miniature on a large scale so objective as to exhaust rather than rouse reflection.

Poetry and theft being the Bedouin's two prominent characteristics, we should not omit his theory of the latter accomplishment:

The true Bedouin style of plundering, with all its numerous varieties of honour and gentlemanly manners, gives the robber a consciousness of moral rectitude. "Strip off that coat, O certain person! and that turban," exclaims the highwayman. "They are wanted by my lady-cousin!" You will (of course, if necessary), lend ready ear to a request thus politely attributed to the wants of the fair sex. If you will add a few obliging expressions to the bundle, and offer Latro a cup of coffee and a pipe, you will talk half your toilet back to your person; and if you can quote a little poetry you will part the best of friends, leaving perhaps only a pair of sandals behind you. But should you hesitate, Latro, lamenting the painful necessity, touches up your back with the heel of his spear. If this hint suffice not, he will make things plain by the lance's point, and when blood shows the tiger-part of humanity appears.

The comfort of the journey is not increased by the simoon and pillars of sand, which latter

Scudded on the wings of the whirlwind over the plain. Huge yellow shafts with lofty heads, bent horizontally backwards in the form of clouds; and on more than one occasion camels were overthrown by them (in fact, sandspouts, terrible to the "ship of the desert," as waterspouts at sea). It required little stretch of fancy to enter into the Arab's superstition. These sand columns are supposed to be the genii of the waste, which cannot be caught; a notion arising from the fitful movements of the wind that raises them; and as they advance the pious Moslem stretches out his finger, exclaiming, "Iron! oh thou ill-omened one."

In the searching, parching, feverish, irritating Simoon, nobody seems to come off so well as a lazy, stupid, sleepy, half-negro boy, nephew of the camel-driver, who cushioned himself among the soft, damp, springy skinbags of the water-camel. In such weather quarrels are not uncommon, and as there are no police-stations they take their course with great simplicity:

The Simoon, as usual, was blowing hard, and it seemed to affect the travellers' tempers. In one place I saw a Turk, who could not speak a word of Arabic, disputing

with an Arab who could not speak a word of Turkish. The pilgrim insisted upon adding to the camel's load a few dry sticks, such as are picked up for cooking. The camel man as perseveringly threw off the extra burden. They screamed with rage and hustled one another, and at last the Turk dealt the Arab a heavy blow. I afterwards heard that the pilgrim was mortally wounded that night, his stomach being ripped open with a dagger. On inquiring what had become of him, I was assured he had been comfortably wrapped up in his shroud, and placed half-dead in a half-dug grave.

At Zaribeh is performed the ceremony of Ihram, or assuming the pilgrim's costume, two strips of red-striped white cotton, knotted mantle-wise over the shoulder, and kilt-like round the loins. On this last stage to Meccah

they are attacked in a ravine by the Utaibah robbers, and brought to a halt under fire from the rocks. High-trotting dromedaries are bowled over. The Turkish soldiery ride about helplessly, and the Turkish Pasha sits down under a rock to hold a council of war over his pipe, as to what shall be done " by the permission of Providence." The caravan might have fared worse but for the active assistance of the Wahabis, a wild austere sect of Puritan Arabs, haters of garlick, tobacco and golden ornaments. They swarm up the rocks, dislodge the robbers, and the caravan hurries on over a road sprinkled with dead camels, corpses of the faithful, boxes and baggage.

Haji Burton finally arrives at Meccah, and is lodged in the house of his companion, the boy Mohammed, who becomes his mutawwif (director of circumambulation), and leads him through the ceremonial of devotion at the Kaabah. Our pilgrim prostrates himself, prays in the right places, circumambulates the Kaabah, kisses the "Hajr el Oswad" (a black aerolite set in silver), drinks a bitter draught of Epsom salts from Zemzen's holy fountain, enters the Kaabah and is bullied for fees, stones the "sheitan el kubir" (great devil), attends the sacrificial shambles of Muna, and is disturbed by "glances from the corner of the veil," from properly attending to the sermon on Mount Arafat.

Having completed his pilgrimage he arrives at Jeddah, with only tenpence of borrowed coin, and waiting on the British Consul, has great difficulty in obtaining access through a troop of dragomans and native servants, who look upon the Haji as a most disreputable and obstreperous Afghan. He is very hospitably received by Mr. Cole, a brother officer in the Indian service, who is surprised and delighted to find a fellow-countryman returned safe, from so rare, difficult, and perilous an adventure.

In the end Lieutenant Burton embarks on disgust of the boy Mohammed the Meccan, a British steamer for Bombay, to the great who is now convinced (of what he had been long ago snubbed by a majority of the faithful for suspecting, on seeing Haji Abdullah's sextant), that his companion was an Indian Sahib who had been laughing at their beards.

We have thus given the reader a succinct resumée of Haji Burton's adventures, sufficient, we hope, to convince him that the work is one of no ordinary interest, and well worthy of attentive perusal. It is now our duty to register the few objections and drawbacks which have occurred to us in process of reading, but with which we did not think it necessary to interrupt the narrative; and which now offer atte

nuating circumstances that, to a certain extent, disarm the severity of criticism.

Sydney Smith says, in one of his lectures, "A Cherokee Indian would run from Cambridge to London in seven hours. I go in a coach, and the time which the Cherokee spends in learning to run I have devoted to other studies." If, in the work before us, we find traces of haste in composition, outlandish composite words, and occasional instances of what persons of less cosmopolitan education would be inclined to call flippancy of tone; we have to consider that our English is not the only language and literature of which Lieut. Burton is a master. We hardly know whether to be sure he has not published amusing travels through England, France, and Italy; in feuilletons of the Teheran Court Journal: or that Haji Abdullah's flowing "suls" manuscript of satires on the west, composed in choicest nahowy, may not be eagerly copied by all the katibs and neskhis of Hejaz.

His faults of style are chiefly a redundant felicity in out of the way combinations of Greek roots; a certain fondness for strange words (natural to a philologist, but a little puzzling to the unlearned, and distasteful to the British-classical reader); and an insufficient recollection (natural to the habitué of travel), that his reader will be pleased with many small turns of expression and touches of character, which to him have long become hackneyed, trivial, and common place. "The hand of little experience hath the daintier sense," and the old hand has, with all his knowledge of things and men, a difficulty in keeping up that perceptive freshness of sensation, which is often the only merit of newfangled authors in foreign lands.

If his disguise had been a shade less perfeet, and the pilgrim had been in constant danger of discovery. If he had been taken up before the Meccan Sherif, and put through his catechism under fear of instant decapitation. If, in fine, his whole pilgrimage had been a most uncomfortable succession of harassing alarms-the adventure would have been more exciting to the reader, in proportion as the author's feelings of suspense between "the two comforts" had been the more poignant.

As it is, the Pilgrim is covered with such complete panoply of Orientalism, that our Fonder is more excited by the perfection of his simulation, than our sympathies are engaged in the perils he undergoes. The daring enterprise becomes, in his hands, comparatively too safe and easy for our anticipations.

This sense of assimilation to the character he was supporting cannot help detracting, in

some degree, from the exoteric point of view (heightened by contrast with some other familiar), which is one of the greatest charms of the Sentimental Journey, and of that masterpiece of modern travel, Eōthen.

Again, the book is a compromise between informing the curiously learned of the devotional mysteries, ceremonies, traditions, edifices, localities, &c. of Islam; and amusing the general public with a narrative of adventurous travel. Much of the geographical and theological part of the work is performed less satisfactorily to the learned, from a painful sense in the author's mind that the general and profitable reader may be wearying under the infliction of so much technical matter. There is, practically, a great deal too much of the prayers and theology, for a sample to the general reader; and the absence of corresponding Arabic words makes it comparatively useless to the incipient pilgrim of future days.

The author would have, probably, been better pleased, and the public better served, if, instead of one work there had been two separately purchaseable divisions. One, a learned treatise on Hajj, with the necessary prayers and quotations in Arabic (with translations) for the use of the student desirous of mastering the subject, and as a guide to such travellers hereafter as may follow this dangerous example. The other part should have contained all that could have been made amusing, interesting, and easily instructive to the general reader.

But what the public want is not by any means always what the publisher wants. The bibliopolical mind rejoices in any combination. of circumstances which will cause the public to tolerate and patronize a bulky tri-voluminous work in crown octavo. The learned portion, if published in an appendix volume by itself, would be the most expensive to print and command far fewer purchasers; only, in fact, desperate men, unterrified by tracts of Arabic type.

The author, therefore, has to edge in slyly his record of the present state of Mohammedan theology, intercalated with expiatory readable matter, that may sometimes account for the jerks from serious to jocular, which critics are accustomed to term flippancy. Of the hard words complained of above, not having made a list as we went along, it would be too much trouble to make extensive research: but turning over a few pages of the first and third volume, we have, without difficulty, lit upon a small sprinkling, such, as thermandidote, hypogeum, polyandry, chronothermal, steatopygous, parallelogrammic, (should it not be

Q

parallelogrammatic? a syllable more!) and acridophagi, apparently compounded of Latin and Greek.

Still, exceptions notwithstanding, Haji Burton, when he describes anything, does it boldly, tersely, and vigorously. The courage, vivacity, and adventurous spirit of the man

are adequately represented in his style: and we cannot be mistaken in welcoming him as one of the boldest and liveliest, as well as probably, the most adventurous of modern travellers; and one still destined to achieve great enterprizes in the whitest portions of the map of the world.

How often must the writers of worthless books be inclined to paraphrase the oft-quoted line, and exclaim

"Save me, O save me from a partial friend."

Mrs. Duberly, of whom we wish to speak with the respect due to her sex, has published a Journal which, if it had not been for the injudicious advice of indulgent or ironical friends, might have been allowed to remain in its native manuscript. In which (alas! now impossible) case we should have been spared the pain of seeing the name of an English lady and of a gallant officer's wife appended to as unwomanly and ungentle a chronicle as it has ever been our misfortune to peruse.

We are rather glad that the authoress has put forward the hackneyed plea of friends' persuasion to account for her rushing into print, as this circumstance will relieve us from the ungenial task of animadverting angrily upon a woman. We believe that a litigant of the gentler sex may, in certain cases, be represented before her judges by her best friend. Mrs. Duberly appears in our Court through the medium of her worst enemies, the false friends who counselled or countenanced this unhappy publication. It is on them, therefore, and not on the lady her. self that we must visit the sins of this foolish volume.

From the first page to the last we have not met with one anecdote, or been beguiled by one episode deserving of record or preservation. Her evil counsellors have sent to press a book with a taking title and on an absorbing subject-yet we learn nothing from this Journal. Our sympathies are enlisted neither with the writer nor with her friends, human or animal. Battles are spoken of by an eyewitness, yet her descriptions thrill us not. The names of heroes frequently occur in the course of the flighty narrative, but they are

only mentioned in connexion with some passing compliment which they have paid to the narrator or scolded for the orders which they were compelled to issue against her untimely intrusions in the camp. Strange and stirring scenes has Mrs. Duberly witnessed.

"She has seen the strong men die
And the stripling meet his fate."

She may
have been moved, and we hope, for
the sake of her womanhood, that she had
some feeling for the sickness, and sorrow, and
death which surrounded her: but her lan
guage is cold and passionless, or if she occa
sionally affects a tone of enthusiasm, her
melo-dramatic starts are so unpleasing, and
her emotion so unreal, that we find it almost
a relief when she reverts to the wonted dead
level of her general style. Not that that style
is unambitious. Far from it. The fair jour
nalist sometimes makes as easy work of a
Greek quotation or of a flowery metaphor as
with her horse "Bob" she would make of a
sunk fence or a five barred gate. Of this
dashing style we subjoin a few examples:-
The first view of Greece.

Sunday, 14th.-Ran on deck to take my first longing look at Greece. We were close under the Arcadian shore, about four miles from the Island of Stamphane. The high, bold coast lay hazy and crowned with misty clouds in the early sunlight. I watched for an hour, my mind dreaming poetic fancies: "I, too, have been in Arcadia." A brilliant day coloured the blue waves once We had service for all hands on deck. Mr. Coull, the Admiralty agent, officiated; and being somewhat unaccustomed to acting chaplain, he read the prayer for Queen Adelaide straight through.

more.

Mr. Coull reminds us of a Presbyterian major of foot whom we remember to have seen called upon to read prayers to his regi ment on board ship. Unused to the Anglican formulary, the gallant officer not only read the prayers both for rain and for fine weather, but gave out with peculiar unction all the

rubrical directions, such as "The minister alone standing," &c.; "In quires and places where they sing," &c.

Moral reflexions.

Yesterday evening Henry and I took a lovely ride to Kosludsche, a small town about eight miles from the camp. The pastoral scenes, in this land of herds and flocks, speak in flute-like tones of serenity and reposethe calm, unruffled lives of the simple people, the absence of all excitement, emulation, traffic, or noise; valley and hill-side sending home each night its lowing herds, and strings of horses, flocks of sheep and goats. The lives of the inhabitants are little removed above the cattle which they tend; but to one who "has forgotten more life than most people ever knew," the absence of turmoil and all the "stale and unprofitable uses of the world," the calm aspect of the steadfast hills, the quietude of the plains, and the still small voices of the flowers, all tell me, that however worn the mind may be, however bruised the heart, nature is a consoler still; and we who have fretted away our lives in vain effort and vainer show, find her large heart still open to us, and in the shadow of the eternal hills a repose for which earth has no name.

Consoling and complacent thoughts.

Sunday, 20th.-Poor Mrs. Blaydes expired this morning! Truly, we are in God's hands, and far enough from the help of man! Insufficient medical attendance (many of the doctors are ill), scanty stores, and no sick dietwe must feed our dying on rations and rum! As far as I am concerned, I feel calm, and filled with a tranquil faith: I have the strongest trust in the wise providence of God.

Ditto repeated,

Death with such inexorable gripe appears in his most appalling shape He was seized but on Friday with diarrhoea, which turned to cholera on Saturday, and on Sunday the body was left in its silent and solemn desolation. During his death struggle the party dined in the saloon, separated from the ghastly wrangle only by a screen. With few exceptions, the dinner was a silent one; but presently the champagne corks flew, andbut I grow sick, I cannot draw so vivid a picture of life and death. God save my dear husband and me from dying in the midst of the din of life! The very angels must stand aloof. God is our hope and strength, and without Him we should utterly fail.

One of the fair chronicler's favourite figures is an effective use of italics, which graceful types, whenever they occur in our quotations from the journal, are, we implore our readers to remember, specially ordered by the lady herself or by her " partial friends," and not by us humble transcribers.

The book abounds in somewhat jockey-like descriptions of various favourite horses over whose sorrows the fair writer sheds far more genuine tears than she vouchsafes to her dying friends and comrades. Over these equine companions she occasionally indulges in bursts of pretty sentiment, as, for example, when she describes Major Hamilton's pony:

Major Hamilton lent me his white pony. Oh, dainty pony! with black lustrous eyes, and little prancing feet, and long white tail dyed red with henna, like the fingertips of the most delicate lady in Stamboul! We rode home at dark, along the rotten, deep, almost impractica

Our horses were in wonderfully good condition, and appeared fresh and in good heart. I went ashore, and went up to "Bob;" but the sight of him, and the memory of his lost companion, completely upset me, and I could only lay my head on his neck and cry. A good Greek, who, I suppose, fancied the tears and the horse were someway connected, came and stroked the charger's neck, and said, "Povero Bobo!"

Observe the terrible sarcasm with which she holds up to the world and to posterity an inattentive lady's maid.

To-day, for the first time since I left England, I induced Mrs. Williams, the serjeant-major's wife, who came out as my maid, to wash a few of the clothes which had accumulated during our voyage. I mention this, as being the first assistance she has ever thought fit to render me since I left England.

She defies uncivil generals.

Friday, 26th.-Lord Lucan, who commands the Cavalry, sent an order to Major De Salis, yesterday, to the effect that, "unless Mrs. Duberly had an order sanctioning her doing so, she was not to re-embark on board the 'Shooting Star,' about to proceed to Varna." Major De Salis returned for answer, that "Mrs. Duberly had not disembarked from the Shooting Star,' and he had not sufficient authority to order her to do so."

Up to this time (ten o'clock) I have heard nothing further about it. My dear husband has worried himself into a state of the greatest uneasiness. He looks upon the order as a soldier; I look upon it as a woman, and— laugh at it. Uneasy, of course, I am; as, should the crew refuse to assist me, I must purchase a pony, and ride 130 miles (up to Varna) through a strange and barbarous country, and over the Balkan. Should I find that Lord Lucan has taken other steps to annoy me, I have settled with two of the ship's company, who have agreed to put me on shore and bring me off again after dark, and allow me to remain either on the main-deck or in the hold until we reach Varna; and once landed, and once on horseback, I shall be able to smile at this interference; which is in every way unwarrantable, as I left England by permission of the Horse Guards, and with accommodation provided by the Admiralty.

She has a sensuous appreciation of beauty in food, in music, and in art:

I delight in colours. They give me almost as much pleasure as music. I like gorgeous music and gorgeous colour. I would have all my surroundings formed for the gratification of this taste if I could.

She likes beer, and drinks it “like a thirsty horse" (p. 30). She does not even object to brandy for breakfast (p. 31), and when she can

The passages which we have quoted or referred to will suffice to show that the book is neither wise nor witty. We wish for every reason that we could restrict ourselves to this negative censure. We cannot, however, avoid expressing, courteously we hope but strongly, our deep regret that the fair authoress, instigated, no doubt, by her devotion to her husband, her natural high spirit, the love of adventure, and a somewhat masculine nature, should have thought it advisable to intrude upon a sphere which the universal voice of civilized Christendom has pronounced to be as unfit for woman as for man in a righteous cause it is meet and glorious.

Miss Nightingale is no ordinary person. She is a heroine in the highest and holiest sense of the word. Her devotion and her self-denial were not surpassed by the purest and tenderest saints of old. And her name is blessed, and loved, and honoured by millions. She is fondly enshrined in the great true heart of a mighty empire; and she will be venerated for ever. But all women are not called upon to imitate her in her own special career of mercy. Wives and mothers have other duties which give scope for the daily exercise of no less womanly virtues.

But of all female names those of Florence Nightingale and of Mrs. Duberly are the best known to the Crimean army, and to the fifty thousand English homesteads which watch so tremulously for every word from the distant camp. The painful contrast is therefore not of our seeking. It is forced upon us. And if our soldiers and all Englishmen speak with swelling hearts and streaming eyes of the one, and with sorrow almost akin to anger of the other, can we marvel at those various feelings when we turn from the recital of what the Sister of Charity has done for God and man, and compare it with the Crimean career of the fair amazon whose journal is before us.

When Mrs. Duberly sneers at the other officers' wives (p. 25) who remain with anxious hearts at Therapia, unwilling to intrude where men's work is to be done, and shrinking, with the sweet instinct of their sex, from the contemplation of havoc and slaughter; when she is content to hear at second-hand (p. 77) of her suffering servant's sickness and agony, whom her sisters at Therapia would have nursed and tended; when she sings Alboni's fierce, reckless, drinking song, in Lucretia Borgia, as the most fitting hymn (p. 88) to compose her mind when her husband is engaged in battle; when she expresses anger at

the idea of a stop being put to the horrors of war (p. 45), and blames Lord Raglan for possessing the humanity of a gentleman and of a soldier (p. 111); when she complains of the "stink" of dying Turks (p. 142), and of the "dreary perseverance" with which they die; and when at last, in a wild frenzy of folly (p. 159), she passionately regrets that she herself, and some hundreds of her fellowcreatures, were not hurled into eternity by an explosion on board a powder-ship, it is not easy for any Englishman, especially if he be a soldier, to avoid the utterance of a fervent (but now useless) wish, that Mrs. Duberly had been content to leave the Sth Hussars to do their own gallant work, without help or hindrance from an unsexed woman.

There are many passages in this book which, with more peculiar fitness, might have been omitted. For when a married woman expresses herself cavalierly and confidently of the merits of her husband's generals, and when she expresses, as in the subjoined passage, so unkind and ungentle criticism of the chiefs who have passed away from us, civilians may not unnaturally suppose that the lady is speaking not her own only but the opinions of her husband, who as an officer on active service we believe to be utterly incapable of holding or expressing such sentiments :

Sunday, 24th.-Poor General Estcourt died this morning. It strikes us that Death has taken the recall of those in authority into his own stern hands.

Thursday, June 28th.-We had heard that Lord Raglan was prevented by indisposition from attending General Estcourt's funeral, which was a strictly private one; and we heard yesterday that Lord Raglan's health was improving, and that nothing serious was apprehended. Our consternation was. great, when one of his staff, who was with us at the monastery, received a hasty message that Lord Raglan was rapidly becoming worse. I can hardly imagine a greater misfortune to the army than his death at such a moment as the present. Now, when we may be about to lose them, we remember how valuable and necessary are his diplomatic powers in an army composed of so many nations. We are almost tempted to lose sight of the inefficient General, in the recollection of the kind-hearted, gentlemanly man, who had so hard a task, which he fulfilled so well, of keeping together and in check the heads of so many armies.

Friday Morning, June 29th.-Lord Raglan died last night!

It seems as though some pulse in this vast body had ceased to beat, the army is so quiet. Men speak in low voices words of regret. The body is to be conveyed to England for burial.

The British army, however, will feel hurt and angry that an English officer's wife should write thus flippantly of its honoured chiefs.

In common with the whole empire, we believe the Duke of Newcastle to have been "overweighted," when the conduct of the war was entrusted to him. But his intentions and his heart were honest if his hands were weak.