme
. He had introduced greater equity, and more despatch,
into the administration of justice, and was occupied with his noblest and most durable
work, the Code Napoleon, to remedy the confusion and contradiction of the existing laws.
He had established a most excellent police, in which he employed, as
. Luisiana was ceded to him by Spain. St
Domingo was recovered with circumstances of
When Napoleon first obtained the supreme authority in France, his moderation, so
different from the violence of preceding governments, had filled the Royalists with idle
hopes and groundless expectations. The Cromwell of the Revolution had appeared, and they
mistook him for a Monk. Cured of their error, they sought to avenge their disappointment
by a contrivance for his destruction, which, from its qualities, has been emphatically
termed the Infernal Machine. Above thirty persons perished by its explosion, but
Napoleon escaped. The peace with England put a stop to their machinations; but when the
war broke out afresh, their plots were renewed. Georges, Pichegru, and other emigrants,
repaired privately to Paris. Moreau, whose unambitious spirit had been converted by
intriguers into a mal-content and enemy of Napoleon, entered into their schemes.
Meetings were held at Paris, where plans were discussed for the destruction of Napoleon,
and the settlement of a new form of government. Accident led to the discovery of their
plots. Pichegru and Georges were arrested. Pichegru strangled himself in prison. Georges
was publickly executed. Moreau was tried, condemned, pardoned, and banished. The Duke of
Enghien, grandson of the Prince of Conde, who reCe gaillard là,
said one of his own
ambassadors on the occasion, sçait tirer parti de tout
.
Such we believe to be the true history of these transactions. That Pichegru or Captain
Wright died otherwise than by their own hands, we have never seen a tittle of evidence
to prove, or heard a reason that could bear examination. What possible motive could
induce Napoleon to murder Pichegru in secret? The popularity of Pichegru with the army
had been extinguished by absence and length of time, and utterly destroyed by his open
and undisguised connexion with the enemies of his country. What difficulty was there in
trying him by a special commission, and punishing him as a traitor leagued with the
enemies of France—as a conspirator against her government, or even as a convict
returned from transportation? Surely, the difficulty was much less in his case than in
that of the Duke d'Enghien, who had been brought into France by military force, and made
amenable to the laws against emigrants, by an act not his own. We have heard it
surmised, that Pichegru was tortured in prison, to extort confession of his accomplices,
and that to conceal the use of this execrable and illegal practice, which he would have
made known on his trial, he was privately assassinated. But the body of Pichegru was
publicly exposed after his death. Many went to see it, English
Mr Warden has repeated the account he received from Napoleon of the discovery of this
conspiracy. The following particulars are not contained in his narrative, but were
communicated by Napoleon to Lord Ebrington. The first information of the arrival of
Pichegru in Paris was given by a spy of the police, who reported a curious conversation,
that was overheard between Moreau, Pichegru and Georges, at a house on the Boulevards.
In this it was settled, that Georges should get rid of Bonaparte, and that Moreau should
be First, and Pichegru Second Consul. Georges insisted on being Third Consul, to which
the others objected, saying, that as he was known to be a Royalist, any attempt to
associate him in the government, would ruin them with the people. On this he said,
Si ce n'est
. When Moreau was first arrested, he was indignant on his
examination; but when this conversation was repeated to him, he fainted away.
When the death of Captain Wright was mentioned to him by Lord Ebrington, he did not at
first recollect his name; but when told it was a companion of Sir Sidney Smith, he said,
Est-il donc mort en prison? car j'ai entierement oublié la circonstance
. He scouted the notion of any foul play; adding, that he never had put any
man to death clandestinely, or without a trial. Ma conscience est sans reproche
sur ce point. Had I been less sparing of blood, perhaps I might not have been here
at this moment.
The arrest of the Duke of Enghien on neutral territory was an open and undisguised
infraction of the law of nations, for which the apology offered to Baden was no
atonement. To try hist as an emigrant, when he had been seized in his bed on neutral
ground, and brought by an armed force into France, was a shocking and outrageous
violation of every principle of justice. What proofs there were of his participation in
the plot to assassinate Napoleon, we do not know. Such proofs are mentioned, in the
sentence against him; but they have never been communicated to the public. The following
is Napoleon's own account of this transaction.
The Duke of Enghien was engaged in a
treasonable conspiracy, and had made two journies to Strasburg
in disguise; in consequence of which I ordered him to
be seized, and tried by a military commission, who sentenced
him to be shot. "On m'a dit qu'il demanda à me parler; ce
qui me toucha; car je sçavais que c'êtoit un jeune homme de cœur
et de merite. Je crois même que je l'aurois peut-être vu; mais
M. de Talleyrand m'en empecha, disant, n'allez pas vous compromettre
avec uu Bourbon. Vous ne sçavez cequi en puissent
être les suites. Le vin est tiré, il faut le boire." On Lord
Ebrington asking him if it was true the Duke was shot by torchlight.
He replied, 'Eh non, cela auroit été contre la loi. The
execution took place at the usual hour; and I immediately
ordered the report of it, with his sentence, to be publicly affixed
in every town in France.'
It is remarkable, that in this and other
conversations on the subject, Napoleon seems always to have considered, that to see the
Duke of Enghien and to pardon him were the same thing. Our James II. thought
differently, when he admitted his brother's favourite son to an interview, with a
predetermination to order him afterwards for execution.
But to return to Napoleon. At the moment when his schemes for the invasion of England
had been frustrated by the activity and fortune of our Naval commanders, his soldiers
were called from their inglorious encampment at Boulogne, by a new Continental war,
which added fresh laurels to his military reputation, and raised him to a pitch of
greatness which Europe had not witnessed since the days of Charlemagne. For the third
time he conquered and spared the House of Austria; but he stripped her of her Venetian
states, and compelled her to resign her ancient sceptre and Imperial title. To Prussia
he was more obdurate and unforgiving. Besides their territorial cessions, both powers
paid enormously for the peace they obtained. From Russia he exacted nothing but to shut
her ports against England. It was the good fortune of the Czar that, before the
negotiation at Tilsit, Napoleon had conceived the plan of excluding England from the
Continent; and, to his concurrence in that measure, Alexander owed the moderation of the
terms imposed on him. The two Sovereigns indulged in conversations of the most
confidential nature, and Napoleon left the North, with a firm conviction that he had
made the Emperor Alexander his friend for ever. As he passed through Milan, he
discussed, with Melzi, his Continental system, which was, at that time, his favourite
policy. Melzi urged the improbability of Russia submitting long to a measure so
manifestly contrary to her interests; to which Napoleon replied, that he depended on the
personal sentiments with which he had inspired Alexander for the adherence of Russia to
his system. This, observed Melzi, was the more singular, as he related an anecdote of
Alexander, which ought to have shown him how little reliance could be placed on his
power, even if his inclinations were favourable to France. At Tilsit, Napoleon showed
great attentions to General Beningsen. Alexander observed it, and asked him the reason.
Mais, franchement,
said Napoleon,
c'est pour vous faire ma cour. Vous lui avez confié votre armée,
c'est assez qu'il ait votre confiance pour m'inspirer des egards de
l'amitié
. Alexander most imprudently
replied, that Napoleon was mistaken; that not having military experience, he was
compelled to entrust his armies to others; that he was in their hands; and that he
feared and detested, but could not do without them.
'During the fortnight we were together at Tilsit,' said Napoleon,
'we dined together almost every day; we rose from table very
early, in order to get rid of the King of Prussia, qui nous ennuyoit.
About nine o'clock, the Emperor Alexander came back to my
lodgings, in plain clothes, to have tea; we remained together, con
Where such doctors have disagreed, we cannot
but feel our incompetence to decide; but, if we might presume to offer our humble
opinion in so weighty and difficult a matter, we should say that both were in the right;
that such monarchs as they were considering, ought neither to be hereditary nor
elective. It is in England only, as Napoleon remarked on another occasion, where the
King may become, from illness or other causes, incapable; et les affaires n'en
vont pas moins leur train, puisque cela s'arrange entre le Ministere et le
Parlement
.
After the peace of Tilsit began the war of Spain, the most unpopular in France, of all
the military or political enterprises of Napoleon. On this hackneyed subject we can only
repeat what his enemies admit, and what his friends acknowledge, that he had ample
provocation to make war with Spain, and to warrant his expulsion of the reigning family;
but that no provocation could justify or palliate the base and treacherous arts he
employed to accomplish his purpose. We have heard from authority which we cannot doubt,
that having succeeded in expelling the House of Braganza from Portugal, by the mere
terror of his arms, he determined to pursue the same course in Spain; to fill the
kingdom with his troops, and, without commencing hostilities, to decline all
communication with the government, or explanation of his views, in approaching Madrid
with his army. He calculated that the fears of the Prince of the Peace, and the
influence he was known to possess over the Royal family, would induce them to quit their
capital, abandon: their kingdom, and seek for safety across the Atlantick. It
With the Spanish war began the downfall of Napoleon. Prosperity had gradually changed
and vitiated his character. His head was turned by success; and his temper corrupted by
adulation. He thought nothing impossible for him to execute; and could bear no
contradiction to his will. Men of sense and
Il offensoit beaucoup plus qu'il ne
punissoit,
said one who had felt the weight of his resentment. His second
marriage disclosed a new weakness in his character. His vanity was tickled with the
thought, that he, a car
toutes les fois que je touchois cette corde, les esprits fremissoient comme un cheval à
qui on serre trop la bride
.
The war with Russia, when first undertaken, was popular in France. It arose out of the
treaty of Tilsit; and Napoleon had justice on his side. Russia had undertaken to exclude
English manufactures; and, as Melzi foretold, had been unable to fulfil her engagement.
Napoleon arced to punish her for the violation of a treaty, to which she owed her
preservation from ruin, when at his mercy. How he failed, and from what causes, need not
here be detailed. He had still an opportunity of arresting the course of his fortune.
But obstinacy and incredulity prevailed. He could not bring himself to relinquish
designs he had so long indulged; and in thing could persuade him that Austria would ever
abandon his alliance. Austria was followed in her defection by Bavaria; and the battle
of Leipsick ruined his last hopes of universal empire. He was still, however, master of
France and Italy, and might still have concluded peace. But, forgetting how much he had
broke down the spirit of France, he once more refused to hearken to the counsels of
prudence. Instead of courting his people, he disgusted and offended them, by his
intemperate quarrel with his legislature. The Allies entered France. The nation remained
passive, as the Germans had done, twenty years before, when invaded by the French. The
armies fought with spirit and desperation. The
Napoleon reached the neighbourhood of Paris on the evening of the battle, after the
capitulation had been concluded. Finding he was too late to save his capital, he retired
to Fontainebleau, and then collected his forces. On the 2d of April, he reviewed the
corps of Marmont, which had evacuated Paris on the 31st of March, and was then encamped
at Essonne, forming the advanced guard, and constituting about one third of his army.
Marmont assured him of the fidelity and attachment of his troops, who were indeed proof
against seduction; but he forgot to answer for their general. Napoleon had at first
intended to march on Paris, and attack the Allies; but, after consulting with the
officers of his army, most attached to his person and interests, and listening for the
first time to their account of the general discontent in France, which his obstinacy in
refusing peace had excited, he determined to abdicate in favour of his son; and, on the
4th of April, he sent Ney, Macdonald and Caulaincourt, with a proposition to that
effect, to the Emperor Alexander. As these officers passed the advanced guard of the
army, and stopped to have their passports countersigned by Marmont, they communicated to
that officer the object of their mission. He appeared confused, and muttered somewhat of
propositions made to him by Schwartzenberg, which he had in some degree entertained; but
this, he said, materially altered the case, and he would now put an end to his separate
communications; to which one of them replied, that he had better go with them to Paris
for that purpose, and assist them in the negotiation they had in hand. He did accompany
them; but with what views, the future movements of his army will best explain, him with
Schwartzenberg, and proceeded on their mission to
We must here close our review of Napoleon. We have represented him as he appears to
us,—a man of extraordinary talents and dangerous ambition;—better qualified to support
adversity with firmness and patience, than to bear prosperity with temper and
moderation;—quick and violent in his passions, but more susceptible of friendship than
of lasting enmity;—with some of the characteristic vices of a conqueror, but not more
prodigal
'Les circonstances
en me suscitant des guerres,' said he, 'm'ont fourni les moyens
d'agrandir mon empire, et je ne les ai pas negligé.'
His equanimity in
misfortune, and calm resignation to his fate, have been equalled by few—surpassed by
none. Mr Warden bears frequent and ample testimony to those virtues; and we can add,
they are without ostentation, or appearance of display. When one of his visitants at
Elba expressed his surprise at the admirable calmness with which he bore the change of
his fortune, he replied, 'C'est que tout le monde en a été, je crois, plus etonné
que moi; je n'ai pas une trop bonne opinion des hommes, et je
me suis toujours mefié de la fortune. D'ailleurs, j'ai peu joui:
mes freres ont été beaucoup plus rois que moi:—They have had
the enjoyments of royalty; I have had little but its fatigues.'
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From the Edinburgh Review 27 (1816): 58-67.
The A Question of Style project's aim is to gain new insights on the writing and editorial practices of the Edinburgh Review during the editorship of Francis Jeffrey. The Edinburgh Review was the main literary journal in early nineteenth-century Britain. It reviewed the most significant publications in literature, history, politics and science and its contributors included some of the most prominent figures of the age. Authors believed that a review from the Edinburgh Review could make or break the fortunes of a publication. Style focuses on the period 1814-1820 and employs methods from periodical studies, book history, computational linguistics and computational stylistics. It was awarded the inaugural Field Development Grant by the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals from the bequest of the Eileen Curran estate.
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Has been retained, with superfluous surrounding spaces removed.
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The advertisement by which this work was announced to the public, carried in its front a
recommendation from Lord Byron,—who, it seems, has somewhere praised Christabel, as
a wild and singularly original and beautiful poem
. Great as
the noble bard's merits undoubtedly are in poetry, some of his latest publications dispose
us to distrust his authority, where the question is what ought to meet the public eye;
and the works
It is remarked, by the writers upon the Bathos, that the true profound is surely known by
one quality—its being wholly bottomless; insomuch, that when you think you have attained its
utmost depth in the work of some of its great masters, another, or peradventure the same,
astonishes you, immediately after, by a plunge so much more vigorous, as to outdo all his
former outdoings. So it seems to be with the new school, or, as they may be termed, the wild
or lawless poets. After we had been admiring their extravagance for many years, and
marvelling at the ease and rapidity with which one exceeded another in the unmeaning or
infantine, until not an idea was left in the rhyme—or in the insane, until we had reached
something that seemed the untamed effusion of an author whose thoughts were rather more free
than his actions—forth steps Mr. Coleridge, like a giant refreshed with sleep, and as if to
redeem his character after so long a silence, (his poetic powers having been, he says, from
1808 till very lately, in a state of suspended animation,
It is probable that Lord Byron may have had this passage in his eye, when he called the poem 'wild' and 'original;' but how he discovered it to be 'beautiful,' is not quite so easy for us to imagine.
Much of the art of the wild writers consists in sudden trans
And who, it seems, has been rambling about
all night, having, the night before, had dreams about her lover, which
made her moan and leap
. While kneeling, in the course of her
rambles, at an old oak, she hears
a noise on the other side of the stump, and going round, finds, to her great surprize,
another fair damsel in white silk, but with her dress and hair in some disorder; at the
mention of whom, the poet takes fright, not, as might be imagined, because of her disorder,
but on account of her beauty and her fair attire—
!
Christabel naturally asks who she is, and is
answered, at some length, that her name is Geraldine; that she was, on the morning before,
seized by five warriors, who tied her on a white horse, and drove her on, they themselves
following, also on white horses; and that they had rode all night. Her narrative now gets
to be a little contradictory, which gives rise to unpleasant suspicions. She protests
vehemently, and with oaths, that she has no idea who the men were; only that one of them,
the tallest of the five, took her and placed her under the tree, and that they all went
away, she knew not whither; but how long she had remained there she cannot tell—
—although she had previously kept a pretty
exact account of the time. The two ladies then go home together, after this satisfactory
explanation, which appears to have conveyed to the intelligent mind of Lady C. every
requisite information. They arrive at the castle, and pass the night in the same bed-room;
not to disturb Sir Leoline, who, it seems, was poorly at the time, and, of course, must have
been called up to speak to the chambermaids, and have the sheets aired, if Lady G. had had a
room to herself. They do not get to their bed, however, in the poem, quite so easily as we
have carried them. They first cross the moat, and Lady C. took the key that fitted
well
, and opened a little door, all in the middle of the gate
.
Lady G. then sinks downbelike through pain
; but it should seem more
probably from laziness; for her fair companion having lifted her up, and carried her a
little way, she then walks on as she were not in pain
. Then they cross the
court—but we must give this in the poet's words, for he seems so pleased with them, that he
inserts them twice over in the space of ten lines.
Lady C. is desirous of a little conversation on the way, but Lady G. will not indulge her
Ladyship, saying, she is too much tired to speak. We now meet our old friend, the mastiff
bitch, who is much too important a person to be slightly passed by—
Whatever it may be that ails the bitch, the ladies pass forward, and take off their shoes,
and tread softly all the way up stairs, as Christabel observes that her father is a bad
sleeper. At last, however, they do arrive at the bed room, and comfort themselves with a
dram of some home-made liquor, which proves to be very old; for it was made by Lady C.'s
mother; and when her new friend asks if she thinks the old lady will take her part, she
answers, that this is out of the question, in as much as she happened to die in childbed of
her. The mention of the old lady, however, gives occasion to the following pathetic
couplet.—Christabel says,
!
A very mysterious conversation next takes place between Lady Geraldine and the old
gentlewoman's ghost, which proving extremely fatiguing to her, she again has recourse to the
bottle—and with excellent effect, as appears by these lines.
.
—From which, we may gather among other
points, the exceeding great beauty of all women who live in a distant place, no
.
Before going to bed, Lady G. kneels to pray, and desires her friend to undress, and lie
down; which she does in her loveliness
; but being curious, she leans
on her elbow
, and looks towards the fair devotee,—where she sees
something which the poet does not think fit to tell us very explicitly.
She soon rises, however, from her knees; and as it was not a double-bedded room, she turns
in to Lady Christabel, taking only two paces and a stride
. She then clasps
her tight in her arms, and mutters a very dark spell, which we apprehend the poet
manufactured by shaking words together at random; for it is impossible to fancy that he can
annex any meaning whatever to it. This is the end of it.
The consequence of this incantation is, that Lady Christabel has a strange dream—and when
she awakes, her first exclamation is, Sure I have sinn'd
—Now heaven
be praised if all be well
! Being still perplexed with the remembrance of her
too lively
dream—she then dresses herself, and modestly prays to be
forgiven for her sins unknown
. The two companions now go to the Baron's
parlour, and Geraldine tells her story to him. This, however, the poet judiciously leaves
out, and only signifies that the Baron recognized in her the daughter of his old friend Sir
Roland, with whom he had had a deadly quarrel. Now, however, he despatches his tame poet, or
laureate, calledsend away that woman
. Upon this the Baron falls into a
passion, as if he had discovered that his daughter had been seduced; at least, we can
understand him in no other sense, though no hint of such a kind is given; but, on the
contrary, she is painted to the last moment as full of innocence and purity.—Nevertheless,
Nothing further is said to explain the mystery; but there follows incontinently, what is
termed 'The conclusion of Part the Second.' And as we are pretty confident that Mr.
Coleridge holds this passage in the highest estimation; that he prizes it more than any
other part of that wild, and singularly original and beautiful poem
Christabel
, excepting always the two passages touching the toothless
mastiff Bitch
; we shall extract it for the amazement of our readers—premising our
own frank avowal that we are wholly unable to divine the meaning of any portion of it.
Here endeth the Second Part, and, in truth, the singular
poem itself; for the author has not yet written, or, as he phrases
it, embodied in verse
, the three parts yet to come
;—though he trusts he shall be able to do so in the course of the present year
.
One word as to the metre of Christabel, or, as Mr Coleridge terms it, the
Christabel
—happily enough; for indeed we doubt if the peculiar force of the
definite article was ever more strongly exemplified. He says, that though the reader may
fancy there prevails a great irregularity in the metre, some lines being of four, others of
twelve syllables, yet in reality it is quite regular; only that it is founded on a
new principle, namely, that of counting in each line the accents, not the
syllables
. We say nothing of the monstrous assurance of any man coming forward
coolly at this time of day, and telling the readers of English poetry, whose ear has been
tuned to the lays of Spenser, Milton, Dryden, and Pope, that he makes his metre on a
new principle!
but we utterly deny the truth of the assertion, and defy him to
show us any principle upon which his lines can be conceived to tally. We give two or three
specimens, to confound at once this miserable piece of coxcombry and shuffling. Let our
wild, and singularly original and beautiful
author, show us how these
lines agree either in number of accents or of feet.
Kubla Khan is given to the public, it seems, at the request of a poet of great and
deserved celebrity
;—but whether Lord Byron the praiser of the
Christabel
, or the Laureate, the praiser of Princes, we are not informed. As far
as Mr Coleridge's wn opinions are concerned
, it is published, not
upon the ground of any poetic merits,
but as a PSYCHOLOGICAL
CURIOSITY
! In these opinions of the candid author, we entirely concur; but for
this reason we hardly think it was necessary to give the minute detail which the Preface
contains, of the circumstances attending its composition. Had the question
psychological curiosity, may find his way thither without a guide; for it is situated on the confines of Somerset and Devonshire, and on the Exmoor part of the boundary; and it is, moreover, between Porlock and Linton. In that farm-house, he had a slight indisposition, and had taken an anodyne, which threw him into a deep sleep in his chair, (whether after dinner or not he omits to state),
at the moment that he was reading a sentence in Purchas's Pilgrims, relative to a palace of Kubla Khan. The effects of the anodyne and the sentence together, were prodigious: They produced the
curiositynow before us; for, during his three-hours sleep, Mr. Coleridge
has the most vivid confidence that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines. On awaking, he
instantly and eagerlywrote down the verses here published; when he was (he says,
unfortunately) called out by a
person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour; and when he returned, the vision was gone. The lines here given smell strongly, it must be owned, of the anodyne; and, but that an under dose of a sedative produces contrary effects, we should inevitably have been lulled by them, into forgetfulness of all things. Perhaps a dozen more such lines as the following would reduce the most irritable of critics to a state of inaction.
&c. &c.A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid And on her dulcimer she play'd, Singing of Mount Abora. Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight 'twould win That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread: For he on honey-dew hath fed,
There is a good deal more altogether as exquisite—and in particular a fine description of
a wood, ancient as the hills
; and folding sunny spots of greenery
! But we suppose this specimen will be sufficient.
Persons in this poet's unhappy condition, generally feel the want of sleep as the worst of their evils; but there are instances, too, in the history of the disease, of sleep being attended with new agony, as if the waking thoughts, how wild and turbulent soever, had still been under some slight restraint, which sleep instantly removed. Mr. Coleridge appears to have experienced this symptom, if we may judge from the title of his third poem,
Upon the whole, we look upon this publication as one of the most notable pieces of
impertinence of which the press has lately been guilty; and one of the boldest experiments
that has yet been made on the patience or understanding of the public. It is impossible,
however, to dismiss it, without a remark or two. The other productions of the Lake School
have generally exhibited talents thrown away upon subjects so mean, that no power of genius
could ennoble them; or perverted and rendered useless by a false theory of poetical
composition. But even in the worst of them, if we except the White Doe of Mr. Wordsworth and
some of the laureate odes, there were always some gleams of feeling or of fancy. But the
thing now before us, is utterly destitute of value. It exhibits from beginning to end not a
ray of genius; and we defy any man to point out a passage of poetical merit in any of the
three pieces which it contains, except, perhaps, the following lines in p. 32, and even
these are not very brilliant; nor is the leading thought original—
.
With this one exception, there is literally not one couplet in the publication before us
which would be reckoned poetry, or even sense, were it found in the corner of a newspaper or
upon the window of an inn. Must we then be doomed to hear such a mixture of raving and
driv'ling, extolled as the work of a wild and original
genius, simply
because Mr. Coleridge has now and then written fine verses, and a brother poet chooses, in
his milder mood, to laud him from courtesy or from interest?
This publication received the support of a Field Development Grant awarded by the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals from the bequest of the Eileen Curran estate.
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From Quarterly Review volume 22 issue 44, January 1820, p. 437-481. Uncorrected sourece downloaded from: http://archive.org/details/quarterlyreview127smitgoog
The A Question of Style project's aim is to gain new insights on the writing and editorial practices of the Edinburgh Review during the editorship of Francis Jeffrey. The Edinburgh Review was the main literary journal in early nineteenth-century Britain. It reviewed the most significant publications in literature, history, politics and science and its contributors included some of the most prominent figures of the age. Authors believed that a review from the Edinburgh Review could make or break the fortunes of a publication. Style focuses on the period 1814-1820 and employs methods from periodical studies, book history, computational linguistics and computational stylistics. It was awarded the inaugural Field Development Grant by the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals from the bequest of the Eileen Curran estate.
Manual curation assisted by semi-automated scripts.
All soft end of line hyphenations within a page have been removed, and the word consolidated on its first line. Associated punctuation moved too.
Where a word breaks over a page, the page break has been recorded with the
None - we need the original spellings.
Has been retained, with superfluous surrounding spaces removed.
All quotation marks converted to their simple equivalent, prime or double prime accordingly.
Marks that begin each line of a multi-line quotation have been removed.
Marks within
Punctuation within quotations is recorded inside block
THE friends of John Lewis Burckhardt, now alas! no more,
will receive this memorial of a part of his labours with mixed
emotions of satisfaction and regret. In every page they will be reminded
of that ardour of research, that patience of investigation,
that passionate pursuit after truth, for which he was eminently distinguished.
His simple and unstudied narrative will recall that easy,
cheerful and unruffled mind, that evenness and serenity of temper
which he displayed in social life, and which neither the fatigues nor
the privations nor the insults to which he was so frequently exposed
in his long and arduous journies, could for a moment unsettle or
disturb. Those who have yet to learn his character will learn, from
the record now before us, what manner of man he was
, and will
join in deploring the untimely fate of one whose place, we fear,
must long remain unfilled. They will discover that he was a traveller
of no common description:-that no food was too coarse for
him—no clothing too mean—no condition too humble—no treatment
too degrading, when the object was knowledge, and the acquirement
of it considered, as it always appeared to be considered,
a duty to his employers. In the Deserts of Syria, Arabia or Nubia,
and in the hospitable mansion of the venerable president of the
Royal Society, Burckhardt was always the same cheerful and contented
being.
A gentleman by birth and a scholar by education, he added to
the ordinary acquirements of a traveller, accomplishments which
fitted him for any society. He had also the happy faculty of adapting
himself to all circumstances. With Greeks, Syrians, Arabs,
Turks, Nubians, Negroes, he completely identified himself, and
put on and threw off their language and manners with the same
ease as he did his garment. His descriptions of the countries through
which he travels, his narratives of incidents, his transactions with
the natives, are all placed before us with equal clearness and simplicity.
Although,
says his editor, Mr. Burckhardt was gifted by
nature with sagacity and memory for making accurate observations,
and with taste and imagination to give a lively description of them,
it must not be forgotten, that he wrote in a language which was
not his native tongue, which he did not learn until he was twenty-five
years of age, and in the writing of which he had little exercise,
until he had arrived in those countries, where he very seldom heard
it spoken, and where he had still more rarely any opportunities of
referring to English models of composition
.
Mr. Burckhardt was not unacquainted with the systematic no
John Lewis Burckhardt, descended from an ancient family of Basle, was born at Lausanne. He was the eighth child of John Rodolph Burckhardt of Kirshgarten, whose prospects in life were blighted by the French revolution; in the early part of which he was falsely accused, tried, proved innocent, and acquitted. Innocence and acquittal, however, are feeble safeguards among revolutionary demagogues. Young Burckhardt, who daily witnessed the misery inflicted on his country by the republican French, imbibed at a very early age a detestation of their principles, and a determination never to submit to their yoke. In 1800, being then sixteen years of age, he entered the University of Leipzig, whence, after a stay of nearly four years, he was removed to Göttingen. In both places, his exemplary conduct and high feelings of honour, his distinguished talents and ardent zeal for knowledge, ensured him universal esteem and respect; while a remarkable frankness, cheerfulness, kindness, and evenness of temper made him particularly beloved by his more intimate acquaintance. On leaving Göttingen in 1805, he returned to his mother at Basle, where an offer was made to him by one of the Royal Courts of Germany of some employment in the diplomatic line; but as the whole continent was either subject to the French, or in alliance with them, he resolved to try his fortune in England. He arrived in London in July, 1806, bringing with him many letters of introduction, and among others, one to Sir Joseph Banks, from Professor Blumenbach of Göttingen.
At the house of the President of the Royal Society he soon be
As an intimate knowledge of Arabic was of the utmost importance, his instructions directed him in the first instance to proceed to Syria, where, while studying that language in one of the purest schools, he might acquire the oriental manners, at a distance from the intended theatre of his researches, and without the risk of being afterwards recognized. After a stay of two years in Syria, he was to proceed to Cairo, thence by the Fezzan caravan to Mourzook by the route traversed by Horneman; and subsequently, to avail himself of such opportunities as might offer for the countries farther in the interior.
On the 2d March, 1809, Burckhardt sailed from Cowes, and
reached Malta about the middle of April; from thence he proceeded
for Aleppo, in the character of an Indian Mohammedan
merchant, and as the supposed bearer of dispatches from the East
Indian Company, to Mr Barker, the British Consul, and the Company's
Agent in that city. His fellow-passengers were three Tripolines,
and two Negro slaves. In the course of the voyage numerous
questions were put to him by these people relative to India,
its inhabitants and its language, which I answered,
says Burckhardt,
as well as I could; whenever I was asked for a specimen
of the Hindoo language, I answered in the worst dialect of the
Swiss German, almost unintelligible even to a German, and which,
in its guttural sounds, may fairly rival the harshest utterance of
Arabic
. He was at all times willing to lend a helping hand to the
merchants and seamen, to divert their attention from his person and
affairs.
At Suedieh, where he first went on shore, he joined a caravan,
which was on the point of setting out for Aleppo. Here, after a
short stay at Antakia, during which he associated chiefly with the
muleteers, he arrived in safety, and took up his residence with Mr.
Barker the British Consul, as an Indian Mussulman, but still wear
He was not, however, entirely sedentary during this period; he
made, in 1810, a six months' tour to Damascus and through the
Haouran and Mount Libanus, the journal of which is in the possession
of the African Association: and in 1811, he set out for the
Euphrates, in the neighbourhood of which, he spent seven or eight
weeks: all traces of this journey are lost, his epistolary correspondence
not having reached the Association. The tribes of Arabs
which he was anxious to visit were of the most savage kind, and his
means of protection insufficient. The consequence was,
says Mr.
Barker, that poor Burckhardt was stripped to the skin; and he
returned to Sukhne, his body blistered with the rays of the sun, and
without having accomplished any one of the objects of his journey.
It was on this excursion to the desert that he had so hard a struggle
with an Arab lady, who took a fancy to the only garment which
the delicacy or the compassion of the men had left him
. He had
previously been robbed of his watch and compass.
In May, 1812, we find him at Damascus, on the eve of making
a journey along the borders of the Dead Sea, into Arabia Petræa
on his way to Cairo. In this, which lasted from the middle of June
to the end of September, he states himself to have been considerably
worn by the fatigues of the road and the intense heat of the season
.
By the treachery of a Sheik, and the villainy of a Bedouin
The valley of Ghor is continued to the south of the Dead Sea; at about sixteen hours distance from the extremity of the Dead Sea, its name is changed into that of Araba, and it runs in almost a straight line, declining somewhat to the west, as far as Akaba, at the extremity of the eastern branch of the Red Sea. The existence as of this valley appears to have been unknown to ancient as well as modern geographers, although it is a very remarkable feature in the geography of Syria, and Arabia Petræa, and is still more interesting for its productions. In this valley the manna is still found; it drops from the sprigs of several trees, but principally from the Gharrab; it is collected by the Arabs, who make cakes of it, and who eat it with butter; they call it Assal Beyrouk, or the honey of Beyrouk. Indigo, gum arabic, the silk tree called Asheyr, whose fruiten closes a white silky substance, of which the Arabs twist their matches, grow in this valley. It is inhabited near the Dead Sea in summer-time by a few Bedouin peasants only, but during the winter months it becomes the meeting place of upwards of a dozen powerful Arab tribes. It is probable that the trade between Jerusalem and the Red Sea was carried on through this valley. The caravan, loaded at Eziongeber with the treasures of Ophir, might, after a march of six or seven days, deposit its loads in the warehouses of Solomon. This valley deserves to be thoroughly known; its examination will lead to many interesting discoveries and would be one of the most important objects of a Palestine traveller. At the distance of a two long days journey north-east from Akaba, is a rivulet and valley in the Djebel Shera, on the east side of the Araba, called Wady Mousa. This place is very interesting for its antiquities and the remains of an ancient city, which I conjecture to be Petra, the is capital of Arabia Petræa, a place which, as far as I know, no European traveller has ever visited. In the red sand stone of which the valley is composed, are upwards of two hundred and fifty sepulchres entirely cut out of the rock, the greater part of them with Grecian ornaments. There is a mausoleum in the shape of a temple, of colossal dimensions, likewise cut out of the rock, with all its apartments, its vestibule, peristyle, &c. It is a most beautiful specimen of Grecian architecture, and in perfect preservation. There are other mausolea with obelisks, apparently in the Egyptian style, a whole amphitheatre cut out of the rock with the remains of a palace and of several temples. Upon the a summit of the mountain which closes the narrow valley on its western side, is the tomb of Haroun (Aaron, brother of Moses). It is held in great veneration by the Arabs. (If I recollect right, there is a passage in Eusebius, in which he says that the tomb of Aaron was situated near Petra). The information of Pliny and Strabo upon the site of
Petra, agree with the position of Wady Mousa. I regretted most sensibly that I was not in circumstances that admitted of my observing these antiquities in all their details, but it was necessary for my safety not to inspire the Arabs with suspicions that might probably have impeded the progress of my journey, for I was an unprotected stranger, known to be a townsman, and thus an object of constant curiosity to the Bedouins, who watched all my steps in order to know why I had preferred that road to Egypt, to the shorter one along the Mediterranean coast.—p. xlv.
Of this journey the Association are in possession of a detailed and very interesting account.
A caravan of Twatees, who dwell on the great road between Fezzan and Tombuctoo, was setting out on their return, when he arrived at Cairo; but having no funds to equip himself, and too little acquaintance with the Egyptian and African character to take such measures as would secure his real character from being discovered, he determined on a voyage as far as Dongola, as a preparatory step to the knowledge of the Negro nations, and of those who traffic for slaves; and thus to facilitate his future travels in the interior of Africa. In January 1813 he left Cairo on his first journey through Nubia, (the journal of which forms part of the present volume,) and returned to Assuan on the 30th of March, thirty five-days after setting out from this place, during which he only allowed himself a single half-day's rest at Derr.
No opportunity offering of proceeding into western Africa, he
projected a second journey to the banks of the Atbara, or Astaboras,
and from thence to Djidda or Moka, and to return by land
along the eastern shore of the Red Sea to Cairo. The detailed account
of this expedition, as far as Djidda on the Arabian coast
of the Red Sea, forms the subject of the greater part of the volume
now before us; and we may here remark, that the extraordinary
economical manner in which he travelled, and the conscientious
feeling with which he expended the funds of the Association, are
among the prominent characteristics of Mr. Burckhardt. In a letter
to Sir Joseph Banks, from Djidda, he says, When I left Egypt,
I had only sixty dollars, and an ass to carry me; twenty-five dollars
were spent on the way to Shendy. I was thus much straitened, and
I had scarcely enough to buy a slave, a camel, and the necessary
provisions for my journey to the Red Sea
. In this journey he
crossed that desert to the westward of Dongola by which Bruce returned
from Abyssinia, and which has been described in such frightful
terms by this enterprizing traveller; but the dangers and the sufferings
of Burckhardt were occasioned neither by the privations
of the Desert, nor its poisonous winds, nor its moving pillars of
At this place,(Djidda,) he was fortunate enough to obtain a supply
of money by the means of Yahya Effendi, the physician of
Tousoun Pasha, a man educated in Europe, who had known him
at Cairo. A whole year nearly had elapsed after his departure from
Djidda before the Association received any further advices from
their traveller, his first letter being dated from Cairo, after his return
from Arabia; but we are told by the Editor, that, in the following
year, he transmitted to the Association the most accurate and '
complete account of the Hedjaz, including the cities of Mekka and
Medina, which has ever been received in Europe
; that he resided
at Mekka during the whole time of the pilgrimage, and passed
through the various ceremonies of the occasion, without the
smallest suspicion having arisen as to his real character
; and that
the Pasha of Egypt having thought proper to put his qualifications
as a Mussulman to the test, by directing the two most learned professors
of the law, then in Arabia, to examine him on his knowledge
of the Koran, and of the practical as well as doctrinal precepts
of their faith, the result was a complete conviction upon the
minds of his hearers, or at least of his two examiners, of his being
not only a true, but a very learned Mussulman
.
Important as were the experience and information acquired by
this journey into Arabia, it would appear that they were but
too dearly purchased, as his constitution never recovered from the
effects of that fatal climate, which seldom fails to exert its pernicious
influence on all strangers who visit it. In June 1815, in a letter
to Sir Joseph Banks, from Cairo, he says, the approbation of my
employers has been to me the source of most heartfelt joy, and the
encouragement which I have derived from it has entirely banished
from my mind that despondency which my bodily sufferings had
caused
. After telling him that he had passed three months at Mecca,
he adds: I performed on the 25th of November, in the company
of more than eighty thousand pilgrims, the Hadj to Mount
Arafat
. In January he set out from Mecca to Medina, a journey
often or eleven days, mostly through deserts. Six days after his arrival
at the latter place, he was attacked by a fever, which, he says,
kept him chained to his carpet until April
. From Medina he descended
to the sea-coast at Yembo. Here the plague, a calamity
hitherto unknown to Arabia, had lately made its appearance, and
its ravages were so great that the inhabitants had fled, and the town
was found almost deserted. After a stay of fifteen days,he embarked
in a country ship, landed on the promontory of Ras Mohammed, in
the Peninsula of Mount Sinai, whence he reached Tor, where he
suffered a relapse of his fever, which detained him a fortnight; he
In the course of the succeeding nine months spent in Egypt, in anxious expectation of a caravan setting out for western Africa, he had several relapses of his fever: on the appearance of the plague in Cairo, in April 1816, unwilling to shut himself up, and more so to expose himself to infection, he conceived that he could not do better than retire, while it lasted, to the Bedouins, who enjoy a total exemption from it. Accordingly, he set out for the peninsula of Mount Sinai on the 20th of April, and returned to Cairo on the 18th of June.
His account of this journey, together with his history of the Bedouins,
whom he pronounces infinitely superior in all respects to
the Turks, will prove exceedingly interesting; as it is from a perfect
knowledge of their manners, laws and institutions, that we are able
duly to appreciate the truth of the early history of mankind; and it
is satisfactory to find in so able an observer as Burckhardt, the
vindicator of the authenticity of the sacred historian of Beni Israel
.
He now felt himself quite confident of bringing his African expedition
to a happy issue: If,
says he, I fail, it must cost my successor
many years of apprenticeship to be able to enter the gates of
Lybia with as much confidence as I shall now be able to do
.
Among the pilgrims collected at Mecca, in the Hadj of the year 1817,
he had encountered a party of Moggrebyns, or western Africans,
who were expected to return home, as usual, by the way of Cairo
and Fezzan. With this caravan he intended to set off for Fezzan,
with hopes not more sanguine than reasonable of being able to
penetrate from thence to the countries bordering on the Niger; and
by tracing its course, to reap the reward of his long perseverance
in acquiring authentic information respecting the unknown regions
of Africa, traversed by this celebrated but mysterious stream. Providence
ordained otherwise. Early in October, he was attacked by
a return of dysentery, which in the course of ten days carried him
off,—the afflicting account of his death will be found in No.
XXXVI. of this journal. To that we must refer our readers; and
conclude the brief introductory sketch of this highly gifted man in
the words of his editor.
As a traveller, he possessed talents and acquirements, which were rendered doubly useful, by his qualities as a man. To the fortitude and ardour of mind, which had stimulated him to devote his life to the advancement of science, in the paths of geographical discovery, he joined a temper and prudence, well calculated to ensure his triumph over every difficulty. His liberality and high principles of honour, his admiration of those generous qualities in others, his detestation of in
justice and fraud, his disinterestedness and keen sense of gratitude * His present to the University of Cambridge, of the choicest collection of Arabic manuscripts in Europe, was intended as a mark of his gratitude, for the literary benefits, and the kind attention which he received at Cambridge, when preparing himself for his travels. Of his disregard of pecuniary matters, and his generous feeling towards those who were dear to him, a single example will be sufficient. His father having bequeathed at his death about ten thousand pounds, to be divided into five equal parts, one to his widow, and one to each of his children, Lewis Burckhardt immediately gave up his portion, to increase that of his mother. If, he said, I perish in my present undertaking, the money will be where it ought to be; if I return to England, my employers will undoubtedly find me some means of subsistence. were no less remarkable, than his warmth of heart and active benevolence, which he often exercised towards persons in distress, to the great prejudice of his limited means. No stronger example can easily be given of sensibility united with greatness of mind, than the feelings which he evinced on his death-bed, when his mother's name, and the failure of the great object of his travels, were the only subjects upon which he could not speak without hesitation. By the African Association his loss is severely felt, nor can they easily hope to supply the place of one whom birth, education, genius and industry, conspired to render well adapted to whatever great enterprize his fortitude and honourable ambition might have prompted him to undertake. The strongest testimony of their approbation of his zealous services is due from his employers, to their late regretted traveller; but it is from the public and from posterity, that his memory will receive its due reward of fame; for it cannot be doubted, that his name will be held in honourable remembrance, a slong as any credit is given to those who have fallen in the cause of science.—p. lxxxix.
In the review which we are about to take of the two Nubian journeys
contained in this volume, we must necessarily confine ourselves
to a very limited and imperfect outline, in which, however, we shall
be careful to use the traveller's own words, wherever we can do
so; for although they are those of a foreigner, and, as he tells us,
but once transcribed from the collection of daily notes, written in
the corner of an open court, by the side of his camels, under the
influence of the burning winds of the desert, and the sufferings of a
painful ophthalmia, they are penned in all the simplicity of truth,
and we feel that no alteration of ours would tend to their improvement.
Mr. Burckhardt left Assouan, the most romantic spot in Egypt,
but little deserving the lofty praises which some travellers have
bestowed on it for its antiquities
, on the 24th of February, 1813,
Immediately beyond Assouan the mountains approach so near
to the Nile as to leave scarcely the width of a hundred yards of
cultivable ground. Our traveller passed the first might with
the Shikh of Wady Debot: (it may here be observed, once
for all, that though the term wady generally means a river, it
is used, along the borders of the Nile as far as Sennaar, for
a valley, or ravine in the mountains.) Here,
says Mr. Burckhardt,
I first tasted the country dish—which, during a journey
of five weeks, became my constant food—thin, unleavened, and
slightly baked cakes of Dhourra, (Holcus Arundinaceus,) served
up with sweet or sour milk
. As the mention of this universal
dish is perpetually occurring, we shall here give our author's description
of it. It seems to be nearly allied to the teff cakes of
the Abyssinians, and not very different from our English crumpets.
The chief article of food is dhourra bread. As they have no mills, not even hand-mills, they grind the dhourra by strewing it upon a smooth stone, about two feet in length and one foot in breadth, which is placed in a sloping position before the person employed to grind. At the lower extremity of the stone, a hole is made in the ground to contain a broken earthen jar, wooden bowl, or some such vessel, which receives the dhourra flower. The grinding is effected by means of a small stone flat at the bottom; this is held in both hands and moved backwards and forwards on the sloping stone by the grinder, who kneels to perform the operation. If the bread is to be of superior quality, the dhourra is well washed, and then dried in the sun; but generally they put it under the grinding stone, without taking the trouble of washing it. In grinding, the grain is kept continually wet by sprinkling some water upon it from a bason placed near, and thus the meal which falls into the pot, resembles a liquid paste of the coarsest kind, mixed with chaff and dirt. With this paste an earthen jar is filled, containing as much as is necessary for the day's consumption. It is left there from twenty-four to thirty-six hours, during which time it slightly ferments and acquires a sourish taste. No leaven is used; the sour liquid is poured in small quantities upon an iron plate placed over the fire, or
when no iron is at hand, upon a thin well smoothed stone: and if the iron or stone is thoroughly heated, the cake is baked in three or four minutes. As each cake is small, and must be baked separately, it requires a long time to prepare a sufficient quantity; for it is the custom to bring several dozen to table while hot, in a large wooden bowl: some onion sauce, or broth, or milk, is then poured upon them; the sauce is called Mallah. The bread is never salted, but salt is mixed with the sauce. This dish is the common and daily food both at dinner and supper. Although very coarse it is not disagreeable, and the sourish taste renders it peculiarly palatable during the heat of the mid-day hours. It is of easy digestion, and I always found it agree with me; but if left to stand for a day it becomes ill tasted, for which reason it is made immediately before dinner or supper. Cakes of this kind, but still thinner, and formed of a paste left for two or three days to turn quite sour, are made for travelling provision. After being well toasted over the fire, they are left to dry thoroughly in the sun, they are then Crumbled into small pieces and put into leather bags, called Abra. They thus keep for many months, and serve the traders upon occasions, when it is impossible to prepare a supper with fire. Some melted butter is poured over a few handfuls of this food, and appetite is seldom wanting to make it palatable. Sometimes the crumbs are soaked in water, and when the water has acquired a sourish taste it is drunk off; this is called by the traders "the caravan beverage, Sharbet el Jellabe."—p. 219.
The whole of the road to Derr, on the east bank of the river,
perfectly safe, provided the traveller be accompanied by a native.
he people were every where curious and inquisitive. From
Assouan to Dehymt the granite chain of mountains had been uninterrupted;
from the latter place to the second cataract at Wady
Halſa, the mountain next the river was sand-stone, with the exception
of some granite rocks above Tafa, extending as far as
Kalabshé. At Gyrshé, two days journey from Assouan, the plain
between the river and the mountains is about a mile in width; it
is a poor village, and two-thirds of the cottages were abandoned
in consequence of the oppressions of the Mamelouks in their
flight from the Turks, and the arrival of the latter. The Mamelouks
were driven to Dongola, where they still remain. After
their, expulsion from Nubia a terrible famine broke out, in
which one-third of the population perished through absolute
want; the remainder retired into Egypt, and settled in the valleys
below Assouan and Esné, where numbers of them were
carried off by the small-pox
. A part of the inhabitants who
had survived this dreadful malady had but just returned.
On the arrival of the Mamelouks at Argo, one of the principal
places belonging to the king of Dongola, they were only able to
muster about 300 effective men, and as many armed slaves, the
These fierce horsemen had sought refuge in the mountains inhabited by the Ababde and Bisharye Arabs, where all their horses died from want of food, and where even the richest Begs had been obliged to expend their last farthing, in order to feed their troops, provisions being sold to them by the Arabs at the most exorbitant prices. Thus cut off from all the comforts and luxuries of Egypt, to which they had been accustomed from their infancy, Ibrahim Beg thought it a propitious moment to ensnare them, as his father had done their brethren at Cairo. With this design, he sent them the most solemn promises of safe conduct, if they would descend from the mountain, and pledged himself that they should be all placed in situations under the government of Mohammed Aly, corresponding with the rank which each individual then held among themselves. It will hardly be believed that, well acquainted as they were with the massacre at Cairo in the preceding year, more than four hundred Mamelouks, headed by several Begs, accepted the delusive offer, and descended in small parties from the mountains. They were stripped in the way by faithless guides, so that, with the exception of about thirty, the whole reached the camp of Ibrahim Beg, then near Esné, in a state of nakedness. After the different parties had all joined, and it was ascertained that no others were ready to follow them, the signal of carnage was given, and the whole of them, with about two hundred black slaves, were unmercifully slaughtered in one night. Two French Mamelouks only were saved, through the interest of the physician of Ibrahim Beg. Similar instances of perfidy daily occur among the Turks; and it is matter of astonishment, that men should still be found stupid enough to allow themselves to be thus ensnared by them.—p. 13.
At Korosko the shore widens, and a grove of date trees enlivens
the banks of the Nile the whole way from hence to Ibrîm. Groups
of houses occur at every hundred yards; and as far as Derr,
the fields are as carefully cultivated as in any part of Egypt. At
Derr Mr. Burckhardt alighted, as all travellers do, at the house
of Hassan Kashef, who inquired the object of his journey. Encouraged
by the success of Messrs. Legh and Smelt, he replied that he
had merely come on a tour of pleasure through Nubia, like the two
gentlemen who had been at Derr before him; but his Turkish dress
and manners and his perfect knowledge of Arabic created a suspiun-English
.—Besides,
said Hassan, this gentleman
proceeded only as far as Ibrîm; whereas you give me a few
trifles, and wish to go even to the second cataract!
—Thus it is,
that Englishmen in every part of the world spoil the market by their
extravagant generosity. The Kashef, however, had a caravan just
proceeding with merchandize to Egypt; and Burckhardt hinted,
that if he sent him back to Esnè, and the Beg was there informed
of the little attention paid to his letter of recommendation, (which
Burckhardt had presented to him,) he might be induced to levy a
contribution on his merchandize. This became a matter of serious
reflexion with the Kashef, who shortly after thus addressed our traveller:
Whoever you may be, whether an Englishman, like the
two other persons who passed here, or an agent of the pasha, I shall
not send you back unsatisfied; you may proceed; but farther than
Sukkot the road is not safe for you; and from thence therefore you
will return
. Thus sanctioned, he proceeded to the southward, accompanied
by a Bedouin guide.
As far as Derr, the eastern bank of the Nile is better adapted
for cultivation than the western, being covered with the rich
deposit of the river; whereas on the western side, the sands of the
desert are impetuously swept to the very brink of the river by
the north-west winds which prevail during the winter and spring
seasons; and it is in those places only, where the sandy torrent is
arrested by the mountains, that the narrow plain admits of cultivation:
the eastern shore is in consequence much more populous
is than the western; though it is not a little singular that all the chief
remains of antiquity are on the latter—perhaps,
says Mr. Burckhardt,
the ancient Egyptians worshipped their bounteous deities
more particularly in those places, where they had most to dread
from the inimical deity Typhon, or the personified desert, who
stands continually opposed to the beneficent Osiris, or the waters
of the Nile
.
Not far from Derr our traveller noticed a temple of the most
remote antiquity. It was hewn entirely out of the sand-stone rock
With its pronaos, sekos or cella, and adyton; the gods of Egypt
(he observes) seem to have been worshipped here long before
they were lodged in the gigantic temples of Karnac and Gorne;
which are, to all appearance, the most ancient temples in Egypt
.
The Bedouin who accompanied our traveller was of that branch
of the Ababde, who pasture their cattle on the banks of the river
and its islands from Derr to Dongola: they are very poor; mats
They pride themselves,
and justly,
(says our traveller,) in the beauty of their girls
.
They are an honest and hospitable people, and of a more kindly
disposition than any of the other tribes of Nubia. The inhabitants
of a small island near the village Ketta are thus described.
These people, who all speak Arabic as well as the Nouba language, are quite black, but have nothing of the Negro features. The men generally go naked, except a rag twisted round their middle; the women have a coarse shirt thrown about them. Both sexes suffer the hair of the head to grow; they cut it above the neck, and twist it all over in thin ringlets, in a way similar to that of the Arab of Souakin, whose portrait is given by Mr. Salt in Lord Valentia's Travels. Their hair is very thick, but not woolly; the men never comb it, but the women sometimes do; the latter wear on the back part of the head, ringlets, or a small ornament, made of mother of pearl and Venetian glass beads. Both men and women grease their head and neck with butter whenever they can afford it; this custom answers two purposes; it refreshes the skin heated by the sun, and keeps off vermin.—p. 31.
The castle of Ibrîm and the inhabitants of its territory have
an Aga who is independent of the governors of Nubia, with whom
they are often at war. They are of white complexion as compared
with the Nubians, and still retain the features of their ancestors,
the Bosnian soldiers who were sent to garrison Ibrîm by
Sultan Selym. In no part of the eastern world,
says Mr.
Burckhardt, have I ever found property in such perfect security
as in Ibrîm. The inhabitants leave the dhourra in heaps on the
field without a watch during the night; their cattle feed on the
banks of the river without any one to tend them; and the best
parts of their household furniture are left all night under the palm-trees
around the dwelling
.—But he adds that the Nubians in
general are free from the vice of pilfering;
and, what is more important,
that travellers in Nubia have little to fear from the ill will
of the peasants: it is the rapacious spirit of the governors that is
to be dreaded
.
Near Wady Halfa is the second cataract of the Nile, whose noise
was heard in the night at a considerable distance. This part of
the river is described as very romantic: the banks, overgrown
with large tamarisks, have a picturesque appearance amidst the
black and green rocks, which, forming pools and lakes, expand the
width of the river to more than two miles. Between this place
and Sukkot the navigation is interrupted for about 100 miles by
rapids, similar to that at Assouan: in some places, however, the
river is tolerably free from rocks and islands; in these its bed is
I could throw a stone over to the opposite side
.
At Wady Seras our traveller, put up for the night, at a hut of
Kerrarish Arabs, who were watching the produce of a few cotton
fields, and bean plantations. They had not tasted bread for the last
two months. Burckhardt made them a present of some dhourra,
on condition of their letting the women (who are seldom permitted
to enjoy this luxury) partake of it with them; the latter immediately
set to work to grind it between two granite stones; and the girls
sat up eating and singing the whole night
.
The rock, which as far as Wady Halfa had every where been
sand-stone, changed at the second cataract into grunstein and
grauwacke. The mountain crossed by our traveller to the southward
of Seras was of granite and quartz. The Arabs, who act
as guides in these desolate mountains, have devised a singular
mode of extorting presents from the traveller. They first beg a
present; if refused, they collect a heap of sand, and placing a
stone at each extremity of it, they apprize the traveller that his
tomb is made. Before he got out of this mountainous district, Mr.
Burckhardt had a practical proof of this custom; having refused to
give any thing to one of these grave-diggers, the man set about
making his sand-heap; upon this our traveller alighted and began
another, observing, that as they were brethren, it was but just that
they should be buried together
. The fellow laughed; and they
mutually agreed to destroy each other's labours: on Burckhardt's
remounting his horse, the disappointed Arab exclaimed from the
Coran, No mortal knows the spot upon earth where his grave
shall be digged
.
At Wady Okame, the dominions of the governor of Sukkot begin,
and the country opens out on each side of the river. Having a
letter of recommendation from Hassan Kashef to the governor of
Sukkot, who resides at Kolbe, an island in the Nile, Mr. Burckhardt
crossed over in a kind of ferry-boat called a ramous. It
consists of the trunks of date-trees loosely tied together, and worked
by a paddle about four feet in length, forked at the upper extremity,
and lashed to the raft by ropes of straw. Its close resemblance to
those represented on the walls of the Egyptian temples, shews that
man, here at least, has not been an improving animal. This is
not a country,
said the Governor, (who received him very coldly,)
for people like you to travel in, without being accompanied
by caravans
. He gave him, however, a letter to his son, then
at Ferke. Here the whole neighbourhood was assembled to partake
of a cow slaughtered in honour of a deceased relation of the chief.
A present of a piece of soap procured his permission to proceed.
The district of Say begins at Aamara, on the plain of which
the ancient Egyptians
do not appear to have employed granite in any of their buildings
in Upper Egypt, except in the obelisks and some few of their
propyla
. The castle of Say is built of alternate layers of stone
and brick, on an island of the Nile, and, like Ibrîm and Assouan,
has its own Aga, independent of the governors of Nubia; like these,
too, its territories are inhabited by the descendants of Bosnian
soldiers. Beyond Say, thick groves of date trees and numerous
habitations crowded both banks of the river. The dates of Sukkot
and Say are preferred to those of Ibrîm, and are considered superior
to all that grow on the banks of the Nile, from Sennaar down
to Alexandria; they are of the largest kind, generally three inches
in length.
On the 13th March, Mr. Burckhardt reached the territory of
Mahass, and passed several villages, the houses of which were constructed
only of mats of palm-leaves. The castle of Tinareh had
been seized by a rebel cousin of the king of Mahass, but having
been besieged for several weeks by the two brothers Hosseyn and
Mohammed Kashefs, it had capitulated the evening preceding his
arrival. He visited the camp of the latter, the son, on the mother's
side, of a Darfour slave, but without any of that mildness which
generally characterizes the negro countenance.—He rolled his
eyes at me,
says our traveller, like a madman, and having drank
copiously of palm-wine at the castle, he was so intoxicated that he
could hardly keep on his legs
. Goat-skins of palm-wine were
brought in, and in the course of half an hour, the whole camp was
as drunk as their chief. Muskets succeeded; and a feu-de-joie was
fired with ball in the hut where all were sitting. I must confess,
says Burckhardt, that at this moment I repented of having come to
the camp
. At length, however, the whole party dropped asleep,
and a few hours brought the kashef to his senses, so that he could
talk rationally. Burckhardt's situation, however, was not much improved.
He was suspected of being an agent of the Pasha of Egypt;
—But,
said the kashef's, Arabic secretary, at Mahass we spit
at Mohammed Aly's beard, and cut off the heads of those who
are enemies to the Mamelouks
—a fate with which he was
frequently threatened during the night; and which, had it not been
for the arrival of the governor of Sukkot's nephew who confirmed
his account of himself, would in all probability have been carried
into execution.
I was now,
says our traveller, without a friend or protector,
in a country only two days and a half distant from the northern
. Under these circumstances,
he prudently determined to return; but the kashef abruptly
ordered him to stay till next day. Burckhardt however expressed
his anxiety to reach Derr as speedily as possible, and was dismissed
with the usual mixture of insult and contempt. His intention was
to cross over to the western side of the Nile, but there was no conveyance
of any kind. This the more mortified him, as opposite to
Soleb there was a fine village and the ruins of a temple, which appeared
to have been of the size of the largest found in Egypt; besides,
he had reason to believe it to be the most southern specimen
of Egyptian architecture.
At the village of Kolbe, our traveller obtained a ramous for the
baggage, and he and his guide swam the river at the tails of their
camels, each beast having an inflated goat-skin tied to its neck. He
now availed himself of the opportunity of examining, in his way
down, the hitherto undiscovered temple of Ebsambul, whose front,
sculptured and fashioned out of the living rock, and rising immediately
from the bank of the river, is still in a state of complete
preservation. In this front stand six colossal figures, representing
juvenile persons; they are placed in narrow recesses, three on each
side of the entrance; their height from the ground to the knee is about
six feet and a half. The spaces of the smooth rock between the
niches are covered with hieroglyphics, as are also the walls of the
apartments. This temple Mr. Burckhardt thinks to have been the
model of that at Derr, but much anterior to it in point of time, the
style in which the sculptures are executed denoting a high antiquity.
On the side of the mountain facing the north, against which there
was a vast accumulation of sand, and at a distance of about 200
yards from the temple, the upper parts were discovered of four immense
colossal statues cut out of the living rock, all the other parts
being buried beneath the sands, which are drifted here in torrents
from the desert. The head of one of these statues was yet above
the surface; and,
says our author, it has a most expressive
youthful countenance, approaching nearer to the Grecian model of
beauty than that of any ancient Egyptian figure I have seen; indeed,
were it not for a thin oblong beard, it might well pass for a
head of Pallas.
—This statue,
he adds, measures seven yards
across the shoulders, and cannot therefore, if in an upright posture,
be less than sixty-five or seventy feet in height! the ear is one yard
and four inches in length
. Mr. Burckhardt conjectured, that if the
sand could be cleared away, an immense temple would be discovered,
to the entrance of which the four colossal figures served as
ornaments, in the same manner as the six belonging to the neigh
The account given by Belzoni and his associates of these extraordinary
excavated temples, sculptured out of a whole mountain, induced
Mr. Bankes, whose name we have frequently had occasion to
mention, to make a second visit, in company with Mr. Salt, to explore
the sacred recesses more minutely. For the fatigue and
expense of this enterprize, and the exertions of a month in removing
the sand, and excavating the rubbish, &c. they were amply
rewarded by many new and brilliant discoveries; among the first
of which must be reckoned that of a Greek inscription on the leg
of one of the colossal statues which guards the entrance, recording
the visit of Psammeticus (spelt ΨΑΜΜΑΤΙΧΟΙ, in the dative,
and written in very ancient letters) which, from appearances,
it was judged must have been engraved when the temple was already
encumbered with sand. This is probably the most ancient inscription
that exists in any intelligible language, as Psammeticus
died more than 600 years before Christ—more than 100 years before
the conquest of Egypt by Cambyses the Persian—and nearly
200 years before the visit of Herodotus to that country. It is valuable
as an additional corroboration of the truth and accuracy of
the Father of Profane History, from whom we learn that this
Psammeticus was one of the twelve princes who ruled Egypt; that
by the assistance of some Ionians and Carians—men of brass
—
he subdued his eleven associates, and became sole sovereign of the
country; that in return for this service they had lands assigned to
them, and that they taught the Greek language to the Egyptian
youth; a circumstance which affords a satisfactory explanation of
the existence of a Greek inscription at that early period. It is for
those, if there be such, who affect to doubt or to deny the existence
of Greek letters at this time, to prove the contrary; but without
the knowledge of letters, it would be difficult to understand on
what ground Herodotus could affirm, that we certainly know all
things that passed in Egypt since the reign of Psammeticus to our
time;
or how Pisistratus in less than a century afterwards could
have collected at Athens a large library.
This inscription is valuable in another point of view, as it may
But Mr. Bankes's discoveries are not confined to Ebsambul. He
has examined, and re-examined, every ruin between it and Thebes;
and the result of his discoveries and those of Mr. Salt has fully
established the value and importance of the Greek and Latin inscriptions,
(as suggested and exemplified in Mr. Hamilton's excellent
work on Egypt,) in ascertaining the dates of many of the temples,
and in discriminating those built by the Greeks and Romans
from those of the ancient Egyptians. Thus at Philae, besides the
discovery of three new chambers in the great temple, an inscription
of the time of Ptolemy and Arsinoe, on an altar which has been
built into the lower part of the wall of the long colonnade next the
river, as a part of the materials, proves unquestionably the whole
building to be posterior to that reign, and probably to the Ptolemean
dynasty. In the same temple were discovered, under the painted
plaster, several Greek inscriptions relating to Ptolemy Philopater;
and one of them, that had been hid by the plaster, to the Cæsars;
thus affording undoubted proofs that the paintings, the colours
of which were as vivid as those in the Egyptian chambers, are
of a later date than the building of the temple. The sculpture on
the first propylon of the great temple was of a more ancient date,
but our travellers had sufficient proof that the engraving on the
wings or side moles was subsequent to the time of Tiberius. From
the other inscriptions copied by Mr. Hamilton, it is obvious that
the Greeks had added much to the ancient Egyptian temple of
Philæ, and particularly a small peripteral temple, which from the
volutes in the capitals, and the elegance and lightness of the design,
leave no doubt of its Grecian origin—For, as this gentleman observes,
if its date must be referred to the ages anterior to Grecian
civilization, it must be confessed that, after they had seen and
We have another proof of the labours of the Ptolemies in preserving
and adding to the ancient temples of Egypt. The following
inscription, on a plate of gold, was recently found over one
of the side columns of the gateway of the great temple at Canopus,
carefully placed between two pieces of very curiously coloured
pottery.
ΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΣ.ΠΤΟΛΕΜΑΙΟΣ.ΠΤΟΕΛΜΑΙΟΥ.ΚΑΙ
ΑΡΣΙΝΟΗΣ.ΘΕΩΝ.ΑΔΕΛΦΩΝ.ΚΑΙ.ΒΑΣΙΛΙΣΣΑ
ΒΕΡΕΝΙΚΗ.Η.ΑΔΕΛΦΗ.ΚΑΙ.ΓΥΝΗ.ΑΥΤΟΥ
ΤΟ.ΤΟΜΕΝΕΟΣ.ΟΣΙΡΕΙ
King Ptolemy (son of Ptolemy and Arsinoe, adelphic Gods)
and Queen Berenice, his Sister and Wife, [have dedicated] this
Temple to Osiris.
The discovery of many other Greek inscriptions, with corresponding ones in those mysterious characters known by the name of hieroglyphics, may prove of infinite use to Dr. Young in his laudable and persevering efforts to decypher them; and it must afford him high gratification to know that, on the temple of Dakke in Nubia, Greek inscriptions of the Ptolemies have been discovered over the principal entrance, on each side of which is a tablet of identical hieroglyphics, and each nearly of the same length as the inscription on the Greek tablet. The meaning of the two languages was therefore considered by Mr. Salt to be identical; and on referring to Dr. Young's explanations, the two travellers were gratified to find that the hieroglyphics of the 'immortal Ptolemy,' in an oval, the same as that of Dr. Young, appeared on each tablet, and were immediately followed by those of Hermes on one side, and of Isis on the other, to whom all the Greek inscriptions declare the temple to be dedicated. In several other parts of the temple was the name of Ptolemy, inscribed over figures in the act of making offerings, but without the epithet 'immortal,' besides those hieroglyphics which Dr. Young has assigned to the names of Osiris, Isis and Horus, as well as Hermes, each over its respective figure, and every where throughout the numerous representations on the walls. At the little temple also near Esnè, Mr. Bankes had satisfactory proofs that the sculpture and hieroglyphics were executed in the reign of Antonine, and dedicated by persons whose names were Grecian.
These discoveries prove beyond a doubt, what Mr. Hamilton
indeed had satisfactorily shewn, that, after the conquest of the
country by Alexander, the native Egyptians and the naturalized
Greeks had no scruple to meet in the same sanctuary to perform
The mixture of Greek edifices with those of the ancient Egyptians is no disparagement to the merit and genius of the artist who could conceive and execute such gigantic works as Carnac, Luxor, Dendera and Ebsambul, which are confessedly Egyptian, and superior in every point of view, and far more sublime than any of those which have risen out of their ruins.—We return to Mr. Burckhardt.
Opposite to Derr our traveller fell in with Hassan Kashef, who told him that he had no business in Mahass, and seemed surprised that his brothers had suffered him to proceed thither. Here he witnessed one of those wanton acts of despotism which are but too common in the east.
In walking over a large field, with about thirty attendants and slaves, Hassan told the owner that he had done wrong in sowing the field with barley, as water-melons would have grown better. He then took some melon seed out of his pocket, and giving it to the man, said, "you had better tear up the barley and sow this." As the barley was nearly ripe, the man of course excused himself from complying with the Kashef's command: "Then I will sow them for you," said the latter; and ordered his people immediately to tear up the crop, and lay out the field for the reception of the melon seed. The boat was then loaded with the barley, and a family thus reduced to misery, in order that the governor might feed his horses and camels for three days on the barley stalks.—p. 94.
None of the numerous temples nor of their inscriptions escaped
Mr. Burckhardt's notice, on his return by the western bank of
the Nile. Those of Dakke, Gyrshe, Dondour, Kalabshe, Tafa,
Kardassy, Debot, are all particularly described, and the comparative
excellence of each characterized; this, however, we must pass
over, as well as his judicious observations on those interesting remains
of ancient days. The natives regard them with perfect indifference,
and are only attracted by the prevalent idea of Europeans
examining them for no other purpose than that of discovering
The mounds of rubbish and fragments of pottery which were observed at El Meharraka, and which occur in various parts of Egypt, suggest the following explanation, which we believe to be new.
Several travellers have expressed their astonishment at the immense heaps of rubbish consisting chiefly of pottery which are met with on the sites of ancient Egyptian towns; and, if we are to attribute their formation to the accumulation of the fragments of earthen vessels used by the inhabitants for domestic purposes, they are indeed truly surprising; but I ascribe their origin to another cause. In Upper Egypt, the walls of the peasants houses are very frequently constructed in part of jars placed one over the other, and cemented together with mud; in walls of inclosures, or in such as require only a slight roof, the upper part is very generally formed of the same materials; in the parapets also of the flat-roofed houses a double or triple row of red pots, one over the other, usually runs round the terrace, to conceal the females of the family when walking upon it. Pots are preferred to brick, because the walls formed of them are lighter, more quickly built, and have a neater appearance. They possess, likewise, another advantage, which is, that they cannot be pierced at night by robbers, without occasioning noise, by the pots falling down, and thus awakening the inmates of the dwelling, while bricks can be removed silently, one by one, as is often done by nightly depredators, who break into the houses in this manner. If then we suppose that pot walls were in common use by the ancient inhabitants, the large mounds of broken pottery may be satisfactorily accounted for. As for stone, it seems to have been as little used for the private habitations of the ancient Egyptians, as it is at the present day.—p. 102.
On the evening of the 30th March, after a hazardous journey
of thirty-five days, in which he had rested only one day, Mr.
Burckhardt returned to Assouan, having travelled generally at the
rate of ten hours a day. What follows is not the least remarkable
feature of his enterprize; I put,
says he, eight Spanish
dollars into my purse, in conformity with the principle I have
constantly acted upon, namely, that the less the traveller spends
while on his march, and the less money he carries with him, the
less likely are his travelling projects to miscarry; and I returned,
he adds, after a journey of nine hundred miles, with three dol
.
We have briefly dispatched what may be called the personal narrative of this most interesting expedition, to enable us to give a more ample summary of the observations made by our author, on the country and its several inhabitants.
Nubia is divided into two parts, called the Wady Kenous, and
the Wady Nouba; the former extending from Assouan to Wady
Leboua, and the latter from thence to the frontier of Dongola.
The inhabitants of these two divisions are separated by language,
but in manners they appear to be nearly the same. The
Kenous Arabs derive their origin from the deserts of Nedjed, and,
according to their own tradition, settled in those regions at the
period when the great Bedouin tribes from the east spread over
Egypt. They adopted the language of the natives, which has no
Arabic sounds whatever, and which has penetrated into Upper
Egypt, as far as Edfou. It is a fact,
says our author, worthy of
notice, that two foreign languages should have subsisted so long to
the almost entire exclusion of the Arabic, in a country bordered
on one side by Dongola, and on the other by Egypt, in both of
which Arabic is exclusively spoken
.
Availing himself of the quarrels of the various tribes of Arabs which settled in Nubia, Sultan Selym sent a number of Bosnian soldiers, who built or repaired the three castles of Assouan, Ibrîm, and Say. The descendants of these soldiers continue to enjoy an immunity from all taxes and contributions. The Nubians call them Osmanli, (Turks.) Their skin is a light brown, while that of the Nubians is nearly black. The chiefs in power at present. are the three brothers Hosseyn, Hassan, and Mahommed, whom we have had occasion to mention. Instead of the miri (or land tax), they pay each to the pasha an annual tribute of about 120l. and extort from their Nubian subjects and the caravans, about 3000l. each, of which they do not spend a tenth part. Their wealth consists in dollars and slaves.
The revenue of Nubia is principally derived from the sakies, or waterwheels, used for irrigation; the number of which between Assouan and Wady Halfa (or between the first and second cataract) is estimated from six to seven hundred; for each wheel, so many fat sheep, and so many measures of dhourra are levied; and from every date tree are taken two clusters of fruit, whatever quantity it may bear. But the whole system is arbitrary and irregular; poor villages are frequently ruined, while the richer ones are spared, lest the inhabitants should be driven to acts of open resistance. The three kashefs are also the judges; and the administration of justice is an article of merchandize.
If a Nubian kill another of his tribe, the debt of blood must be paid to the family of the deceased, and a fine to the kashef of six camels, a cow, and seven sheep; but if a Nubian be killed by one of the kashef's tribe, no debt of blood is exacted, but the chief demands his fine. The Kenous and the Noubas are almost perpetually engaged in disputes and sanguinary quarrels; and when death ensues, the family of the deceased has the option of receiving a stipulated sum, or claiming the right of retaliation: in the latter case, the brother, son, or first cousin only can supply the place of the murderer, which frequently causes the whole family to fly the country.
If a wealthy Nubian happens to have a daughter, the kashef generally
demands her in marriage; the father is afraid to refuse, but
he seldom escapes ruin by his powerful son-in-law, who extorts
from him every article of his property under the name of presents
to his own child. Thus,
says Mr. Burckhardt, are the governors
married to females in almost every considerable village. Hosseyn
Kashef has above forty sons, of whom twenty are married in this
manner
.
The Nile, from the first cataract to the frontiers of Dongola, never overflows its banks. The fields are therefore watered entirely by the sakies. The grain chiefly sown is dhourra, after which they have a crop of barley, of French beans, lentils, and sometimes water-melons. Tobacco is every where cultivated; it is the chief luxury of all classes, who either smoke it, or mix it with nitre and suck it between the lower gums and the lip. Animal food is scarce; even the kashefs do not indulge in eating it every day. In the larger villages palm wine is the common beverage; it is made from ripe dates, well boiled in water, strained, put into earthen jars, and buried in the ground till it has fermented; this liquor will keep sweet, when properly prepared, a whole year. A spirit is also distilled from dates; and there is another liquor made from dhourra, or barley, which they call bouza, and which resembles beer—the zythum, probably, of the ancient Egyptians. All these are sold in shops, and particularly at Derr, where the more wealthy classes get intoxicated with them every evening. A jelly, or kind of honey, is also extracted from the date, which serves as a sweetmeat. Except palms and a few vines which Burckhardt saw at Derr, no fruit-trees are to be found in Nubia, though almost every species of fruit might be cultivated there.
The houses of the Nubians are either of mud or loose stones;
those of stone are generally in pairs, one for the males and the other
for the females. The mud huts are covered with the stems of
dhourra, till consumed by the cattle, when they are replaced by palm
The Nubians are generally well made, strong and muscular,
with fine features. Mr. Burckhardt says, that in passing along
the Wadys of Nubia, it often occurred to him to remark, that the
size and figures of the inhabitants were generally proportioned to
the breadth of their cultivable soil
. This is curious, and we doubt
not perfectly correct. The women of this country are not handsome;
but they are perfectly well made, and possess in general
sweet countenances and pleasing manners. They are, besides,
modest and reserved; and, from the highest to the lowest, strictly
observant of their conjugal duties. At home they are usually
employed in weaving coarse woollen mantles, and cotton cloth
for shirts; they also weave mats of the date leaves, small drinking bowls,
and plates to serve up the dhourra bread; all made
by the hand, and in the neatest manner. The girls are fond of
singing, and the Nubian airs are very melodious.
The Nubians seldom go unarmed; the first purchase a boy makes is generally a short crooked knife, which is tied over the left elbow, under their shirt, and drawn on the slightest quarrel. The men usually carry a lance, and target, made by the Skeygya Arabs of the hide of the hippopotamus, which is proof against the thrust of a spear, or the blow of a sabre. Fire-arms are not common; some have match-locks; but ammunition is scarce and highly valued. The nephew of Mohammed Kashef ran after Burckhardt two miles, to obtain a single cartridge, saying that he had shot off the only one he had, during the rejoicings of the preceding day.
The climate of Nubia, though intensely hot in summer, is
remarkably healthy, probably on account of the extreme aridity
of the atmosphere. The small-pox, however, makes occasionally
dreadful havock among them, and the vaccine, though once introduced,
has been unfortunately lost. The plague never prevailed
in Nubia so high as the second cataract, and is entirely unknown
The sketch which we have given offers no very favourable picture of the state of Nubian society; and we shall find it still worse in advancing, with our author, on his second journey to the southward. As no caravan for Eastern Africa set out in the year after his return, Mr. Burckhardt remained quiet at Esnè; he kept no company, dressed himself in the poorest garb of an inhabitant of Egypt; and, in order to conceal his real character more effectually, spent as little money as possible, the amount of his daily expenses, of his servant, dromedary, and ass, being about eighteen-pence, and that of his horse sixteen-pence a month. Yet with all these precautions he was not free from the suspicion of possessing some hidden treasure. In Egypt there is no such condition in life as that of a man living on his income without employment. If he neither follows any business, nor wanders about begging, he is sure to become an object of suspicion. Here, however, he remained, till the end of February, when a caravan being on the point of starting from Daraou, (three days journey to the northward of Esnè,) for the confines of Sennaar, he determined to accompany it, and to try his fortune in this new route unattended by any servant. At Daraou, therefore, he appeared in the garb of a poor trader. It may be useful to the future traveller to know the contents of his baggage and of his provisions; they were as follows.
I was dressed in a brown loose woollen cloak, such as is worn by the peasants of Upper Egypt, called thabout, with a coarse white linen shirt and trowsers, a lebde, or white woollen cap, tied round with a common handkerchief, as a turban, and with sandals on my feet. I carried in the pocket of my thabout a small journal-book, a pencil, pocket-compass, pen-knife, tobacco-purse, and a steel for striking a light. The provisions I took with me were as follows: forty pounds of flour, twenty of biscuit, fifteen of dates, ten of lentils, six of butter, five of salt, three of rice, two of coffee beans, four of tobacco, one of pepper, some onions, and eighty pounds of dhourra for my ass. Besides these I had a copper boiler, a copper plate, a coffee roaster, an earthen mortar to pound the coffee beans, two coffee cups, a knife and spoon, a wooden bowl for drinking and for filling the water-skins, an axe, ten yards of rope, needles and thread, a large packing needle, one spare shirt, a comb, a coarse carpet, a woollen cloth (heram) of Mogrebin manufac
tory for a night covering, a small parcel of medicines, and three spare water-skins.—p. 167.
Thus equipped, and with a little merchandize to save appearances,
our traveller set out on the 2d March, 1814, with the caravan
for the south, preceded by all the women and children of the
village, who burnt salt before them as a certain means of keeping.
away the devil from the party. He had been very kind to the
host with whom he lodged at Daraou; this man, at parting,
recommended him to his brother, son, and other relations, who
formed the largest and most wealthy portion of the caravan: he is
your brother,
said the old man to his son, and there,
opening his
waistcoat, and putting his hand upon his bosom, there let him be
placed
. This ceremony,
says Mr. Burckhardt, has some
meaning in the Arabian desert, but among these miscreants of
Egyptians it is mere hypocrisy;
and so it proved, for the whole of
this party behaved to him in the most brutal manner.
Our limits will not permit us to trace the route pursued by the
caravan. It was on the eastern side of the Nile, but at a great distance
from it, being the chord of that great bend of the river to the
westward in which Dongola is situated, and the extremities of
which are not far removed from Assouan on the north and Berber
on the south: it is, in fact, the precise route which was taken by
Bruce on his return from Abyssinia. It lies over a perfect desert,
except where those numerous wadys, or valleys, in the ridge of
mountains on the left, open upon the plain, and in which alone trees,
shrubs and grass are to be found for the cattle of the caravans, and
wells or rills of fresh water. The scarcity of this article is sometimes
severely felt; but when calamitous accidents occur, as they
occasionally do, Mr. Burckhardt seems to think they happen either
from taking circuitous routes, or neglecting to fill an adequate
number of water-skins. The extraordinary sufferings of Mr. Bruce
in this desert he conceives to be greatly exaggerated in the relation;
at the same time he adds, I cannot but sincerely admire
the wonderful knowledge of men, firmness of character, and
promptitude of mind which furnished Bruce with the means of
making his way through these savage, and inhospitable nations, as an
European. To travel as a native has its inconveniences and difficulties;
but I take those which Bruce encountered to be of a nature
much more intricate and serious, and such as a mind at once
courageous, patient and fertile in expedients could alone have
surmounted
.—p. 203.
We believe the character of Bruce's journal may be summed
up in very few words: his descriptions are exaggerated; much of
his narrative, especially that of the dramatic cast, is loosely given
from memory; and his adventures are embellished for effect—in
that poisonous blast
of the desert,
which, in point of fact, has nothing poisonous in it.
Mr. Burckhardt, who experienced the wind here, and still more severely
in the deserts of Arabia, says, I never saw any person lie
down flat upon his face to escape its pernicious blast, as Bruce describes himself to have done in crossing this desert; but, during
the whirlwinds, the Arabs often hide their faces with their cloaks,
and kneel down near their camels to prevent the sand or dust from
hurting their eyes:
for my own part,
he adds, I am perfectly
convinced that all the stories which travellers or the inhabitants of
the towns of Egypt and Syria relate of the simoom of the desert,
are greatly exaggerated, and I never could hear of a single well
authenticated instance of its having proved mortal either to man
or beast
. The simoom, in fact, is nothing more than the harmatan
of the eastern coast of Africa, (which, so far from being pernicious,
is considered to be salutary); the sirocco of Naples, the southeaster of the Cape of Good Hope, and our own hazy easterly wind
of summer.
The sufferings experienced by Mr. Burckhardt in crossing this
desert consisted chiefly in the fatigue of travelling, the labour of
doing every thing for himself, and the scantiness and poverty of his
fare. From the first day of our departure from Daraou,
he says,
my companions had treated me with neglect, and even contempt
.
They thought him a Turk, and all Arabs bear the most inveterate
hatred to the Osmanlis; and from the small quantity of his merchandize
they considered him as a man running away from his creditors.
But he succeeded in convincing some of them that he was
travelling in search of a lost cousin, who had gone some years before
on a mercantile expedition to Darfour and Sennaar, in which
his whole property had been engaged.
When (says Burckhardt) in addition to other motives for ill-treating me, the traders saw in me every appearance of a poor man, that I cut wood, and cooked for myself, and filled my own water-skins, they thought me hardly upon an equality with the servants who are hired by the merchants, at the rate of ten dollars for the journey from Daraou to Guz, or Shendy, and back again. I had always endeavoured to keep upon good terms with the family of Alowein, who were the principal Fellah merchants, and whose good offices I thought might be useful to me in the black countries; but when they saw that I was so poor that they could have but little hopes of obtaining much from me in presents, they soon forgot what I had already given them before we set out, and no longer observed the least civility in their behaviour towards me. They began by using opprobrious language in speaking of Hassan Beg, of Esnè, observing that, now we were in the desert, they cared little for
all the Begs and Pashas in the world; seeing that this did not seriously affect me, they began to address me in the most vulgar and contemptuous language, never calling me any thing better than Weled, "boy." Though they became every day more insulting, I restrained my anger, and never proceeded to that retaliation to which they evidently wished to provoke me, in order to have sufficient reasons for coming to blows with me. In the beginning of the journey I had joined the party of the Alowein in our evening encampment, although I always cooked by myself; I was soon, however, driven away from them, and obliged to remain alone, the people of Daraou giving out that several things had been purloined from their baggage, and that they suspected me of having taken them. Not to enter into any further details, it is sufficient to say, that not an hour passed without my receiving some insult, even from the meanest servants of these people, who very soon imitated and surpassed their masters.—pp. 179, 180.
Every day, on halting, he was driven from the cool and comfortable shade of the trees or rocks, into the burning sun; he had to prepare his own dinner—not one of the poorest slaves condescending to assist him, though he offered them a share of his homely meal. In the evening the same labour recurred; after he had walked four or five hours in order to spare his ass—fatigued as he was, and in the utmost need of repose, he was obliged to fetch wood, to make a fire, to cook his victuals, and to feed his beast. Without a friend, a companion, or even a servant, in the midst of this dreary desert, and with a set of men into whose hearts one spark of feeling or compassion for a fellow-creature never entered, it is not surprising that a melancholy reflexion should now and then obtrude itself on his mind: but he deals not in the language of complaint.
Twice the serab or mirage appeared to them in crossing this desert, but somewhat different from what had been observed in Egypt.
Its colour was of the purest azure, and so clear that the shadows of the mountains which bordered the horizon were reflected on it with the greatest precision, and the delusion of its being a sheet of water was thus rendered still more perfect. I had often seen the mirage in Syria and Egypt, but always found it of a whitish colour, rather resembling a morning mist, seldom lying steady on the plain, but in continual vibration; but here it was very different, and had the most perfect resemblance to water. The great dryness of the air and earth in this desert may be the cause of the difference. The appearance of water approached also much nearer than in Syria and Egypt, being often not more than two hundred paces from us, whereas I had never seen it before at a distance of less than half a mile. There were at one time about a dozen of these false lakes round us, each separated from the other, and for the most part in the low grounds.—p. 193.
Though the present caravan was not exposed to much inconvenience
for want of water, yet it sometimes happens that very dis
After five days march in the mountains, their stock of water was exhausted, nor did they know where they were. They resolved therefore to direct their course towards the setting sun, hoping thus to reach the Nile. After two days thirst, fifteen slaves and one of the merchants died. Another of them, an Ababde, who had ten camels with him, thinking that the camels might know better than their masters where water was to be found, desired his comrades to tie him fast upon the saddle of his strongest camel, that he might not fall down from weakness; and thus he parted from them, permitting his camels to take their own way: but neither the man nor his camels were ever heard of afterwards. On the eighth day after leaving Owareyk, the survivors came in sight of the mountains of Shigre, which they immediately recognized, but their strength was quite exhausted, and neither men nor beasts were able to move any farther. Lying down under a rock, they sent two of their servants with the two strongest remaining camels, in search of water. Before these two men could reach the mountain, one of them dropped off his camel, deprived of speech, and able only to wave his hands to his comrade as a signal that he desired to be left to his fate. The survivor then continued his route, but such was the effect of thirst upon him, that his eyes grew dim and he lost the road, though he had often travelled over it before, and had been perfectly acquainted with it. Having wandered about for a long time, he alighted under the shade of a tree, and tied the camel to one of its branches; the beast however smelt the water, (as the Arabs express it,) and wearied as it was, broke its halter, and set off galloping furiously in the direction of the spring, which, as it afterwards appeared, was at half an hour's distance. The man, well understanding the camel's action, endeavoured to follow its footsteps, but could only move a few yards; he fell exhausted on the ground, and was about to breathe his last, when Providence led that way from a neighbouring encampment a Bisharye Bedouin, who by throwing water upon the man's face restored him to his senses. They then went hastily together to the water, filled the skins, and returning to the caravan, had the good fortune to find the sufferers still alive. The Bisharye received a slave for his trouble. My informer, a native of Yembo in Arabia, was the man whose camel discovered the spring, and he added the remarkable circumstance that the youngest slaves bore the thirst better than the rest, and that while the grown up boys all died, the children reached Egypt in safety.— pp. 201, 202.
On the 23d March, the caravan arrived at Berber, having taken
twenty-two days in crossing the desert from Daraou to that place.
Here the Mek first extracted three dollars from Mr. Burckhardt,
and having afterwards learned that he had a little reserve in his
girdle, obliged him to produce a fourth. I calculate,
says our
his yearly income from the caravans, at about three or
four hundred Spanish dollars; he spends this sum in keeping a large
establishment of male and female slaves, of horses, and fine dromedaries,
and in feeding about fifty people belonging to his establishment,
as well as strangers
.
The Wady of Berber consists of four villages situated on the Sandy Desert, about half an hour's walk from the Nile. Each is composed of several quarters, independent of one another; the houses are also separated by court-yards, so that there are no regular streets. They are built of mud, or sun-baked bricks. The rooms all open into the court-yard; two of them are usually occupied by the family, a third serves as a store-room, a fourth for the reception of strangers, and a fifth for less laudable purposes. An oblong frame of wood with four legs, with a seat of thin stripes of ox-leather drawn across, is the principal article of furniture; this is called angareyg, and answers the double purpose of a sofa by day and a bed by night. Mats of reeds or carpets of leather, without any pillow, are their only bedding.
It speaks not very favourably for the inhabitants of Berber, that,
in the houses of the most respectable of them, there is generally a
room (as we have just seen) set apart for public women. In the
house where I lodged,
says Mr. Burckhardt, we had four of these
girls, one of whom was living within the precincts, the three others in
contiguous apartments. They are female slaves, whom their masters,
upon marrying, or being tired of them, have set at liberty, and
who have no other livelihood but prostitution, and the preparation
of the intoxicating drink called Bouza
.
The night of our arrival at Berber, after we had supped, and that the neighbours who had come to greet us had retired, three or four of these damsels made their appearance, and were saluted with loud shouts by my companions, who were all their old acquaintance. Some Angareygs were brought into the open court-yard, which the principal: people of our party having taken possession of the women proceeded to give them "the welcome," as they call it. The men having undressed to their loins, and stretched themselves at full length upon the Angareygs, were rubbed by the women with a kind of perfumed grease, much in the same manner as is used after coming out of the bath. This operation lasted for about half an hour, but the parties remained together for the whole night, without being in the least annoyed by the neighbourhood of those who were lying about in the court-yard. During the whole of our stay at Berber we had these damsels almost every evening at our quarters. They prepare, as I have already stated, the Bouza, and as it is difficult for any person to indulge in the drinking of this liquor in his own house, where he would be immediately surrounded by a great number of acquaintance, it is generally thought preferable to go to the women's apartment, where there is no intrusion.
Many of these women are Abyssinians by birth, but the greater part of them are born at Berber of slave parents. They are in general handsome, and many of them might even pass for beauties in any country. —pp. 214, 215.
The following is a yet more dreadful picture of the immoral character of the Berbers.
The effects which the universal practice of drunkenness and debauchery has on the morals of the people may easily be conceived. Indeed every thing discreditable to humanity is found in their character, but treachery and avidity predominate over their other bad qualities. In the pursuit of gain they know no bounds, forgetting every divine and human law, and breaking the most solemn ties and engagements. Cheating, thieving, and the blackest ingratitude, are found in almost every man's character, and I am perfectly convinced that there were few men among them or among my fellow-travellers from Egypt who would have given a dollar to save a man's life, or who would not have consented to a man's death in order to gain one. Especial care must be taken not to be misled by their polite protestations, and fine professions, especially when they come to Egypt; where they represent their own country as a land inhabited by a race of superior virtue and excellence. On the contrary, infamous as the eastern nations are in general, I have never met with so bad a people, excepting perhaps those of Suakin. In transactions among themselves the Meyrefab regulate every matter in dispute by the laws of the strongest. Nothing is safe when once out of the owner's hands, for if he happens to be the weaker party, he is sure of losing his property. The Mek's authority is slighted by the wealthier inhabitants; the strength of whose connections counterbalances the influence of the chief. Hence it may well be supposed that family feuds very frequently occur, and the more so, as the effects of drunkenness are dreadful upon these people. During the fortnight I remained at Berber, I heard of half a dozen quarrels occurring in drinking parties, all of which finished in knife or sword wounds. Nobody goes to a Bouza hut without taking his sword with him; and the girls are often the first sufferers in the affray. I was told of a distant relation of the present chief, who was for several years the dread of Berber. He killed many people with his own hands upon the slightest provocation, and his strength was such, that nobody dared to meet him in the open field. He was at last taken by surprise in the house of a public woman, and slain while he was drunk. He once stript a whole caravan, coming from Daraou, and appropriated the plunder to his women. In such a country, it is of course locked upon as very imprudent to walk out unarmed, after sunset; examples often happen of persons, more particularly traders, being stripped or robbed at night in the village itself. In every country the general topics of conversation furnish a tolerable criterion of the state of society; and that which passed at our house at Ankheyre gave the most hateful idea of the character of these people. The house was generally filled with young men who took a pride in confessing the perpetration of every kind of in
famy. One of their favourite tricks is to bully unexperienced strangers, by enticing them to women who are the next day owned as relations by some Meyrefab, who vows vengeance for the dishonour offered to his family; the affair is then settled by large presents, in which all those concerned have a share. The envoy whom Ibrahim Pasha sent in 1812 to the king of Sennaar was made to suffer from a plot of this kind. Upon his return from Sennaar to Berber, he was introduced one evening to a female, at whose quarters he passed the night. The Mek of Berber himself claimed her the next morning as his distant relation. "Thou hast corrupted my own blood," said he to the envoy, and the frightened Turk paid him upwards of six hundred dollars, besides giving up to him the best articles of his arms and baggage. I had repeated invitations to go in the evening to Bouza parties, but constantly refused. Indeed a stranger, and especially an unprotected one, as I was, must measure all his steps with caution, and cannot be too prudent. —pp. 221, 222.
The Berbers live chiefly on dhourra bread and milk; dates are
imported from Mahass and are consequently accounted a luxury.
Onions and kidney-beans are their chief vegetables; they have
no fruit whatever. Their cattle, which are of a good kind, are
pastured after the rains in the Bisharein mountains between the
Nile and the Red Sea; in the dry season they are fed with the
leaves and stalks of the dhourra. The cows have the hump
between the shoulders common to those of Sennaar and Abyssinia.
Their camels are excellent, and Mr. Burckhardt says,
that their dromedaries surpass all that he saw in the Syrian and
Arabian deserts
. Their asses are strong and handsome. Their
horses are of the Dongola breed, which are represented as the
finest race in the world. In the spring they are pastured on
green barley; but for the rest of the year have little else than
the stalks and leaves of the dhourra.
Part of the caravan, and with it Mr. Burckhardt, left Berber on the 7th April, and proceeded towards Shendy. They soon reached Ras al Wady, the principal village in the dominions of another Mek of the name of Hanoze. This sublime personage detained them from morning till late in the evening, without sending them any food, and they could not venture to taste their own, as they were now considered as his guests. The Mek himself kept out of sight, but his son came to the caravan to beg some presents. The great man made his appearance, however, the following day, quite naked, with the exception of a towel round his loins, and attended by six or eight slaves, one of whom carried his water-flask, another his sword, and a third his shield. Seeing a fine ass, he ordered his hopeful son to mount it; and notwithstanding the resistance of its owner, the animal was trotted off to the Mek's stable: the caravan was then permitted to depart.
At the end of four hours travelling, they reached the river
Damer has acquired considerable reputation for its schools, to
which young men are sent from Darfour, Sennaar, Kordofan and
other parts of Soudan, to study the law. It has a large mosque built
on arches of brick-work, in which prayers are regularly performed.
The Faky el Kebir leads the life of a hermit, in a small room about
twelve feet square, where his food is daily brought to him by his
friends and disciples. His mornings are occupied in reading, but
about three in the afternoon he takes his seat on a stone bench,
where he is joined by the rest of the fraternity. Mr. Burckhardt
went to kiss his hand, and found him a venerable old man, wrapped
up in a white cloak. The affairs of this little hierarchical state
(he says) appear to be conducted with great prudence, and all its
neighbours testify much respect for the Fakys.
—Such are the good
effects produced by a veneration of religious institutions, even of
the very worst kind.
As there was no daily market at Damer, and no metal currency less than a dollar, our traveller was under the necessity of going from house to house, with some strings of beads to sell in exchange for a few measures of dhourra. This gave him an insight into the manners of the people.
One afternoon while crying my beads for sale, I was accosted by a Faky, who asked me if I could read. On answering in the affirmative, he desired me to follow him to a place where he said I might expect to get a good dinner. He then led me to a house where I found a great number of people collected to celebrate the memory of some relative lately deceased. Several Fakys were reading the Koran in a low tone of voice. A great Faky afterwards came in, whose arrival was the signal for reciting the Khoran in loud songs, in the manner customary in the east, in which I joined them. This was continued for about half an hour, until dinner was brought in, which was very plentiful, as a cow had been killed upon the occasion. After a hearty meal, we recommenced our reading. One of the Shiks produced a basket full of white pebbles, over which several prayers were read. These pebbles were destined to be strewed over the tomb of the deceased in the manner which I had often observed upon tombs freshly made. Upon my inquiries concerning this custom, which I confessed to have never
before seen practised in any Mohammedan country, the Faky answered that it was a mere meritorious action, that there was no absolute necessity for it, but that it was thought that the soul of the deceased, when hereafter visiting the tomb, might be glad to find these pebbles, in order to use them as beads in addressing its prayers to the Creator. When the reading was over, the women began to sing and howl. I then left the room, and on taking my departure my kind host put some bones of roasted meat in my hand to serve for my supper. —p. 269.
The caravan remained at Damer five days, and setting out on the 15th of April, reached Shendy on the 18th. Next to Sennaar and Cobbé in Darfour, Shendy is the largest town in eastern Soudan; it consists of several quarters, divided from each other by public market places, and contains from 800 to 1000 houses, similar to those of Berber. Those of the chief and his relatives have courtyards twenty feet square, inclosed by high walls. The name of the Mek is Nimr, or the Tiger. He holds his mekship in right of his mother, who was of the Sennaar tribe, which explains Bruce's account of his having found a woman (Settina, our lady) on the throne. Three different tribes of Arabs inhabit the country of Shendy, besides that to which the Mek's wife belongs, and their dissensions among themselves assist materially in the preservation of his authority.
As merchandize pays no duty at Shendy, it has become a place of flourishing trade. The Mek is generally satisfied with a small but voluntary contribution from each of the caravans. Mr. Burckhardt, however, was obliged to part with his gun, to which this chief unluckily took a fancy, in consideration of four Spanish dollars. He had already about twenty rusty firelocks, and he made serious proposals to our traveller to enter into his service as a gunsmith. His court consists of half a dozen police officers, a writer, an imam, a treasurer, and a body guard formed chiefly of slaves.
The character of the inhabitants of Shendy is much the same as that of the Berbers: debauchery and drunkenness are even more common here than among the latter; but the public women do not infest the streets as at Berber. The dress, habits and manners are also the same, and appear to prevail as far as Darfour on the one hand, and Sennaar on the other. At Shendy, however, there were more well dressed people than our traveller had observed elsewhere. The women wore golden rings at their noses and ears.
At Shendy Mr. Burckhardt observed a ceremony which marks
most strongly the inveteracy of oriental customs. On the death of
a Djaaly chief, I saw,
says he, the female relations of the deceased
walking through all the principal streets, uttering the most lamentable
howlings. Their bodies were half naked, and the little cloth
. So says Herodotus, and almost in the same
words.
Shendy has a weekly market, which appears to be well supplied with a great variety of goods. The currency is the same as that of Berber, dhourra and dammour. The merchants sit in the market-place in little mud shops about six feet square, covered with mats. Among the articles exposed for sale Mr. Burckhardt enumerates milk, brought every morning by the Bedouin girls and exchanged for dhourra; butcher's meat of cows and camels, but rarely of sheep; all kinds of groceries and spices; soap, coral, and glass beads; tobacco, the best of which is from Sennaar; natron from Darfour, and salt from the mines of Boyedda: antimony, sandal wood, gum Arabic and various kinds of drugs. Four or five hundred camels, as many cows, a hundred asses, and twenty or thirty horses were on sale on the great market-days. The artizans whom he noticed at Shendy were chiefly blacksmiths, silversmiths, tanners, potters and carpenters. The women and grown up children, and many of the men, were generally observed with a distaff in their hands, spinning cotton yarn for the people of Berber, who are great weavers.
Shendy is also the principal market for the purchase of slaves, With the exception of a few Abyssinian females who are distributed through Egypt and Arabia, these unhappy creatures are chiefly negroes from the interior of Africa: there is, however, another description of slaves distinguished by the name of Nouba, the offspring of these Abyssinian women and their masters, by whom they are sent to Shendy. The rest are blacks of Soudan, the number of whom sold annually at this place Mr. Burckhardt calculates at 5,000; of these he reckons 2,500 for Arabia, 1,500 for Egypt, and 1000 for Dongola and the Bedouins of the mountains between Shendy and the Red Sea. The greater proportion of slaves brought to Shendy are below the age of fifteen, many of them are children of four or five years old.
Mr, Burckhardt conceives that, on the most moderate calculation,
the number of slaves in Egypt may be estimated at 40,000;
that the number exported towards Arabia and Barbary is greatly
below the number kept by Mussulmen within the limits of Soudan:
from his own observation (he adds) there are not fewer than 12,000
along the borders of the Nile from Berber to Sennaar, and 20,000 in
there does not appear to be the smallest
hope of the abolition of slavery in Africa itself;
and concurs in the
opinion which we have more than once expressed, that it is not
from foreign nations that the blacks can hope for deliverance: that
this great work must be effected by themselves;
and that this can
only be done by the education of the sons of Africa in their own
country, and by their own countrymen
.
As a visit to Mecca at the time of the pilgrimage, in order to obtain the title of Hadji, (the most powerful recommendation and best protection in any future journey into the interior of Africa,) had been the principal motive of our traveller's second journey into Nubia, he set about his preparations for the journey. With this view, he sold his little stock of merchandize at Shendy, purchased a slave-boy for sixteen dollars, a camel for eleven, and, after laying in a stock of dhourra meal, butter, and dammour, found he had just four dollars remaining; which he calculated would suffice to carry him to Djidda, on which place he had a letter of credit from Cairo.
Thus prepared he joined the caravan for Suakin, by the route of Taka; among them was a party of black traders from Western Africa, to which, as a poor man, he attached himself; not only in the hope of deriving information but also assistance from them, if he should want it. The principal among them was Hadji Aly, a slave-dealer, from Kordofan, who had been a great traveller, and already thrice performed the hadji.
His travels, and the apparent sanctity of his conduct, had procured him great reputation, and he was well received by the meks and other chiefs, to whom he never failed to bring some small presents from Djidda. Although almost constantly occupied (whether sitting under a temporary shed of mats, or riding upon his camel on the march) in reading the Koran, yet this man was a complete bon vivant, whose sole object was sensual enjoyment. The profits on his small capital, which were continually renewed by his travelling, were spent entirely in the gratification of his desires. He carried with him a favourite Borgho slave, as his concubine; she had lived with him three years, and had her own camel, while his other slaves performed the whole journey on foot. His leathern sacks were filled with all the choice provisions which the Shendy market could afford, particularly with sugar and dates, and his dinners were the best in the caravan. To hear him talk of morals and religion, one might have supposed that he knew vice only by name; yet Hadji Aly, who had spent half his like in devotion, sold
last year, in the slave-market of Medinah, his own cousin, whom he had recently married at Mekka. She had gone thither on a pilgrimage from Bornou by the way of Cairo, when Aly unexpectedly meeting with her, claimed her as his cousin, and married her: at Medinah, being in want of money, he sold her to some Egyptian merchants; and as the poor woman was unable to prove her free origin, she was obliged to submit to her fate. The circumstance was well known in the caravan, but the hadji nevertheless still continued to enjoy all his wonted reputation.—pp. 365, 366.
Having crossed the Atbara, or Astaboras, their route lay to the
south-east; and they soon entered the country of the Bisharye
Arabs, a bold and handsome race: the men go constantly armed,
and are seldom free from quarrels; the women are slender and
elegant, of a dark brown complexion, with beautiful eyes and fine
teeth. But the moral character of both sexes is very bad; they
are treacherous, cruel, avaricious and revengeful, and are restrained
in the indulgence of their passions by no laws either human
or divine
. They are the most inhospitable of the Bedouin tribes,
and this alone, says our traveller, proves them to be a true African
race; they speak no Arabic. At Om Daoud, he went among
the huts to beg a little water or milk, when his appearance excited
an universal shriek among the women, who were terrified at the
sight of such an outcast of nature as they consider a white man
to be. Even at Shendy, on market days, the country-people were
often affrighted by his turning short upon them, and generally exclaimed,
God preserve us from the devil
!
The populous and fertile district of Taka, a valley among the
eastern mountains, overflowed in the rainy season, is noted for its
fine breed of cattle and excellent dhourra. It is inhabited by a tribe
of the Bisharein, who have their bouza huts, and their public
women. Wives make no difficulty in receiving strangers into their
tents; but, says Burckhardt, with great simplicity, this never happened
to me: for whenever I presented myself before a tent, the
ladies greeted me with loud screams, and waved their hands for me
to depart instantly
. These people eat the blood of animals coagulated
over the fire, and the liver and kidneys raw; but the milk of
the camel and dhourra are their principal articles of food. Like
the Bishareins of Atbara, those of Taka are treacherous, revengeful,
and addicted to theft.
A Hadendoa seldom scruples to kill his companion on the road in order to possess himself of the most trifling article of value, if he entertains a hope of doing it with impunity; but the retaliation of blood exists in full force. Among the Hallenga, who draw their origin from Abyssinia, a horrible custom is said to attend the revenge of blood; when the slayer has been seized by the relatives of the deceased, a family feast is proclaimed, at which the murderer is brought into the
midst of them, bound upon an Angareyg, and while his throat is slowly cut with a razor, the blood is caught in a bowl, and handed round amongst the guests, every one of whom is bound to drink of it at the moment the victim breathes his last.—p. 396.
On leaving Taka they were joined by a number of black pilgrims from Bagerme and Bornou as far as Timbuctoo, begging their way to Mecca.
The equipments of all these pilgrims are exactly alike, and consist of a few rags tied round the waist, a white woollen bonnet, a leathern provision sack, carried on a long stick over the shoulder, a leathern pouch containing a book of prayers, or a copy of a few chapters of the Koran, a wooden tablet, one foot in length, by six inches in breadth, upon which they write charms, or prayers, for themselves or others to learn by heart, an inkstand formed of a small gourd, a bowl to drink out of, or to collect victuals in from the charitable, a small earthen pot for ablution, and a long string of beads hanging in many turns round the neck.—p. 407.
Vast numbers perish on this long and unhealthy route; they are
looked upon, however, as martyrs, and their fate rather encourages
than deters others from following their example. One of the present
company was blind; he had come from the west of Darfour,
guided by a stick in the hands of a companion who led the way.
Mr. Burckhardt subsequently saw this man begging in the mosque
at Mecca, and again at Medina grovelling on the threshold of
the temple, and exclaiming, as he asked for charity, I am blind,
but the light of the word of God and the love of his prophet illumine
my soul, and have been my guide from Soudan to this tomb
!
We have already extended our account of this interesting volume to too great a length to allow us to dwell on the journey across the mountains to the port of Suakin, on the Red Sea; where our traveller was likely to fare worse than he had hitherto done, had he not fortunately been possessed, as we before observed, of a firmaun from Mahommed Ali, which procured him a passage to Djidda;-and here we must take our leave of him till the appearance of another volume, which we presume will contain the account of his pilgrimage to Mecca, and to Medina.
We cannot, however, close this Article, long as it is, without reverting to a subject which has more than once occupied our attention— the course and termination of the Niger, one of the principal objects of our lamented traveller's intended researches in Soudan.
In our review of Park's second journey, (No. XXV. p. 128. 137.
140.) we were induced to try the validity of the hypothesis (first thrown
out by Maxwell) which gave to the Niger a southern course, and a
termination in the Zaire or Congo; and we entered on the question
chiefly because Park had warmly adopted that hypothesis, previously
But Mr. Burckhardt has revived a question of older date than either of the above-mentioned speculations, by the assurances which he received—and which every Arab merchant and black pilgrim has repeated in every quarter of northern and western Africa, that the Niger of Soudan and the Nile of Egypt are one and the same river. This general testimony to a physical fact can be shaken only by direct proof to the contrary, or by demonstration of its physical impossibility. That it had been so shaken by the arguments of Major Rennell we never conceived a doubt, until the perusal of Mr. Burckhardt's narrative induced us to look more closely into the statements of Bruce, on which the impossibility of identity was chiefly grounded; when we perceived them to be so vague and inconsistent, that we determined to try the question on its own merits.
If it be true that the Niger actually unites with the Nile, it can
only do so through the channel of the Bahr el Abiad or White river,
which joins the Bahr el Azrek near Halfaia, about the 16th parallel
of northern latitude, on the extensive plain of Sennaar; and the
concurrent testimony of all travellers goes to this point. All the
Burnuans and Haussans (says Hornemann) that I questioned about
the distant regions of this river, (the Niger) agreed in telling me that
it ran through the land of the Heathens by Sennaar: others affirmed
that it passes through Darfour in its course eastward and flows to
Cairo, being one stream with the Egyptian Nile.
He was further
informed by a native of Egypt who had several times travelled to
Darfour and to the southward of it, to collect slaves, that the
communication of the Niger with the Nile was not to be doubted;
but that this communication, before the rainy season, was very little
in those parts, the Niger being at the dry period reposing, or, non
fluens,
and that the river called Bahr el Abiad is this river,
(the
Niger). In the suite of the Morocco princes taken on board the
Tagus frigate at Alexandria, was a hadji who had frequently visited
larger than the Nile,—deep in all its course,—twice as
broad as the Nile, and can scarcely be seen to flow;—that it
runs dead and with little inclination,
and preserves its stream
always undiminished
. Bruce saw it at the height of the rainy
season, and yet it ran dead
—in fact, the whole description which
he gives of this western branch of the Nile, points it out as an
immense canal or drain, quietly carrying off the collected waters
of some great lake or inland sea—such as the lakes of Ghana and
Wangara are described to be, or that sea of Soudan of which all
the Arab travellers speak.
Two objections, however, have been stated to this termination of the Niger, and such as would be insuperable if implicit confidence could every where be placed in the accuracy of Bruce. The first is, the great elevation of the plain of Sennaar, which would require the bed of the Abiad, and consequently that of the Niger, to be at least 5000 feet above the level of the sea, an elevation greater, probably, than even the source of the Niger;-the second is the want of correspondence in the periodical inundations of the Nile of Egypt and the Nile of Soudan.
Now, although Mr. Bruce seems to have kept a weather journal
in Abyssinia, we find only two observations for elevation made by
the barometer, one of which is unintelligible,
I had procured,
he
says, from the English ships while at Jidda, some quicksilver, perfectly
pure, and heavier than the common sort; warming therefore
the tube gently at the fire, I filled it with this quicksilver, and, to
my great surprize, found that it stood at the height of twenty-two
English inches: suspecting that some air might have insinuated itself
into the tube, I laid it by in a warm part of the tent, covered, till
morning, and returning to bed, slept there profoundly till six, when,
satisfied the whole was in perfect order, I found it to stand at
Yet this loose estimate of the elevation of the springs of the
Nile is the only groundwork for deducing that of Sennaar; for here
he took no observation whatever, but states loosely that the plain of
Sennaar is more than a mile lower than the high country of
Abyssinia
—that is, about 5,200 feet above the level of the sea.
We shall find, however, by examining another part of his work,
that such an elevation is altogether, inconsistent with a former
statement. In noticing the strange assertion of the Jesuits, that
the Alps and Pyrenees are inconsiderable eminences to the mountain
Guza, he says, though really the base of Lamalmon, it
is not a quarter of a mile high
.easy descent
the Nile has from hence to the sea, than his elevation
of more than 5200 feet; but on this point we mean not to
insist further, as we may have misunderstood Bruce.
Every account given by modern travellers through Nubia agrees
with the easy ascent of the Valley of the Nile
. In the whole distance
of one thousand miles, from the Abiad to the Mediterranean,
there are but two cataracts, which are not falls, but mere rapids,
occasioned by contractions of the bed of the river by rocks, neither
of which present an interruption to navigation. Lord Belmore navigated
the Nile against the stream without any difficulty to the
second cataract, as did Captains Irby and Mangles; and Bruce
says he sailed against the stream at the rate of eight miles an hour.
Mr. Burckhardt, in crossing the mountains from Shendy, through
Taka, to the shore of the Red Sea, evidently found the descent
to that sea little more than the ascent from the Nile. The
current of the Nile is at no time so rapid as that of the Ganges; in
The course of the Niger for the first 2000 British miles is within two degrees on either side of the 15th parallel of latitude, ending, as it is supposed, at the eastern extremity of Wangara in about the 14th parallel. But the hypothesis does not admit of its ceasing in the sea of Wangara; and if it proceeds, it must necessarily decline and pass to the southward of Darfour, as far probably as the latitude 10° N., where it may join the Abiad. Supposing this to be the case, the length of its course from Wangara to the confluence of the Abiad and the Azrek would be about 1000 English miles. If then we allow the full inclination of the Ganges (nine inches in the mile) for the first 2000 miles, and that of the Amazons for the latter 1000 miles, (being in all probability a succession of seas or lakes, till it joins the dead-running canal of the Abiad,) and 800 feet, as above mentioned, for the whole inclination from the Abiad to the sea, we shall have 2800 feet as the elevation which would be required for the source of the Niger, to carry it through Soudan and Egypt into the Mediterranean, with a current equal to that of the Ganges or the Amazons—an elevation which will perhaps not be deemed too great for the real truth, when it is considered that the same elevated region from which it issues gives rise to two other great rivers, the Senegal and the Gambia. But as we may confidently assert that neither the current of the Niger nor of the Nile is of equal strength with that of the Ganges or the Amazons, even this elevation would not be required to carry the waters to the Mediterranean.
The other objection to the identity of the Niger and the Nile is
grounded on the incongruity of their periodical inundations; that is
All the waters in Abyssinia,
says Bruce, collected into the
Nile would not be sufficient to pass its scanty stream through the
burning deserts of Nubia, without the Abiad which joins it at
Halfaia;
and in another place he says, the Nile would be dry
for eight months in the year but for the Abiad:
—and, we may
add, the Abiad would not greatly assist in prolonging the flooding
of the Nile, after the cessation of the rains, if it had no other supply
than those derived from the mountain-streams of the Jebel-Kumri.
We ventured to assertin a former Number, (XXXVI. p. 348.)
that all lakes or inland seas, having no outlets, must, from the
very nature of things, be salt; we quoted several well-known instances
in proof of this: hence we concluded that, as those of
Wangara, according to Arabian authorities, were fresh, they must
necessarily have their outlets. We have since received an account
of two large seas, or sheets of water, being discovered in the interior
of New Holland, supplied chiefly by two rivers of very considerable
size, whose sources are on the western side of the Blue
Mountains. The first, which is to the southwest of Port Jackson,
was ascertained to have no outlet; but of the second, the exploring
party could not discern the boundary. We know not whether
Lieutenant Oxley forgot (like Sir Alexander Mackenzie) to dip
his finger into the water to taste it; but he has at least supplied
unequivocal testimony that the waters of the first were salt, as all
the plants, collected on the shores and islands and swampy places
of this lake or morass, prove to be saline plants, and of the same
species as those which grow on the sea-shore of that country.—
On this ground we may safely pronounce it an inland lake, without
We give no credit whatever to the report received by Mr. Jackson, of a person having performed a voyage by water from Timbuctoo to Cairo. Large seas in the rainy season, and chains of lakes in the dry, are not inviting navigations to native Africans, whose i. and travels are almost universally conducted by caravans whic Burckhardt assures us is not only more suited to the taste of the people, but cheaper. To expose themselves to the risk of perishing by famine, of being devoured by crocodiles, or plundered by the long succession of petty chiefs on the borders of rivers, are evils more terrible than any which they meet with in crossing the largest deserts. Even on the Nile, from Sennaar to the second cataract, there is no floating craft, and the only mode of passing the river by a rude raft of the stems of the palm-tree or an inflated sheepskin.
We leave our readers to draw their own conclusion as to the validity of the general testimony which we have stated to prevail in favour of the identity of the Nile of Soudan and the Nile of Egypt: for ourselves, though we are by no means wedded to a particular theory,—we have no hesitation in declaring, that this testimony has not yet been contradicted by any direct proof or know physical impossibility.
This publication received the support of a Field Development Grant awarded by the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals from the bequest of the Eileen Curran estate.
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>From Quarterly Review volume 15, number 30, July 1816, p. 440-68. Uncorrected source downloaded from: http://archive.org/details/quarterlyreview10smitgoog
The A Question of Style project's aim is to gain new insights on the writing and editorial practices of the Edinburgh Review during the editorship of Francis Jeffrey. The Edinburgh Review was the main literary journal in early nineteenth-century Britain. It reviewed the most significant publications in literature, history, politics and science and its contributors included some of the most prominent figures of the age. Authors believed that a review from the Edinburgh Review could make or break the fortunes of a publication. Style focuses on the period 1814-1820 and employs methods from periodical studies, book history, computational linguistics and computational stylistics. It was awarded the inaugural Field Development Grant by the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals from the bequest of the Eileen Curran estate.
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IT may be doubted whether the method of publication adopted
by M. de Humboldt is that in which either his interest or his
reputation has best been consulted. We know of no two travellers,
ancient or modern, who have traversed so many leagues of
foolscap as Doctor Clarke and the Baron de Humboldt:—we mean
The 'Researches' are only a re-publication, under a new name, of a former work, entitled 'Views of the Cordilleras and Monuments of the indigenous Nations of the New Continent,' with a selection from the sixty-nine plates, which accompanied that work, of nineteen to illustrate this; so that we have now in the 'Researches,' references to plates that have no existence, or exist only in another book. This, we repeat, is bad management—but it is less our concern than the author's.
The principal objects in these 'Researches' are fully explained in the 'Introduction to the 'Personal Narrative of Travels.'
This work is meant to display a few of the great scenes of nature in the lofty chain of the Andes, and at the same time to throw some light on the ancient civilization of the Americans, from the study of their monuments of architecture, their hieroglyphics, their religious rites, and their astrological reveries. I have given in this work descriptions of the Teocalli, or Mexican Pyramids, compared with that of the temple of Belus, the arabesques which cover the ruins of Mitla, idols in basalt, ornamented with the calantica of the heads of Isis; and a considerable number of symbolical paintings, representing the serpent woman, who is the Mexican Eve; the Deluge of Coxcox, and the first migrations of the natives of the Azteck race. I have endeavoured to prove the analogies which exist between the calendar of the Tolteck and the catasterisms of their zodiac, and the division of time of the people of Tartary and Thibet; as well as the Mexican traditions of the four regenerations of the globe, the pralayas of the Hindoos, and the four Ages of Hesiod. I have also included in this work, in addition to the hieroglyphical paintings I brought back to Europe, fragments of all the Azteck manuscripts which are found at Rome, Veletri, Vienna, and Dresden; and of which the last reminds us, by its lineary symbols,
of the Kouas of the Chinese. Together with the rude monuments of the natives of America, the same volume contains picturesque views of the mountainous countries which these people have inhabited; such as those of the Cataract of Tequendama, of Chimborazo, of the Volcano of Jorullo, and of Cayambe, the pyramidal summit of which, covered with perennial ice, is situate directly under the equinoxial line.
This is a faithful abstract of the contents of the 'Researches,'
two-thirds of which might just as well have been composed by one
who never crossed the barriers of Paris, as by him who has
traversed the Cordilleras of the Andes: and M. de Humboldt has
here unwittingly added to the number of those who have shewn
that, to write 'Researches,' it is by no means necessary to travel:
Pauw, for instance, composed his 'Recherches Philosophiques sur
les Américains,' as the Abbé Grozier says he did his 'Recherches
sur les Egyptiens et les Chinois,'
while seated in his easy chair in
Berlin. We prefer, however, the descriptions and delineations of
one who has clambered up the sides of Chimborazo and Cotopaxi,
to the deepest researches of him who has mounted no higher than
the upper step of the library ladder, inasmuch as we prefer plain
matters of fact, collected by the senses, to the most splendid theory
and ingenious speculations collected out of books.
It is in vain for M. de Humboldt to endeavour to exonerate himself
from the charge of being a theorist, while every page of his
book, that is not purely descriptive, teems with theory; it is
surprizing, indeed, that he should not perceive how high he stands
in the ranks of those learned men who, allured by splendid hypotheses,
built on very unstable foundations, have drawn general consequences
from a small number of solitary facts
; and that he is
constantly offending against his own rule, that—in attempting to
generalize ideas, we should learn to stop at the point where precise
data are wanting
. It is true he does not appear to have any
preference for a particular theory, but indulges in all; sailing with
every wind, and swimming with every stream; he grounds an argument
and draws his conclusion from suspicious and unauthenticated
data, with the same confidence as from established facts; he
sees resemblances and finds analogies between objects the most
discordant and heterogeneous, if they possess but one single point
of agreement, real or imaginary: can we wonder then to find him so
frequently drawn into inconsistencies and contradictions? These
two volumes abundantly attest this uncontrollable propensity of an
exuberant imagination, a propensity encouraged and increased by
an unwearied, but indiscriminate, research for printed authorities.
All the institutions and religious notions, the monuments, the lanbearded Ainos of the
isles of Jesso and Sachalien
—And why to the Ainos, of all the people
in the world?—for no other reason, at least no other is
assigned by M. de Humboldt, than that three men with beards,
and with clearer complexions than the natives of Anahuac, Cundinanamarca,
and the elevated plain of Couzco, whose names were
Quetzalcoatl, Bochica, and Manco-Capac, make their appearance
on the new continent without any indication of the place of their
birth.—(Introduction.)
The three fanciful figures, with long
beards, flowing robes, and fine Grecian faces, which are given in
the Atlas to the voyage of the unfortunate La Peyrouse, as portraits
of the inhabitants of Sachalien, must have been fresh in the memory
of M. de Humboldt when he wrote this paragraph—portraits of
men, we venture to say, who never existed but in the painter's imagination.
If, instead of a new continent, in the literal sense of the expression,
America had been considered only as a newly-discovered
continent, many a learned disputation might have been spared on
the peopling of this supposed new world; for though there can be
no manner of doubt that the people who inhabit the American and
Asiatic shores of Behring's Strait have had, and still have, a mutual
intercourse, and consequently all difficulty of accounting for the
event is at once removed, yet it by no means follows as a necessary
consequence, that the people of America originally passed
from the continent of Asia. We are not to conclude that, because
the people of an adjacent continent are less civilized than those
of its neighbour, the former must have sprung from the latter.
The Egyptians, who inhabit the most barbarous continent of the
old world, were at one time probably the most civilized of nations;
and, for ought we know to the contrary, the stupid negroes may be
the most ancient race of mankind. We agree, therefore, entirely,
with M. de Humboldt, that there is no proof whatever that the
existence of man is much more recent in America than on the other
continent; yet it is from the contrary assumption that all those discussions
have originated. Those, who held them, proceeded on
the notion that the new continent emerged from the waters at a later
period than the old, and that it was more philosophical to account
for the peopling of the former from the latter, than to interpose
the hand of Divine Power to form a new creation of man! It is
true that in the great family of the human race dispersed over
the globe, once so difficult but now so easy to be traversed in every
direction, there is but one species, or, as M. de Humboldt expresses
it, one single organic type
, modified by circumstances into a mulcharacterized by the formation of the
scull, the colour of the skin, the extreme thinness of the beard, and
straight and glossy hair
. But, admitting that these were specific
differences, which they are not, such an argument might very easily
be overthrown. How do we know that these animals proceed not
from the remaining few of those which escaped one of those great
catastrophes which have so evidently befallen the earth, by taking
refuge on those elevated regions, while the Gnoo, the Hippopotamus,
and the Camelopardalis found security on the opposite continent
of Africa? At any rate, the opinion that the geological constitution
of America is different from that of the old world, has
completely been refuted.
We discern in the former the same succession of stony strata that we find in our own hemisphere; and it is probable that in the mountains of Peru, the granites, the micaceous schists, or the different formations of gypsum and gritstone existed originally at the same periods as the rocks of the same denominations in the Alps of Switzerland. The whole globe appears to have undergone the same catastrophe. At a height superior to that of Mount Blanc, on the summit of the Andes, we find petrified sea-shells; fossil bones of elephants are spread over the equinoxial regions; and what is very remarkable, they are not discovered at the feet of the palm trees in the burning plains of the Orinoco, but on the coldest and most elevated regions of the Cordilleras. In the new world, as well as in the old, generations of species long extinct have preceded those which now people the earth, the waters, and the air.—(Introduction, p. 12.)
We cannot discover from what particular Asiatic stock M. de
Humboldt supposes the American race to have derived their origin.
He finds in the Toltecks, the Aztecks, the Muyscas, and the Peruvians,
so many resemblances and analogies to every nation of
Asia, and to every tribe, from the Caucasus to the Tschoudes, and
from the borders of Scandinavia to Japan, and occasionally to
some of the nations of Europe and Africa,—that, unless China or
Thibet preponderate, we are unable to say how he has settled the
point in his own mind. From etymological researches he derives
but little aid; though in his introduction to the 'Personal Narrative'
he prepares us for much learned discussion on the cha
.
In eighty-three American languages examined by Messrs. Barton
and Water, one hundred and seventy words only were found whose
roots could be considered as common to both continents; and of
these, three-fifths resemble the Mantchou, the Tongouse, the Mongol,
and the Samoyede; and two-fifths, the Celtic and Tschoud,
the Biscayen, the Coptic, and the Congo languages. One hundred
and two words, however, common to Asia and America, were not
to be rejected by a comparative etymologist. The terms
, says
M. de Humboldt, of mox, igh, tox, baz, hix, and chic, do not
seem to belong to America, but to that part of Eastern Asia which
is inhabited by nations whose languages are monosyllabic
. He
adds,—we shall on this occasion observe that the Chinese termination
tsin is found in a great number of Mexican proper names;
for instance, in Tonantsin, Acamapitsin, Coanacotsin, Cuitlahuatsin,
and Tzilacatsin.—(ii. p. 223.)—
We are surprized, we own,
that while on this subject we escaped a long and detailed comparison
between the sesquipedalian compounds of the Sanscrit and
such Azteck words as Tlacahuepaneuexcotzin, Tetlayhiouiltiliztli,
and Amatlacuilolitquitcatlaxtlahuilli. But the fact is, that M. de
Humboldt is not much of an etymologist, and we think not the
worse of him on that account. As to his monosyllabic derivatives,
we should just as soon expect to be told that old Lilly's monosyllabic
hexameters—his gryps, Thrax, rex, grex, Phryx, &c.
—were
stolen from a Jesuit's Chinese dictionary, as to find M. de Humboldt's
mox, tox, hix, or chic, among the dialects of any of the Indo-Chinese
nations. We will not suspect that he can be ignorant of
the powers of the letters of the Spanish alphabet, but conclude
rather that he has merely transcribed from Spanish books, and not
collected from living authorities on the spot, such words as Ixtilixochitl,
Tixlpitzin, Qzocuilltexeque, and a hundred of the same
kind, in all of which the Spanish x, whose power is so different
from the same letter in French, is religiously preserved. We remember
a Portugueze x to have drawn a very learned etymologist
into a ridiculous blunder: he had proved, to his own satisfaction,
that the Latin word eximius was derived from the Chinese root
xim; not once suspecting that the power of x, in the Portugueze
alphabet, is, in ours, equivalent to sh, and that of m to ng ; so that,
according to his theory, the Romans must have pronounced their
derivative eshingius. We have always considered as extremely absurd,
the attempt to deduce a common origin between nations from
the identity of a few monosyllables, whether in sound or sense; a
similar mechanism in the structure of two different languages
affords a far better ground for such a conclusion.
M. de Humboldt is almost as unfortunate in his Chinese termination
tsin
. The Chinese language, being wholly, monosyllabic,
can hardly be said to have terminations; the same syllable is at
once initial and final. But this little word tsin, in De Guignes'
Chinese Dictionary of 14,000 characters, scarcely the third part of
those in use, has no less than forty-three different significations; and
probably, therefore, in the whole language, three times that number,
or one hundred and twenty-nine: among other things, it means
a particular kind of horse, a species of rice, of fish, of precious
stone; it means cold, and to make warm, to cut, to sleep, &c.
Whether in any, or which, of these senses it is employed in his
'Cuitlahuatzin' and 'Tzilacatsin,' he does not inform us. If, as
he says, it be true that languages are the most durable monuments
of nations
, still we think he has done right in deserting this
fruitful field of speculation; though the ground which he has taken
is, in our opinion, ten times more tender and treacherous than
that which he has abandoned. If
, says he, languages supply
but feeble evidence of ancient communication between the two
worlds, this communication is fully proved by the cosmogonies,
the monuments, the hieroglyphics, and institutions of the people
of America and Asia
. We shall state some of the proofs produced
by M. de Humboldt, leaving our readers to form their own
judgment as to their validity;—but first, it should be observed, that
all which regards the history, cosmogony, institutions, &c. of this
people, is, to say the least of it, very problematical, being drawn
solely from those rude Mexican paintings, which may be made to
represent whatever the interpreter pleases,—and copied by M. de
Humboldt from the writings of the early Spaniards, Acosta, Gomara,
Torquemada, Garcilasso de la Vega, and others;—but particularly
from that fanciful and credulous system-monger, the Abbé Clavigero,
whose two quarto volumes, as Robertson justly observes,
contain hardly any addition to the ancient history of the Mexican
empire as related by Acosta and Herrera, but what is derived from
the improbable narratives and fanciful conjectures of Torquemada
and Boturini
. This Italian Abbé and Gemelli Careri are the two
principal authorities on whom M. de Humboldt ventures to erect
a new and improved system of interpretation, although the latter
has been strongly suspected of having exercised his ingenuity in
shewing how very successfully a 'voyage round the world
may be
performed by the fire-side. But having copied Gemelli's hieroglyphic
painting, M. de Humboldt could not do less than defend
the author of the 'Giro del Mundo' against the charge of writing
a 'fictitious voyage.'
I can affirm it
, says M. de Humboldt, to be no less certain that
.
We can say the same of Gemelli's descriptions in another
quarter of the globe; and also bear testimony that his book
contains an inextricable mixture of errors and well-observed
facts
—such facts and such errors, however, as might have been
collected out of the works of preceding travellers.
The hieroglyphical paintings which M. de Humboldt undertakes
to explain over again, and improve on Clavigero's system, were not
procured by him in America, but are those of the Vatican, of
Weletri, of Vienna, of Dresden, of Berlin, of Paris, of Mendoza,
(which are printed in Purchas's Pilgrims,) and of Gemelli; he seems
to regret the want of a 'Codex Mexicanus,' which, as he learnt
from a well-informed traveller, is shewn in a library at Oxford,
and is surprized that it should have remained unknown to the illustrious
Scottish historian,—but Robertson knew how to appreciate
those Mexican paintings; he knew that the most authentic and
valuable, if any value can be attached to them, are those published
by Purchas, and was therefore not likely to give himself
much concern about what was inexplicable, unauthenticated, and
consequently useless, if not injurious, to the truth of history:
besides, we have reason to believe no such 'Codex' exists at Oxford.
If our readers should not feel disposed to concur in opinion
with M. Pauw, when he says, on n'est pas certain que le manuscrit
Mexicain renferme un seul mot de ce qu'on croit y entrevoir
,
we would recommend them to examine and form their own estimate
of M. de Humboldt's translation or interpretation of a lawsuit
in hieroglyphical writing, (vol. i. p. 141.)
and the Epochs
of Nature according to the Azteck Mythology, (vol. ii. p. 15.)
The explanation given to the latter will, we think, appear to them,
as it does to us, a precious piece of mummery; and yet it is from
this that M. de Humboldt lays the greatest stress on the ancient
intercourse of the Old and the New world.
The most prominent feature, he says, among the analogies observed in the monuments, the manners, and traditions of the people of Asia and America, is that which the Mexican mythology exhibits in cosmogonical fiction of the periodical destructions and regenerations of the world.
The 'Codex Vaticanus,' which is supposed to contain this fiction,
was copied, in 1566, by a Dominican monk of the name of
a tradition of five ages, analogous with
that of the Mexicans, being found on the elevated plains of Thibet
.
Hesiod too, in his explanation of the oriental system of the renovation
of nature
, makes five generations in four ages, by dividing
the age of brass into two parts; and M. de Humboldt observes,
that we may be astonished that so clear a passage should ever
have been misinterpreted
. The first sun, cycle, or age, was destroyed
by famine, or giants, or tigers, it is not clear which, after
a duration of 5206 years. It corresponds with the age of justice
(Sakia Youga) of the Hindoos
, and we can be at no loss for a
parallel case to that of the giants; as, according to the Pouranas,
Bacchus or the young Rama then also gained his first victory over
Ravana, King of the Giants of the Island of Ceylon
.
The second age was destroyed by fire; its duration was 4804
years. As birds alone were able to escape the general conflagration
all men were transformed into birds. The third age was terminated
by tempests; the men who did not perish in them were
transformed into apes. The fourth age was destroyed by water
after a duration of 4008 years: men were transformed into fish,
except one man and one woman, who saved themselves in the trunk
of an ahahuète, or cupressus distica
. These two of course were
the Mexican Noah and his wife, named Coxcox and Xochiquetzal.
We shall extract the history of the deluge of Coxcox, though taken
from the suspicious authority of Gemelli Careri, and we must say
that, after reading it, in spite of the evidence of all that is symbolical
and chronological in the painting of the migrations with the
hieroglyphics contained in the manuscripts of Rome and Veletri
,
we find ourselves among the number of those infidels who give credit
to the hypothesis, that the drawing of Gemelli is the fiction of
some Spanish monk, who has attempted to prove, by apocryphal
documents, that the traditions of the Hebrews are found among the
indigenous nations of America
.
The painting represents Coxcox in the midst of the water lying in a bark. The mountain, the summit of which, crowned by a tree, rises above the waters, is the peak Colhuacan, the Ararat of the Mexicans. The horn, which is represented on the left, is the phonetic hieroglyphic of Colhuacan. At the foot of the mountain appear the heads of Coxcox and his wife. The latter of these is known by the two tresses in the form of horns, which denote the female sex. The men born after the
deluge were dumb: a dove from the top of a tree distributes among them tongues represented under the form of small commas. We must not confound this dove with the bird which brings Coxcox tidings that the waters were dried up. The people of Mechoacan preserved a tradition, according to which Coxcox, whom they called Tezpi, embarked in a spacious acalli with his wife, his children, several animals, and grain, the preservation of which was of importance to mankind. When the great spirit Tezcatlipoca ordered the waters to withdraw, Tezpi sent out from his bark a vulture, the zopilote (vultur aurea). This bird, which feeds on dead flesh, did not return on account of the great number of carcasses with which the earth, recently dried up, was strewed. Tezpi sent out other birds, one of which, the humming bird, alone returned, holding in its beak a branch covered with leaves; Tezpi, seeing that fresh verdure began to clothe the soil, quitted his bark near the Mountain of Colhuacan.—vol. ii. p. 64.
Well may M. de Humboldt say that these traditions remind
us of others of high and venerable antiquity
. To us they smell
most rankly of the 'Spanish Monk.' This deluge took place not
many centuries before the Spanish conquest according to the annals
of a people that extended not more than 320 years back from
that invasion; according to Pedro de los Rios, Gomara, Clavigero,
Gemelli Careri, and M. de Humboldt, it happened eighteen
thousand and twenty-eight years (the sum of the four ages) after
the beginning of the first age; but, according to Ixtlilxochitl, (we
should like to hear M. de Humboldt pronounce this word,) a native
Mexican, only one thousand four hundred and seventeen years from
that epoch. Our author is not in the least disconcerted by this
trifling discrepancy in point of time. We ought not to be
astonished at it
, he says, when we recollect the hypotheses which,
in our days, have been advanced by Bailly, Sir William Jones, and
Bentley, on the duration of the five Yougas of the Hindoos
. He
adds, however, I have never been able to discover any peculiar
propriety (property?) in the number of 18,028 years; it is not a
multiple of 13, 19, 52, 60, 72, 360, or 1440, which are the numbers
found in the cycles of the Asiatic nations
:—but give M. de
Humboldt three years only—three little years—to add to these
Mexican four suns, let him but change their respective durations,
and then,-if for the numbers 5206, 4804, 4010, and 4008, the
numbers 5206,4807, 4009, and 4009, were substituted, we might
suppose that these cycles originated from a knowledge of the lunar
period of nineteen years
!
The next 'cosmogonical analogy,' taken from the 'Codex Vaticanus,'
represents the celebrated serpent woman, Cihuacohuatl,
called also Quelastli, or Tonacacihua, woman of our flesh
; she is
always represented with a serpent, and is considered as the mother
of the human race.
These allegories remind us of the ancient traditions of Asia. In the woman and serpent of the Aztecks we think we perceive the Eve of the Semetic nations; in the snake cut in pieces, the famous serpent Kaliya or Kalinaga, conquered by Vishnu, when he took his form of Krishna. The Tonatiuh of the Mexicans appears also to be identical with the Krishna of the Hindoos, recorded in the Bhagavata Purana, and with the Mithras of the Persians.
This is not all. Two naked figures in the attitude of contention
suggest the idea that, as the serpent woman was considered at
Mexico as the mother of two twin children
, these naked figures
remind us of the Cain and Abel of Hebrew tradition
.
The cosmogony of the Mexicans; their traditions of the mother of mankind fallen from her first state of happiness and innocence; the idea of a great inundation, in which a single family escaped on a raft; the history of a pyramidical edifice raised by the pride of men, and destroyed by the anger of the gods; the ceremonies of ablution practised at the birth of children; those idols made with the flour of kneaded maize, and distributed in morsels to the people assembled in the temples; the confession of sins made by the penitent; those religious associations similar to our convents of men and women; the universal belief that white men, with long beards and sanctity of manners, had changed the religion and political system of nations;—all these circumstances had led the priests, who accompanied the Spanish army at the time of the conquest, to the belief, that at some very distant epocha christianity had been preached in the New Continent.—vol. i. p. 196.
Might not these priests have suggested and encouraged such an
idea there as they are known to have done in other countries?
The hieroglyphical paintings which they found, and others which
they fabricated, afforded them an admirable opportunity of explaining
their recondite meaning to their own purposes; nothing could
be so well adapted for the propagation of monkish fictions and pious
frauds; and their success is recorded by M. de Humboldt. Some
learned Mexicans
, says he, have imagined that the Apostle St.
Thomas was the mysterious personage, high priest of Tula, whom
the Cholulans acknowledged under the name of Quetzalcoatl
.
What could the learned Mexicans know about St. Thomas but
what the Spanish monks told them? It is astonishing, however,
with what credulity these men embraced the most wild and extravagant
fancies. It actually beeame a question among the Spanish
priests, and was gravely discussed by them, whether this great personage,
(Quetzalcoatl,) whom our author calls the 'Mexican
Budha,' was a Carthaginian or an Irishman? The Mac Carthays
could have settled this important question at once. Absurd as it
would appear to suppose that a rude people, like the Mexicans,
without any written language, either symbolical or alphabetical,
without any system of numeration, could have made much progress
identic with that made use of
by the Hindoos, the Tibetans, the Chinese, the Japanese, and the
Asiatic people of the Tartar race
. We shall see presently in what
this identity consists. The Mexican year was divided into eighteen
months of twenty days and five days over, which are called memontomi
or voids, and considered as unlucky—the month into five
weeks of four days each. These days were represented by four
signs or hieroglyphics—tochtli, a rabit or hare; acatl, a cane;
tecpatl, a flint, calli, a house. By applying the same signs to a
period of four years, a simple system of chronology or reckoning
of time presented itself for their adoption. To lengthen this
without increasing the number of signs, and to prevent the confusion
which would arise from the constant recurrence of the same
signat the commencement of each short period, they repeated them
three times, making twelve years, to which the first in the series (the
rabbit) being added, gave them a period of thirteen years, of
which the first year was 1 rabbit, the last 13 rabbit. This was
called Tlalpilli, which M. de Humboldt finds analogous to
the indiction of the Romans
. The second Tlalpilli of thirteen
years would then of course begin with a new (the second) sign, and
be called 1 cane; and it would also end with the same sign and be
distinguished as 13 cane; in like manner the third Tlalpilli would
commence with the third sign, 1.flint, and end with 13 flint; and
the fourth begin with 1 house, and end with 13 house; and these
four added together would give them another period of (4X13 or)
52 years, called xiuhmopilli, ligature of the years. The series of
a new cycle of fifty-two years would then again commence with 1
rabbit, as before. All this is perfectly simple, but has very little
'identity' with the cycles of sixty years in use among the Chinese,
the Japanese, the Mongols, the Mantchous, and other Tartar
hordes. None of these nations use any numbers in their cycles;
the series is carried on by two sets of signs, or syllables, one of
which is formed of the twelve constellations of the zodiac, the other
of the five elements, male and female. In China they are called
the twelve tchu, and the ten kan; and the binary combinations of
these ten roots and twelve branches (10x12/2)give a distinct and
proper name to every year of the period or age of sixty years, without
the employment of a single numeral character or figure, so that
in no respect is there the least resemblance between the oriental
cycles and the roues séculaires of the Mexicans; if the latter be not
altogether the fabrication of some 'Spanish monk.'
We will not attempt to follow M. de Humboldt through this
learned chapter on the Mexican calendar, which employs upwards
of 130 pages; suffice it to say, that having settled the identity of
the Mexican cycles and those of the Asiatic nations, all the rest of
the 'analogies' fall easily into his system, and the closest affinities
are discovered between every branch of astronomical knowledge,
every astrological reverie, every superstition, recorded of the
Greeks, Hebrews, Phenicians, Hindoos, Persians, and Chinese,
all the Tartar tribes, and all the corresponding branches among
the Mexicans; every difference and difficulty disappearing at
once when touched by the magic wand of M. de Humboldt.
The very names even
, he tells us, of the oriental zodiacs, and
the Nacshatras of the Hindoos, are the names of the Mexican signs
of the days
; and the way in which this is proved is so curious that
we shall select the history of one of the signs (Capricorn) as a specimen
of it, as well as of the satisfactory manner of unravelling the
mysteries of the Mexican paintings. The sign Cipactli is represented
by Gama as a sea animal. M. de Humboldt says it is a
whale with a horn in its forehead. Gomara and Torquemada call
it espadarté, a narwal. Boturini, mistaking the horn for a harpoon,
translated cipactli by serpent armed with harpoons
. But,
says our author, being a fabulous animal, it is natural enough its
form should vary; accordingly the horn is sometimes a lengthening
of the muzzle, as in the fish oxyrinchus
. But Valades, Boturini,
and Clavigero converted this whale into a shark or lizard;
(very like each other, and the latter, according to the authority of
Count Osrick, exceedingly like a whale;
) and in the Borgian
manuscript the head of this cipactli resembles that of a crocodile,
and this same name of crocodile is given by Sonnerat (Sonnerat!
a butterfly-hunter!) to the tenth sign of the Indian zodiac, which is
our capricorn
—ergo, cipactli is capricorn. But lest this clear
demonstration should not be considered as sufficient proof, we have
it in another shape. Cipactli, in Mexican mythology, is connected
with Coxcox, and Coxcox was Noah who saved himself at the top
of the mountain on the destruction of the fourth sun; and this,
somehow or other, connects itself with another discovery of Sonnerat,
that the capricorn of the Hindoos is the fabulous fish maharan,
represented from the most remote antiquity as a sea monster with
the head of an antelope
; and as capricorn is an antelope, and an
antelope is also exceedingly like a whale
,—ergo, cipactli is capricorn;
and this striking analogy between the two signs suggests
other 'analogies' equally close and remarkable.
An animal which, after having for a length of time inhabited the waters, takes the form of an antelope, and scales the mountains, reminds nations, whose disturbed imagination associates objects the most remote
from each other, of the ancient traditions of Menou, Noah, and the Deucalions, famous among the Scythians and people of Thessaly.
Were we to copy the list of 'parallels and analogies' similar to
the few we have given, it would occupy the whole of this article.
Among them we should find an Azteck priestess compared with
the Egyptian Isis—three xocpalli or prints of feet, with the sravana
or three prints of the feet of Vishnu-the Mexican tcomoxtli,
with the Hindoo Puranas—the Peruvian trinity, with the Hindoo
trimurti—two unknown animals pierced with darts, the one compared
with the Paschal lamb of the Hebrews, and the other with
the anatomical man in the almanac—the gods hurling fire on the
top of the Pyramid of Cholula, with the destruction of the Tower
of Babel—the five complementary days of the Mexicans, with the
epagomena of the Memphian years, and the pendjehidouzdideh of
the Persians—the Mexican year divided like that of the Egyptians,
and the New French Calendar—the Mexican day commencing
with the sun rising, like that of the Persians, the Egyptians, the
Babylonians, and most Asiatic nations—divided into eight intervals,
like that of the Hindoos and the Romans—of unequal hours, like
that of the Jews—and, to sum up all, that as Plato, the Prince
of Philosophers, thought there was something majestic and royal
in a large nose
, so it would seem did the Mexicans, from the
enormity of this organ in the 'Mexican paintings'—but enough,
and more than enough. We regret to find such foolery, for we
really can give it no better name, carried to so great an extent, and
by one too who is furnished with such abundance of matter of a
superior cast.
We do not mean to deny that the first attempts, however rude, of an unenlightened people to register events, communicate ideas, and render visible the operations of the mind, are void of interest; on the contrary, we consider them as so many landmarks by which we trace, in the most interesting manner, the progress of the intellectual faculties of man; but we wish to discountenance that perverse ingenuity which would mould and twist them to its own purposes, and give them a meaning which they were never intended to bear.
Neither do we mean to deny that this people had their calendar
and their chronology. The alternate procession and recession
of the shadows of fixed objects, to and from their extreme points,
which have attracted the attention of all agricultural, and consequently
stationary, people, would, in the course of a few years observation,
give them the four great divisions of the sun's revolution;
still, we cannot admit with our author, that a nation so barbarous
as the Mexicans had any knowledge of the causes of eclipses,
or the Metonic period of nineteen years. A picture language,
In them
, says Robertson, every figure of
men, of quadrupeds, of birds, as well as every representation of
inanimated nature, is extremely rude and aukward. The hardest
Egyptian style, stiff and imperfect as it was, is more elegant. The
scrawls of children delineate objects almost as accurately
. Whatever
therefore may have been their condition in the tenth century,
when
, our author says, they were more advanced in civilization
than Denmark, Sweden, and Russia
, they were sunk low enough
in the fifteenth century. But it is time to leave the regions of fancy
and fiction for those of reality, and proceed to notice some of the
few remaining monuments of the Mexicans and Peruvians.
M. de Humboldt observes that the only American tribes, among
whom we find remarkable monuments, are the inhabitants of
mountains. Isolated in the region of clouds, on the most elevated
plains of the globe, surrounded by volcanoes, the craters of which
are encircled by eternal snows, they appear to have admired, in the
solitude of their deserts, those objects only which strike the imagination by the greatness of their masses; and their productions bear
the stamp of the savage nature of the Cordilleras.
We shall not
stop to offer any objections to a theory by no means new—that
the local character of a country, its climate, soil, and scenery, possesses
a commanding influence on the progress and style of the
arts—it is, however, liable to many, and to one in particular—it is
not borne out by facts. The greatest monument that exists of
Mexican industry, for it exhibits no skill, is the Pyramid of Cholula;
and that of Peru, which most deserves notice, is the causeway
that leads over the Paramo del Assuay.
The general form of those edifices which, by the inhabitants of
the Mexican territory, were called Teocallis, or Houses of the Gods,
It is impossible
, says our author, not to be struck with
the resemblance of the Babylonian temple of Jupiter Belus to the
Teocallis of Anahuac
.
The pyramids of Teotihuacan are situated in the valley of Mexico, eight leagues north-east of the capital, on a plain called Micoatl—the path of the dead. Two large ones, dedicated to the sun and the moon, are surrounded by several hundred smaller ones, forming streets in straight lines from north to south, and from east to west. Each side of the base of the largest is 208 metres (682 feet); the perpendicular height, 55 metres (180 feet). The small pyramids are not more than 9 or 10 metres high, and are supposed to be the tombs of the chiefs. The two great ones had each four terraces: the nucleus is a mixture of clay and small stones, and the casing a wall of porous amygdaloid or mandelstein. On the tops were colossal statues of the sun and moon, said to have been made of stone and covered with plates of gold, of which they were stripped by the soldiers of Cortez; the idols were destroyed by a Franciscan monk of the name of Zumaraga.
The pyramid of Papantla was discovered, scarcely more than thirty years ago, by some Spanish hunters, in a thick forest called Tajin, on the descent of the Cordillera on the east of Teotihuacan, and between it and the gulf of Mexico. It is more tapering than the others, being 18 metres high with only 25 of base, built entirely with hewn stones of large dimensions and regularly shaped; it is covered with hieroglyphical sculpture, and small niches, to the number of 318, are cut in its sides and arranged with great symmetry.
But the most ancient, and most celebrated (says M. de Humboldt)
of the pyramidal monuments of Anahuaca, is the Teocalli
of Cholula. It stands on the east side of the city of the same
name, which Cortez compared with the most populous cities of
Spain, but which scarcely contains, at present, 16,000 inhabitants.
Our author says he measured it carefully, and ascertained that its
perpendicular height is only 50 metres (164 feet), but that each
side of its base is 439 metres (1440 feet); the latter being twice as
A mysterious dread, a religious awe, fills the soul of the
Indian at the sight of this immense pile of bricks, covered with :
shrubs and perpetual verdure!
The Peruvian monuments are many of them works of obvious utility.
The lofty plains that stretch along the back of the Cordilleras from the equator to the third degree of south latitude end where a mass of mountain rises from 4500 to 4800 metres (14,764 to 15,749 feet) of height, which, like an enormous dyke, unites the eastern to the western ridge of the Andes of Quito. This group of mountains, in which porphyry covers mica-slate and other works of primitive formation, is known by the name of the Paramo del Assuay.
The road which crosses this mountain is nearly as high as Mount Blanc, and in winter, M. de Humboldt says, the travellers are exposed to a cold so excessive that several perish every year from its effects.
We were surprized to find in this place, and at heights which greatly surpass the top of the peak of Teneriffe, the magnificent remains of a road constructed by the Incas of Peru. This causeway, lined with free-stone, may be compared to the finest Roman roads I have seen in Italy, France, or Spain; it is perfectly straight and keeps the same direction for six or eight thousand metres. We observed the continuation of this road near Caxamarca, 120 leagues to the south of Assuay;
and it is believed in the country that it led as far as the city of Cousco. —(vol. i. p. 242.)
Near this road, and at the height of 4042 metres (13,262 feet), are the remains of a palace of the Inca Zupaynpangi, and in descending toward the south, another monument of ancient Peruvian architecture, known by the name of the fortress of Cannar. It is a hill terminated by a platform, which is surrounded by a wall 17 or 18 feet high, built of large blocks of free-stone; its shape is oval, and the larger diameter nearly 130 feet. It has a house in the centre, which served as a lodging to the Incas in their journies from Peru to Quito; and the foundations of edifices surrounding it, indicate that there was room enough at Cannar to lodge a small army. In like manner, at certain distances from station to station. along this great public road, were houses built for the Incas, remarkable for their simplicity, symmetry, and solidity. The stone is a trappean porphyry of great hardness, cut into parallelopipedons with such perfection, that M. de Humboldt confirms the remark of M. de la Condamine, that the joints would be imperceptible if the outer surface of each stone was not designedly made convex, and cut slantingly towards the edge, so that the joints may form small flutings by way of ornament. None of the stones seen by M. de Humboldt at Cannar exceeded 8 feet in length, but Acosta mentions hewn stones at Traquanaco of 38 feet long, 18 feet broad, and 6 feet thick; and Pedro Cieca, in the 'Chronica del Peru,' notices his having seen some of similar dimensions in the ruins of Tiahuanaco. Such a stone of porphyry would weigh about 293 tons.
Among the ruins of the houses of the Incas, along the great
causeway, that of Callo is in the best state of preservation; M.
de Humboldt says, that the stones of it are beautifully cut, and
not, as Robertson asserts, used just as they were raised out of the
quarries: but Robertson was not here speaking of Callo, but of
Peruvian buildings in general, and Ulloa confirms the observation.
Condamine saw in some of these edifices, stones of porphyry
worked into the heads of animals, in the perforated noses of which
were moveable rings of the same stone. Hatchets of flints could
not have accomplished this; and M. de Humboldt tells us that
in viewing the masses of porphyry extracted from the quarries of
Pullal, he conjectured that the Peruvians must have been acquainted
with the compound metal of copper mixed with tin, in
which it seems he was justified by the discovery of an ancient Peruvian
chissel found in a silver mine near Cuzco, which was worked
in the time of the Incas. The metal being analyzed by M. Vauquelin,
was found to consist of 0.94 of copper, and 0.06 of tin. Had
The other monuments described in these volumes, the statue of
a Mexican priestess, the axe with engraved characters, the granite
vases, found on the Mosquito shore, if the latter be not European,
have little deserving of admiration, except, like the Sarcophagi
of Egypt, the useless labour that has been bestowed upon
them. We proceed therefore to that which is incomparably the
best part of these volumes—the description of those magnificent
and savage scenes of nature—those Cordilleras of the Andes,
which bear about the same proportion to the chain of the Alps
as these do to that of the Pyrenees. Into these wild regions
of eternal ice and snow, on which the direct rays of a cloudless
sun fail to make the slightest impression; to these colossal
summits, looking down on the most exuberant vegetation that
the bountiful earth produces, we accompany M. de Humboldt
with the greatest pleasure; confident of our security in trusting
to him as a steady and well-informed guide to the botanical,
geological, and physiological treasures of the equinoctial regions
of the new continent
.
The most stupendous of these mountainous summits are those which rise out of the two parallel chains into which the Cordilleras of the Andes are separared by a longitudinal valley, which commencing about the equator, melt again into one mass to the southward of Quito. This elevated valley, or succession of plains, is thus described by M. de Humboldt.
In these plains the population of this marvellous country is concentrated, towns are there built which contain from thirty to fifty thousand inhabitants. When we have lived for some months on this elevated spot, where the barometer keeps at twenty inches high, we feel the irresistible influence of an extraordinary illusion; we forget, by degrees, that every thing which surrounds the observer-those villages which proclaim the industry of a mountainous people; those pastures covered at the same time with lamas, and flocks of European sheep; those orchards bounded by hedges of duranta and barnadesia; those fields. cultivated with care, and promising the richest harvests; hang as it were suspended in the lofty regions of the atmosphere:—we scarcely recollect that the soil we inhabit is more elevated above the neighbouring coasts of the Pacific Ocean, than the summit of Canigou above the basin of the Mediterranean.—(vol. i. p. 232.)
The most active volcanoes in the kingdom of Quito are those on
the eastern Cordillera, or that which is farthest from the sea coast;
as there is reason to suppose that the proximity
of the ocean contributes to feed the volcanic fire
. We always
thought so, and considered, with M. de Humboldt, the fact, not
merely accidental
, that no active volcano has been discovered at a
greater distance than 40 or 50 leagues from the ocean. Yet, with
apparent inconsistency, he afterwards says, very well-founded doubts
have been raised respecting these direct and constant communications
between the waters of the sea and the focus of the volcanic
fire.—(Per. Nar. vol. i. p. 163.)
—Cotapaxi is, perhaps, of all
known volcanoes, the most distant from the ocean.
The most remarkable peaks on the western chain are Chimborazo
and Carguairazo, Ruca Pichincha, Corazon, and Ilinissa; and on
the eastern ridge, Cotapaxi, Tungurahua, and Cayambe, whose
summit is traversed by the equator. We may consider
, says M.
de Humboldt, this colossal mountain as one of those eternal monuments
by which nature has marked the great divisions of the terrestrial
globe
. It so happens in a small part of South America; but
two of the great divisions
of the globe the Equator does not
cross in any part, and not a foot of that part of Africa over which
it does pass is known: but if the imaginary divisions of the terrestrial
globe
into the northern and southern hemispheres be meant,
the observation is still more unfortunate, as of the 360 degrees of the
equator, 282 (about 7/9, of it) pass over the trackless ocean whose surface
nature has not particularly marked
. We notice this to shew
what gross errors M. de Humboldt is led into by that thirst after
generalization, which he himself so properly condemns in others.
He adds, among the mountains of eternal snow, that surround the
city of Quito, Cayambe, which is the most beautiful as well as the
most majestic, never ceases to excite admiration at sunset, when the
volcano of Guagua Pichincha, situate to the west, or toward the
Pacific ocean, throws its shadow over the vast plain which forms
the foreground of the landscape
. Cayambe is the loftiest summit of
the Cordilleras, except Chimborazo; the first, according to Bouguer
and Condamine, whose measurements are confirmed by Humboldt,
being 3208 toises, (5901 metres, or 19,361 feet); and the
latter 3640 metres above the plain of Topia, which is itself 2891
metres, that is 6531 metres, or 21,428 feet, of absolute height.
Messrs. Humboldt and Bonpland attempted to ascend by a narrow
ridge, which rises amidst the snows on the southern declivity, to the
summit of Chimborazo; but the thick fog which surrounded them,
it was more than
eleven hundred metres (3609 feet) higher than the top of Mount
Blanc
. The summit of Chimborazo is circular. Seen from the
shores of the South Sea, it detaches itself from the neighbouring
summits, and towers over the whole chain of the Andes, like that
majestic dome produced by the genius of Michael Angelo, over the
antique monuments which surround the Capitol
. The flank of this
mountain, as viewed from the plain of Topia, is said to present that
gradation of vegetable life which M. de Humboldt has systematised
in what he calls his 'Geography of Plants;' as it is more general,
we hope it is also more correct, than the application of his theory
was found to be in his botanical chart of the Peak of Teneriffe.
At three thousand five hundred metres absolute height, the ligneous plants with coriaceous and shining leaves nearly disappear. The region of shrubs is separated from that of the grasses by Alpine plants, by tufts of nerteria, valerian, saxifrage, and lobelia, and by small criciferous (cruciform) plants. The grasses form a very broad belt, covered at intervals with snow, which remains but a few days. Above the pajonal (the grass belt) lies the region of cryptogamous plants, which here and there cover the porphyritic rocks destitute of vegetable earth. Farther on, at the limit of the perpetual ice, is the termination of organic life. -(vol. ii. p. 12.)
Capac-Urca, or the altar, whose summit has sunk into the crater, is said to have been once higher than Chimborazo; and a great part of Carguerazo fell in on the night of the 19th of July, 1698. Torrents of water and mud then issued from the sides of the mountain and laid waste the neighbouring country, and an earthquake which accompanied, and probably was the cause of, this dreadful catastrophe, swallowed up thousands of the inhabitants of the adjacent towns. The appearance of Ilinissa, with its two pyramidal points, warrants the supposition of their being the wrecks of a volcano that has fallen in. The height of this majestic and picturesque mountain was determined by the trigonometrical measurements of Bouguer, to be 2717 toises, or 17,374 feet.
Corazon is a mountain covered with perpetual snow, rising out of the western Cordillera between the summits of Pichincha and Ilinissa. It was on this mountain that Messrs. Bouguer and Condamine observed the mercury in the barometer standing so low as fifteen inches and ten lines, from which they concluded that they were then 2470 toises (15,795 feet) above the level of the sea—a result not strictly exact, as the true application of the corrections for the influence of temperature and the decrement of caloric were not at that time sufficiently known.
But Cotopaxi is the loftiest of those volcanoes of the Andes, whose explosions have been most frequent and disastrous, its absolute height being 5754 metres, or 18,879 feet, 800 metres or 2625 feet higher than Vesuvius would be if placed on the Peak of Teneriffe. Its form is said to be the most beautiful and regular of the colossal summits of the Andes, being to appearance a perfect cone, which, covered with an enormous layer of snow, shines with dazzling splendour, more particularly when the sun approaches the western horizon, and detaches itself in the most picturesque manner from the azure vault of heaven. Every inequality of soil, every rocky point, and stony mass, are entirely concealed by the thick coating of perpetual snow, whose limit is at 4411 metres (14,472 feet) of absolute height. The cone itself resembles the peak of Teyde, but its height is about six times that of the great volcano of Teneriffe.
The mass of scoriæ, and the huge pieces of rock thrown out of this volcano, which are spread over the neighbouring valleys, covering a surface of several square leagues, would form, were they heaped together, a colossal mountain. In 1738, the flames of Cotopaxi rose 900 metres, 2953 feet, above the brink of the crater. In 1744, the roarings of the volcano were heard as far as Honda, a town on the borders of the Magdalena, and at the distance of 200 common leagues. On the 4th of April, 1768, the quantity of ashes ejected by the mouth of Cotopaxi was so great, that, in the towns of Hambato and Tacunga, day broke only at three in the afternoon, and the inhabitants were obliged to use lanterns in walking the streets. The explosion which took place in the month of January, 1803, was preceded by a dreadful phenomenon, the sudden melting of the snows that covered the mountain. For twenty years before no smoke or vapour, that could be perceived, had issued from the crater; and in a single night the subterraneous fire became so active that, at sunset, the external walls of the cone, heated, no doubt, to a very considerable temperature, appeared naked, and of the dark colour, which is peculiar to vitrified scoriæ. At the port of Guayaquil, fifty-two leagues distant, in a straight line from the crater, we heard, day and night, the noises of the volcano, like continued discharges of a battery; we distinguished these tremendous sounds, even on the Pacific ocean, to the south-west of the island of Puna.—(vol. i. p. 118.)
Passing to the northward of the equator, which, as we have observed,
traverses the colossal summit of Cayambe, the Andes
are condensed, as it were, into one great cluster; but from the
parallel of 2° 30' N. to 5° 15' N. they again branch out into three
Cordilleras, and are again blended together in the sixth and seventh
degrees of northern latitude. In these parallels the highest summits
of the eastern chain do not attain the region of perpetual
snow; the elevation of the western chain is scarcely fifteen hundred
metres; but the central ridge frequently reaches those limits,
"We traversed the mountain of Quindiu in the month of October, 1801, on foot, followed by twelve oxen, which carried our collections and instruments, amidst a deluge of rain, to which we were exposed during the last three or four days, in our descent on the western side of the Cordilleras. The road passes through a country full of bogs, and covered with bamboos. Our shoes were so torn by the prickles, which shoot out from the roots of these gigantic gramina, that we were forced, like all other travellers who dislike being carried on men's backs, to go barefooted. This circumstance, the continual humidity, the length of the passage, the muscular force required to tread in a thick and muddy clay, the necessity of fording deep torrents of icy water, render this journey extremely fatiguing: but, however painful, it is accompanied by none of those dangers, with which the credulity of the people alarm travellers. The road is narrow, but the places where it skirts precipices are very rare. As the oxen are accustomed to put their feet in the same tracks, they form small furrows across the road, separated from each other by narrow ridges of earth. In very rainy seasons these ridges are covered by water which renders the traveller's step doubly
uncertain, since he knows not whether he places his foot on the ridge, or in the furrow. As few persons in easy circumstances travel on foot in these climates, through roads so difficult during fifteen or twenty days together, they are carried by men in a chair, tied on their back; for in the present state of the passage of Quindiu, it would be impossible to go on mules. They talk in this country of going on a man's back (andar en carguero), as we mention going on horseback; no humiliating idea is annexed to the trade of cargueroes; and the men who follow this occupation are not Indians, but Mulattoes, and sometimes even whites. It is often curious to hear these men, with scarcely any covering, and following a profession which we should consider so disgraceful, quarrelling in the midst of a forest, because one has refused the other, who pretends to have a whiter skin, the pompous title of don, or of su merced. The usual load of a carguero is six or seven arrobas (165 to 195 pounds English): those who are very strong carry as much as nine arrobas. When we reflect on the enormous fatigue, to which these miserable men are exposed, journeying eight or nine hours a day over a mountainous country; when we know that their backs are sometimes as raw as those of beasts of burden, and that travellers have often the cruelty to leave them in the forests, when they fall sick; that they earn by a journey from Ibague to Carthago only twelve or fourteen piastres, (from 50s. to 60s.) in a space of fifteen and sometimes even twenty-five or thirty days, we are at a loss to conceive how this employment of a carguero, one of the most painful that can be undertaken by man, is eagerly embraced by all the robust young men, who live at the foot of the mountain. The taste for a wandering and vagabond life, the idea of a certain independence amidst forests, leads them to prefer this employment to the sedentary and monotonous labour of cities.-(vol. i. p. 65.)
Nor is this mountain the only part of South America which is traversed on the backs of men. Those that surround the province of Antioquia are all crossed in the same way; and M. de Humboldt tells us that he knew a man of this province so bulky that he had not met with more than two mulattoes capable of carrying him; and that if either of these had died while he was on the banks of the Magdalena, he never could have reached his home! yet so considerable is the number of young men who undertake the employment, that our travellers sometimes met a file of fifty or sixty of them together.—When the government, a few years ago, formed the project of making the passage from Nares to Antioquia passable for mules, the Cargueros remonstrated against mending the road, and it was thought expedient to yield to their clamours. All this is very natural, however we may affect to wonder at it, on the part of the Cargueros; and the same thing would happen, without doubt, if some of our tender-hearted reformers were to bring a bill into Parliament for the abolition of chair-men in the cities of London and Westminster.
It appears also to be the practice in Mexico for every director of the mines to have one or two Indians at his service, who are called his horses (cavallitoes), because they are saddled every morning, and, supported by a cane and bending forwards, carry their owner on their backs from one part of the mine to another. We shall not be surprized if, ere many years elapse, the Indians and the directors change places, and the cavallitoes take their turn to saddle and ride their old masters.
Another occupation of the South Americans, no less singular, is that of travelling by floating down the mountain rivers on logs of wood—a practice which could only be adopted in the upper branches of the Amazons, Marannan, and other mighty rivers, to which the crocodiles do not ascend. The aquatic postman of the province of Jaen de Bracamoros swims monthly for two days, down the Chamaya and a part of the Amazons, as the shortest and easiest communication between the eastern side of the Andes and the coasts of the Pacific. The Chamaya is not navigable by boats, on account of its numerous small cascades, its fall, as ascertained by Humboldt, being, in the space of eighteen leagues, 542 metres, or 1778 feet. The postman therefore mounts a log of bombax or ocroma, trees of very light wood. Wrapping his letters in a handkerchief or in his guyaco or drawers, he winds them as a turban round his head, and then, like the natives of Madras on their catamarans, he braves the surf, seldom either losing or weting the letters with which he is entrusted. If a ledge of rocks forming a cascade intersects the bed of the river, he lands just above it, passes the forest, and resumes his log at the foot of the cascade, or provides another. Numerous huts, surrounded with plantain trees, afford him provisions; and having delivered his dispatches to the Governor of Jaen, he returns by a toilsome journey to the place from which he set out, ready to start, when the period arrives, on a fresh expedition.
It is highly probable that the greater part of the elevated plains
or valleys surrounded by mountains have been covered with
water, which by long and constant attrition in some cases, and
by the aid of man in others, has effected an outlet, and finally left
only a river to flow through the lowest level of the valley. Such
has been the elevated plain on which the city of Mexico stands, the
centre of which is yet covered with water; such also has been that
of Bogota, on which stands the city of Santa Fé, at an elevation
above the level of the ocean of 2660 metres, (8727 feet,) being
1256 feet higher than that of Mexico, and both of them higher
than the summit of Mount St. Bernard: and such will one day
be the case of the great lake Erie, when the barrier of Niagara,
Near the farm of Tequendama the Rio de Bogota rushes from
the plain through a narrow outlet into a crevice which descends
towards the basin of the river Magdalena. The natives have a tradition
that in remote times, before the moon accompanied the earth,
an old man named Bochica broke down the barrier of rocks, after
his wife Huythaca, a very beautiful, but malignant kind of a lady,
had, by her skill in magic, swelled the river, and inundated the
valley of Bogota. Here M. de Humboldt finds the good and evil
principle personified in the venerable Bochica and his wife;—and
the remote period when there was no moon reminds him of the
boast of the Arcadians as to the antiquity of their origin! The
fall of Tequendama is thus described:—
The traveller who views the tremendous scenery of the cataract
of Tequendama will not be surprized that rude tribes should have
attributed a miraculous origin to rocks which seem to have been cut
by the hand of man; to that narrow gulf into which falls headlong the
mass of waters that issue from the valley of Bogota; to those rainbows
reflecting the most vivid colours, and of which the forms vary every
instant; to that column of vapour, rising like a thick cloud, and seen
at five leagues distance, from the walks around Santa Fé.....The cataract
of Tequendama forms an assemblage of every thing that is sublimely
picturesque in beautiful scenery. This fall is not, however, as
it is commonly believed to be in the country, and repeated by naturalists
in Europe, the loftiest cataract on the globe: the river does not
rush, as Bouguer relates, into a gulf of five or six hundred metres of
perpendicular depth; but there scarcely exists a cataract which, from
so lofty a height, precipitates so voluminous a mass of waters.—
(vol. i. p. 76.)
The river just above the fall is stated to be about half the breadth of the Seine at Paris, between the Louvre and the Palace of the Arts, that is, from 140 to 150 feet; in entering the crevice, which M. de Humboldt supposes, unnecessarily we think, to have been formed by an earthquake, it is narrowed to less than forty feet. The volume of water falls at a double bound to the depth of 574 feet. The prospect from the top is magnificent, and astonishes the traveller by the variety of its contrasts.
Leaving the cultivated plain rich in corn, he finds himself surrounded not only with the aralia, the alstonia theæformis, the begonia, and the yellow bark tree, (cinchona cordifolia,) but with oaks, with elms, and other plants, the growth of which recals to his mind the vegetation of Europe; when suddenly he discovers, as from a terrace, and at his feet, a country producing the palm, the banana, and the sugar cane.-(p. 79.)
M. de Humboldt adds that the difference of 175 metres, or 574
feet, of height, is too inconsiderable to have much influence on
the temperature of the air; and that the contrast between the
vegetation of the plain of Bogota and the foot of the cataract, is
not owing to the height of the soil on the former, for that the
palm trees which flourish at the foot of the latter would have
pushed their migrations to the upper level of the river, provided
the rock had not been perpendicular, and the elevated plain had been
sheltered like the bottom of the crevice. It would, however, be
as singular a phenomenon in vegetation, to find the palm and
banana flourishing in a climate where the thermometer descends
very often to the freezing point
, as it is to meet with them in that
state at the bottom of a deep crevice near 8000 feet above the
level of the sea, where only a few feeble rays of noon
shed an
impotent gleam of light and heat on the luxuriant vegetation that
clusters round it.
Amidst the majestic and ever-varied scenery of the Cordilleras, it
is the valleys, M. de Humboldt tells us, that most powerfully affect
the imagination of the European traveller, that present scenes of
the wildest aspect, and fill the soul with astonishment and terror.
The crevices of Chota and Cutaco were found to be, one fifteen
hundred, the other thirteen hundred metres in perpendicular depth.
A small torrent, called the Rio de la Summa Paz, rushing through
the valley of Icononzo, flows through a deep crevice, which could
not have been crossed but with extreme difficulty, if nature had
not provided two bridges of rocks, which it seems are considered
in the country as among the objects most worthy the attention of
travellers. Such natural bridges over mountain torrents are not,
however, uncommon either on the new or the old continent; and
there needed not the aid of an earthquake here, any more than at
Tequendama, to rend the rocks asunder. The torrent alone was
quite sufficient to wear away the lower materials; and the view of
these chasms and masses of rock in the plate which accompanies
the description, shews the strata to have been left undisturbed.
In the second bridge, which is contiguous to the other, three
enormous masses of rock have fallen so as to support one another,
that in the middle forming the key of the arch,—an accident
which might have given the natives the idea of arches in masonry,
unknown to the people of the new world, as well as to the ancient
inhabitants of Egypt
. Numerous flights of nocturnal birds that
haunt this cavern send up a lugubrious noise; they could only
be examined by throwing down rockets to illumine the sides of
the chasm; but M. de Humboldt supposes them to belong to the
genus Caprimulgus.
Two geological phenomena, much more curious than these natural bridges, remain to be noticed before we conclude our account of M. de Humboldt's 'Researches.' The one is the Volcanitoes, or little air volcanoes of Turbaco; the other the volcano of Jorullo,-which rose out of the earth in the eighteenth century.
The volcanitoes are situated about four miles to the east of the village of Turbaco, in a thick forest abounding with balsam of Tolu trees, and others of magnificent growth; the ground, sloping gradually from the village to the height of 150 feet, every where covered with vegetation rising out of a shelly calcareous soil. The following description is all that is here given of these singular protuberancies.
In the centre of a vast plain, bordered by bromelia karatas, are eighteen or twenty small cones, in height not above seven or eight metres. These cones are formed of a blackish grey clay, and have an opening at their summits filled with water. On approaching these small craters, a hollow but very distinct sound is heard at intervals, fifteen or eighteen seconds previous to the disengagement of a great quantity of air. The force with which this air rises above the surface of the water may lead us to suppose that it undergoes a great pressure in the bowels of the earth. I generally reckoned five explosions in two minutes; and this phenomenon is often attended with a muddy ejection. The Indians assured us that the forms of the cones undergo no visible change in a great number of years; but the ascending force of the gas, and the frequency of the explosions, appear to vary according to the seasons. I found by analyses made by means of both nitrous gas and of phosphorus, that the disengaged air scarcely contains a thousandth part of oxygen. It is azotic gas, much more pure than that which is generally prepared in our laboratories. The physical cause of this phenomenon is discussed in the historical narrative of our travels into the interior of the new continent.—(vol. ii. p. 97.)
The volcano of Jorullo appears to be, what M. de Humboldt
calls it, one of the most singular catastrophes in the physical
history of our planet
, and very little known to European geologists.
It is situated about the 19th parallel of northern latitude,
in the intendency of Valladolid, to the west of the city of Mexico,
and about thirty-six leagues from the ocean. Its height is 1683
feet above the surrounding plain. This enormous excrescence
rose out of a savannah or swampy plain, on the night of the
29th September, 1759, surrounded by several thousand basaltic
cones, from six to nine feet in height, bristling a surface of four
square miles.
The cones are so many funnels, which exhale a thick vapour, and communicate an insupportable heat to the surrounding air. They are called in this country, which is excessively unhealthy, by the name
of the little ovens, hornitas. They contain nodules of basalt embedded in a mass of indurated clay. The slope of the great volcano, which is constantly burning, is covered with ashes. We reached the inside of the crater by climbing the hill of scorified and branching lavas. We shall here observe, as a remarkable fact, that all the volcanoes of Mexico are ranged in a line from East to West; and which forms, at the same time, a parallel of great elevations. In reflecting on this fact, and comparing it with our observations on the bocche nuove of Vesuvius, we are tempted to suppose that the subterraneous fire has pierced through an enormous crevice which exists in the bowels of the earth between the latitudes of 18° 59' and 19°12', and stretches from the Pacific to the Atlantic ocean.—(vol. ii. p. 103.)
We have endeavoured in the preceding pages to bring together the membra disjecta,—those huge protuberances starting out of the backbone of the earth,—scattered as we find them in these volumes, without any attempt at arrangement; and we are not aware that we have omitted the notice of any object of actual 'research' on the spot which could be deemed either curious or important. We have dwelt but little, and that little will perhaps be thought too much, on those cycles and calendars, those chronologies and cosmogonies extracted out of the—to us, at least— unintelligible daubings designated under the name of the 'Codices Mexicani'. To M. de Humboldt, however, they would appear to be of first-rate importance, and some idea may be formed of his laborious 'Researches' (in the libraries of Europe) to collect and explain those Sybilline documents, and to trace, in their dark and mysterious leaves, the 'parallels' and 'analogies' between the several natives of the old world and the Aztecks, the Toltecks, the Cicimecks, and Tlascaltecks,—from the list which he has given, rather ostentatiously, as we think, of authors or works referred to at the end of the second volume, occupying fifteen pages, and containing the names of about two hundred and forty different authors or books of all ages, nations, and languages, from the Bible to Carey's Pocket Atlas, from the Iliad to some obscure Magazine. On the whole, however, we deem the descriptive part of these 'Researches' less objectionable, as being less prolix, than the 'Personal Narrative,' though strongly tinged with the same faults as those which we took the liberty of pointing out in that work.