Travels in Chaldæa, including a Journey from Bussorah to Bagdad, Hillah, and Babylon, performed on foot in 1827. With Observations on the sites and remains of Babylon, Seleucia, and Ctesiphon. By Capt. Robert Mignan, of the Hon. East India Company's Service. One vol. 8vo. Pp. 334. London. Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley. 1829. THE author of this work is so modest in his pretensions, that he would be a hard-hearted critic indeed who could treat him with severity. Nor are the works of travellers, except in such cases as those of Humboldt, the French Saverus, and some other professedly scientific men, to be tried by the same standard that is applied to other literary productions. Every authentic piece of information from a distant and imperfectly-known country is valuable, inasmuch as it may serve to correct or extend our previous knowledge of it: and every traveller who quietly and sensibly tells the story of what he has himself seen, is worthy of attention. Of Captain Mignan's antiquarian researches, we are inclined to think that they contain several important corrections of the statements of his predecessors. With regard, however, to the subject which he treats most in detail the ruins of Babylon-we are still disposed to rest more confidently upon the statements of the late Mr Rich, because that gentleman's observations and measurements were made at more leisure, and with a more complete apparatus, than Captain Mignan could command, and more especially because they were made without a view to any preconceived theory. This, however, is a discussion upon which we do not at present intend to enter. We proceed to lay before our readers a summary of the information scattered through the volume before us respecting the present state of the plains of Shinar-the scene of the earliest human civilisation of which we possess any records—the scene of the fiercest conflicts between the various successive aspirants to the domination of the world—the scene of the triumphant grandeur of the Assyrian, the Mede, and the Persianthe scene of Alexander's death, and of Haroun Alraschid's splendour. PRICE 6d. From the upper the consistency of a sun-dried brick. journey of many days their relative position seems still progress. The whole extent of the plain offers scarcely one mcderate-sized tree to the passenger's eye. Thick and extensive groves of brushwood are, however, plentiful, rising somewhat above the height of a man. The neighbourhood of cities and villages is generally enlivened by plantations of the date palm. The marshy pieces of ground are clad even in summer with green herbage, reeds, and bulrushes. In the dry parts either bare soil is exposed, or it is thinly covered with a short sere herbage, withered thistles, and a prickly shrub called the camel's thorn. Some of the brushwood forests are haunted by lions and other beasts of prey. The banks of the rivers are inhabited by flocks of buffalos. The light gazelle bounds over the open plain. The pelican, and a number of smaller birds, none of them remarkable either for plumage or song, are frequently to be met with. The finest kind of hawks used in hunting the antelope are found in this district. The excessive heat to which the inhabitants are exposed during the day, renders the body extremely sensible to the diminished temperature which succeeds at sunset. The clearness of the atmosphere overhead, gives a lustre to the heavenly bodies unknown in more northern latitudes. But the vapours which load the horizon cause the sun to appear, for some time after his rising and before his setting, a dull red mass, unsurrounded by rays. The greater part of the country is subject to the Pasha of Bagdad. He appoints the governors of the smaller towns: each of whom farms his district at a certain annual rental, and is left to repay himself as he best may, by squeezing money out of those subjected to him. The authority exercised by each of those magistrates in his immediate vicinity, and a standing army kept on foot by the Pasha, are the only guarantees for the preservation of civil order. When to the evident inadequacy of such a defective organization, we add, that Irak-Arabi (as it is termed) is a frontier province, and recall to the reader's mind the weakness and confusion at present existing in the Ottoman government, we need scarcely add, that the traveller is rather insecure both as regards his person and property. Our author's excursion led from Busserah, along the Shut-ul-Arab, as the natives term the river formed by the confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates, to Koote; thence along the Tigris, here called the Dialah, to Bagdad; and thence to Hillah, a town situated among the The population may be divided into two great classes ruins of ancient Babylon. The whole district which -the inhabitants of the cities and villages, and the inhahe traversed is a vast plain, varied with slight undulations, bitants of the plains. It is among the former only that intersected by the Tigris and Euphrates, by some streams we are to look for traces of regulated society, commerce, of less magnitude, and by a great number of canals. and industry. They consist of a mixture of Turks, ArFrom the rapidity of the two principal rivers, the angle menians, Jews, and a populace of domiciliated descendof its inclination to the plane of the sea must be consider- ants of the native tribes. The frame-work of society is able. During the winter season, a great part of the dis-nearly the same as is to be met with in all the dependentrict is under water, and even during the dry season most of the hollows continue pools or marshes. The soil on the rising grounds, on the contrary, which consists of a mixture of hard clay and sand, is baked by the heat to cies of the Turkish Empire. Their commerce extends little beyond the exporting the raw produce of their country, and receiving the manufactured goods of other countries in return. It is chiefly conducted by means of cara vans which traverse the desert, at stated intervals, to Aleppo and other mercantile depots. There is also some trifling commercial intercourse between Bussorah and Bagdad by water carriage. It consists principally of Indian manufactures brought from Calcutta and the Malabar coast, by ships of five hundred tons burden; about eight of which trade up the Persian Gulf annually under the English flag, and several under Arab and Persian colours. The camel is the chief instrument of the land carriage. The roads are in a state of nature, except where a bridge of boats has been stretched across some of the principal rivers. The vessels on the Tigris are constructed of reeds and willows thickly coated with bitumen; the prow is the broadest part of the boat, being extremely unwieldy and bluff, and the whole as clumsy as possible. The industry of the country is almost exclusively agricultural; and even that is confined to the neighbourhood of cities. The cultivation of the ground is rude; but the return, owing to the fertility of the soil, and the kindliness of the climate, exuberant. One of their methods of supplying the want of moisture is ingenious enough. The camel's thorn (hedysarum alfagi) abounds everywhere. The Arabs divide the stem of the plant in spring near the root; a single seed of the water-melon is then inserted in the fissure, and the earth replaced about the stem of the thorn. The seed becomes a parasite; and the nutritive matter, which the brittle, succulent roots of the melon are ill adapted to collect, is abundantly supplied by the deeper-searching and tougher fibres of the root of the camel's thorn. Two other sorts of industry, altogether peculiar to this country, are, the quarrying of bricks from the numerous mounds which mark the site of former cities, and the search after coins, and other antiquities, which the wealthy Turks and Armenians purchase to dispose of to Europeans. Both of these give employment to numbers. Beyond the immediate neighbourhood of the cities, the laws of the government are respected only where its ministers are personally present to enforce them. The migratory tribes regulate themselves by their own laws, and constitute a different, and, in a great measure, independent nation. This juxta-position of two different and unmixing races of men, however strange to those who are accustomed only to European institutions, is nothing uncommon in the East. In Persia, for example, the labourers and the commercial part of the nation, together with their priests, and the attendants of the court, have been domiciled in cities; while those tribes which furnish the warriors of the nation continue to live under the tents of their forefathers, and, in a great measure, to be a law unto themselves. The external appearance of the Arab is not very inviting. In the encampment of an opulent tribe, which is frequently surrounded as far as the eye can reach with their flocks, may be found men and women, children, horses, mules, dogs, and asses, huddled together in groups beneath their long goat-hair tents. They are, in general, dirty, and in rags. Captain Mignan tells us, that he on one occasion saw the process of slaughtering a sheep, and preparing it for food. The animal's entrails and hoofs, dipped once or twice into water, were devoured raw; the rest of the animal, unflayed and unshorn, was put into a vessel, and half boiled, after which they drank the soup, and voraciously devoured the half-warmed carcass. In passing through their tents, our author was occasionally exposed to annoyance by their eager curiosity; in other respects they were civil enough. The Desert Arabs, in particular, are a haughty and warlike race. They are not only excellent horsemen, but manœuvre, when collected into a troop, with considerable dexterity. One of them, who served Captain Mignan as a guard from Bagdad to Hillah, seemed impressed with the belief, that his single presence was as effective a protection as the united strength of a whole caravan. Our traveller insinuates, however, that they are not fond of giving battle, unless with a tolerably secure prospect of success. What seems rather a disadvantage, considering their mode of life, is, that they are almost all of them short-sighted; and few of them can bear to fix their gaze steadily upon any object for a length of time. They have some rude manufactures among them, which afford them employment when confined to their tents. Captain' Mignan saw them busy making a coarse kind of cloth from the wool of their sheep. They first spin it into yarn, winding the threads round small stones; these they hang on a stick, fixed in a horizontal position between some shrubs or trees, to form a woof; then passing other threads alternately between these, they thus weave the cloth which they wear. The chief employment of the men, however, is the chase, or levying an arbitrary impost upon such travellers and caravans as pass through the district where their flocks feed. They lately attacked the caravan from Bagdad to Aleppo, before it had well cleared the suburbs of the former city. Captain Mignan seems inclined to attribute their increased audacity to a retrograde movement of the province in civilisation. Perhaps it might as justly be attributed to the late troubles of the empire, which have somewhat loosened the bonds of government. The Arabs are withal a merry race, with a keen relish for drollery, and endued with a power over their features that is shown off in the richest exhibitions of grimace. When they halt at night, they amuse themselves with songs and interminable stories. Their melodies are simple, and not a little monotonous: the subject of their songs are brief exhortations to behave bravely. They dance, too; and when on a march, they have an extempore fashion of securing instrumental music. A kettle covered with an empty oil-skin bag serves for a drum. The harmony of the instrument is heightened by the clapping of hands, and a loud chorus of a peculiar strain. One person at a time comes forward and dances, keeping up a constant wriggling motion with his feet, hands, breast, and shoulders, until his gestures become too fatiguing to be continued. Their superstition is extreme. Nor is this to be wondered at. Their religion has received into its creed every wild tale of supernatural power that the fertile East has produced. Ignorant though they be, they know that they tread upon the ruins of primeval empires. The ghosts of the various superstitions which have en countered and shattered each other in this border land of two great divisions of the human race, hover chilly over them. When the moon shines down on the shapeless mounds, the only remnants of ancient Babylon, the halfbarbarous natives draw shuddering closely together, and hear in the breeze that moans around their tents, the evil spirits wailing over the times when they were worshipped in the land. Besides the observations made on the journey, the narration of which fills the greater part of his book, Captain Mignan has given us some interesting historical and geographical details respecting Bussorah, from native writers. The plates, too, which accompany the work, afford a better idea of the objects represented than any description could. The map of Chaldea and Babylon, however, is particularly inaccurate: to say nothing of the egregious blunder of appending to it a scale of distances, according to which, Hillah (among the ruins of Babylon) is not three miles distant from Bagdad. But of the work itself we have pleasure in recommending an attentive perusal. The Venetian Bracelet, The Lost Pleiad, A History of the Lyre, and other Poems. By L. E. L., author of the Improvisatrice, the Troubadour, and the Golden Violet. London. Longman, Rees, Orme, & Co. 1829. Pp. 307. WE have a liking for Miss Landon, because she possesse genius, and because she is anxious to turn that genius to as much account as possible. It is for this very reason that we do not choose to pass over her faults in silenc or to bestow upon her that injudicious and indiscriminate praise to which a few of her own personal friends have, perhaps sincerely, but certainly erroneously, imagined she was entitled. An ardent, or we might say, an impassioned temperament, lies at the foundation of Miss Landon's poetical powers. Such a foundation is not a bad one, but it requires to be skilfully built upon. In the present day, the poetry of feeling-that poetry which speaks to the senses and to the heart has attained to much eminence; but we suspect it has arrived at the culminating point, and, having served its purpose, is destined speedily to lose its temporary popularity. In making this remark, we allude, of course, not to that poetry in which we find strong feelings mingled with strong thoughts, but to that more unsubstantial species of composition in which a stimulus is given to the affections and the passions by the mere force of continual appeals to the softer part of our nature, without any very good and ostensible cause being shown why such appeals should be made. The eye gazes with delight upon the gorgeous colours of the summer evening clouds, but were these gay pageants to remain for ever, it would soon turn away from them with indifference, to rest upon the softer loveliness of the blue expanse. So it is with much modern poetry. It is too luscious,―too full of gaudy colouring,—too much adapted for certain dreamy and sickly states of the mind,-and too little in unison with the real state of things in this sublunary sphere. In the prince of all our poets-Shak- | speare where shall we find any such specimens of Eastern voluptuousness and morbid sensibility as have of late teemed from the press? It is somewhat remarkable that, in this respect, the march of poetry has been entirely in the opposite direction to that of prose. The puling sentimental trash which, towards the conclusion of last century, formed the staple commodity of all our circulating libraries, has given place to the more rational historical novels of Sir Walter Scott and others, or to the very slight tincture of romance which characterizes the straight-forward transactions of a tale of fashionable life. But with poetry, the case is widely different. Pope has been laid upon the shelf, and Moore has taken his place upon the table. Sense has been sacrificed to sound; and the head has been allowed to lie fallow, while the heart has been called upon to produce a crop of feelings upon all occasions, and at a moment's warning. Byron, the master-spirit of modern times, is greatly to be blamed for this rush towards so palpable an extreme in the poetical world. But in his case, the diseased egotism of his tortured mind is scarcely offensive, because it makes us more intimately acquainted with the secrets of his mighty nature. A similar display of selfish sorrow coming from the lips of smaller persons ceases to be any thing but ludicrous, for it only gives them a resemblance to the frog in the fable. If Byron himself has too little abstract thought in his works, and too much palaver about his own feelings, and if this is pardoned simply because his talents carried it through, and because there was a stern sincerity in the intensity with which he preyed upon himself, there is surely no reason why they who are anxious to imitate his beauties should also involve themselves with his faults. These observations have a reference to Miss Landon. She has good, strong feelings, and without them nobody can write poetry; but she does not make a good, healthy use of them. She allows them to run into a channel of affectation; and often, when she thinks she is pathetic, she is simply unnatural. It may perhaps startle Miss Landon to be accused of affectation; but of affectation we most distinctly do accuse her. In her preface to the present volume, she tells us, that with regard to the frequent application of her works to herself, considering that she sometimes pourtrayed love unrequited, then betrayed, and again destroyed by death, the conclusions are not quite logically drawn, as the same mind cannot have suffered such varied modes of misery. 66 However, if I must have an unhappy passion," she adds, perhaps a little too flippantly, "I can only console myself with my own perfect unconsciousness of so great a misfortune." Now, this being the case, we ask at once, why ever speak in the first person, when you discourse concerning unhappy passions? If you know nothing about them practically, yet strive to give the reader the impression that you do, depend upon it, you will make numerous mistakes, for you are writing about what you do not thoroughly understand. If you wish to make others weep, you must have wept first yourself. If you have been crossed in love, then you may harp upon these crosses with some chance of doing it naturally; but if you have never been crossed in love, and if truth to nature be above all other requisites in poetry, then, for Heaven's sake, strike into some different strain. In like manner, if you have never met with any very severe misfortunes, and are, on the whole, a lively, good-natured sort of girl, as we believe you to be, why should you for ever be lamenting over miseries which do not exist? Byron was a gloomy man, and it was therefore all very proper that his poetry should Le gloomy; but if you are not gloomy, then assume a tone more in unison with the ordinary feelings of humanity, and also with your own dispositions, else a heartless affectation will pervade every thing you write-affectation of the very worst kind, that which attempts to excite sympathy for imaginary sorrows, and to raise a belief, like a cunning mendicant, that you are in a much more desolate condition than you ever were, or ever will be. Poetry does not consist in such tricks as these. Yet Miss Landon is continually pouring out such sentiments as the following: "I'm weary, weary: day-dreams, years, And sullen care and discontent Now, not to speak it profanely, not one word of this is "The worthlessness of common praise, But fast, is undermined- This is terribly morbid; and if Miss Landon thinks it fine writing, she is quite mistaken. It is not true to nature, and therefore bad. A kind of suspicion, that she is too apt to fall into this vein, seems to cross the mind of the authoress occasionally; and in one of these better moods, she says of herself, with great justice-at least we suppose she alludes to herself "I have fed Perhaps too much upon the lotus fruits Imagination yields,-fruits which unfit The palate for the more substantial food This is exactly what we are aiming at. We wish to inculcate that all poetry must rest upon reality, not less than imagination, and that Miss Landon, and many of her school, place far too little store by the former. Be fervent, be fanciful, be pathetic, but, above all, be real,-be true to yourself, and your own nature, and the world around you. If you paint woe, let it be woe which actually exists, not your own blue-devilism. This may impose for a time, but the healthy part of the public will soon discover the deceit, and, instead of weeping by your bed-side, will laugh at the ingenious pretences by which you have contrived to enter yourself upon the doctor's sick-list. We wish to rouse Miss Landon, therefore, to something more manly, and honest, and substantial. She is worth taking this trouble with, because there are stamina in her. Let her cease to whine so much about love unrequited love, and white roses, and drooping violets, and pale young men who die nobody knows why; let her study history, and passing from her dreamy land of blue skies and broken vows, let her watch the active and actual developement of human passion in all stages and spheres of life, and she will come then to find that men and women, such as they are, have been, and will always be, afford far higher materials for poetry than the maudlin creations of a love-sick brain. We have good hopes, that as Miss Landon gets older, she will see the propriety of attending to this advice; in which case she will cease to sing merely for boys and tender girls, she will become far less of a mannerist, and she will take a better grasp of her subject, and give more individuality to her conceptions. Yet, with all her faults, we like Miss Landon, as we said at the outset. She is full of enthusiasm, and has a good deal, as we have also said, of that je ne sai quoi, commonly called genius. One can never be very angry with her, and she writes at times with great earnestness and truth. It is needless to particularise the contents of the volume before us. Its leading features very much resemble those of its predecessors, although we think, on the whole, it is superior to any of them. "The Venetian Bracelet," "The Lost Pleiad," "A History of the Lyre," and "The Ancestress," are tales simple in incident, but prettily told, and full of many sweet, delicate, and feminine sentiments. The "Poetical Portraits" and "Miscellaneous Poems" are unequal, some being very good, and others so poor that they should have been left out altogether. Miss Landon does not seem to have yet quite learned the secret of how to improve a book by abridging it. Without farther preface, we shall select a few passages from her volume, which we offer as favourable specimens of her abilities. We begin, as in duty bound, with something on the subject of love : "Love, what a mystery thou art !-how strange We loathe the pang, and yet must suffer still; It is a power no science teaches yet. Oh, love! how sacred thy least words should be, When on them hangs such abject misery !"-Pp. 36-8. Upon the same theme, which appears to absorb so much of Miss Landon's attention, we have the following pretty passage: "Then came the wanderings long and lonely, The breathless silence, which, to love, The looks, ten thousand words above; The following lines upon the poet's fate are still more to our taste. The most popular of our living bards (wheever that may be) need not have been ashamed of writing them : "Trace the young poet's fate: Fresh from his solitude, the child of dreams, His talents and his state? These scenes soon change- Hangs heavily on the lute, which wakes no more Is turn'd to weariness. What can he do But hang his lute on some lone tree, and die!"-P. 105-6 Of the minor poems, the most spirited and vigorous is one with rather an obscure title; we subjoin the greater part of it: LINES OF LIFE. "Well, read my cheek and watch my eye- I never knew the time my heart I teach my lip its sweetest smile, I borrow others' likeness, till I pass through flattery's gilded sieve, "Whatever I would say ; In social life, all, like the blind, Must learn to feel their way. I check my thoughts, like curbed steeds I hear them speak of love, the deep, I hear them tell some touching tale, I hear them name some generous deed, I hear the spiritual, the kind, The pure, but named in mirth; We bow to a most servile faith, While none among us dares so say Rivet our fetters on. Surely I was not born for this! Of generous impulse, high resolve, The worthless and the weak, Is in itself divine."-P. 265-72. We once more beg to assure Miss Landon that we have the most friendly feelings towards her, and that though it would have been easy for us to have dwelt at greater length upon the beauties of her productions, we have preferred enlarging rather upon their defects, in the hope that, by correcting these, she will enable us, ere long, to bestow upon her less qualified commendation than our conscience would permit of at present. We pluck a plume or two from her, only that she may the sooner obtain new and stronger feathers to her wings. The Constitution of the Scotch Episcopal Church, concisely stated, in a Charge, delivered in August, 1829, to the Clergy of the Episcopal Communion of Brechin. By the Right Reverend George Gleig, LL.D., F. R.S. E., and F.S. S. A., their Bishop. Stirling: Printed for C. J. G. and F. Rivington, London; and Bell and Bradfute, Edinburgh. In this Presbyterian country, it may be necessary to inform our readers, that by the word "Charge," is meant an address delivered by a Bishop to the clergy under his superintendence; explaining to them the grounds of their duty as ministers of the gospel, and pressing upon their consciences the numerous motives which ought to induce them to perform it. Were the moderator of one of our presbyteries a permanent office-bearer, and invested with certain powers which such an appointment would almost necessarily create or attract to it, we should better under stand what is meant by the practice which prevails in the sister-church, of one clergyman addressing others on points of doctrine and professional obligation. The author of the short discourse now before us has been long known to the literary world, as a person of no ordinary acquirements, both as a divine and as a philosopher. The able articles which he contributed to the Encyclopædia Britannica, of which work he was some time the Editor, extended his reputation to all parts of Europe, and will preserve the remembrance of his name to many future generations. Metaphysics, Theology, and some other treatises not less learned, and perhaps still more ingenious in the structure of their argument, established the character of Dr Gleig as a writer of the first class, and prepared the world for the several volumes which he has since published on Biblical criticism, Scriptural antiquities, and on the professional education of a divine. This tract, addressed to the Episcopal clergy in the district of Brechin, sets forth, in language remarkable for perspicuity and vigour, the constitution of a church according to the prelatical model; the principles of which, we regret to hear, on an authority so unquestionable, seem not so well understood at present among the Episcopalians of Scotland as they were twenty years ago. What may be the cause of this falling-off in point of intellect or docility, we are not told, and it would not become us to conjecture; but we can take upon us to assert, that those who read this "Charge" with the proper disposition to be instructed, will no longer be ranked among the ignorant members of a communion, which, considering its pretensions to principle, ought, above all others, to eschew the hazard of perishing for lack of knowledge. For example, the Bishop tells us that, "To every attentive reader of the New Testament, it must be obvious, that the earliest preachers of the gospel, whether denominated Apostles or Evangelists, as soon as they had converted to the faith a company of believers, who might at one time, and in one place, associate together for the participation of all the institutions and ordinances of the Christian Church, ordained Presbyters, called by our translators Elders, by whom these ordinances might be administered. The Apostle, however, or Evangelist, who laid the foundation of any particular church, retained in his own hands the government of that church, till he found a man, such as St Paul found in Timothy and in Titus, who might be intrusted with authority to free him from the burden of taking care of all the churches of which he had laid the foundation; and such a man, when advanced to the highest order of the ministers of Christ, and placed over a company of Presbyters and believing Christians, as the Pastor and Overseer of them all, constituted that company a regular church, or branch of the Catholic Church of Christ. The first churches were generally planted in the cities of the Roman empire; and the office of their Pastor and Overseer was to instruct them more fully than they had hitherto been in the doctrines of the gospel-to administer all the ordinances of Christ-and to enforce obedience to his laws, by the excommunication of all such as should be obstinately impious or immoral. The Pastor and Overseer appears to have been styled, indifferently, the Apostle, (which our translators have, on one occasion, improperly rendered the Messenger), the Angel, or the Bishop of the with other ministers inferior to himself, they were all dechurch over which he presided; or, when he was classed nominated Priests or Presbyters, as had been the practice likewise with respect to the Jewish priests of different orders under the Mosaic dispensation." "To the Apostle, Angel, or Bishop of the city, was assigned the office of converting to the faith the inhabitants of all the adjacent country, including often several villages, over which the authority of a civil magistrate extended; and as soon as the Bishop found persons qualified for the office, he admitted them to the order of Deacons or of Priests, and sent them out, from time to time, as occasion required, to preach who lived at a distance too great to permit them to attend the gospel, and administer the sacraments of Christ to those regularly his own ministrations. He continued, however, to be himself the Pastor of the whole district; and the Presbyters and Deacons, who, at that early period, lived with him in the city, as in a kind of college, were nothing |