expresses himself as highly indebted. Numerous and late travellers have been so profuse in their descriptions of this magnificent capital, that Pera and Galata seem as familiar to us as Greenwich and the Borough, and the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus are not less known than the Serpentine and the Thames. We shall therefore omit his description of these beautiful scenes, and carry him safe from the infection of the plague, and what he seems at this time to have dreaded worse,French principles, and accompany him to the more interesting and not less beautiful regions of Greece. It may not, however, be either unamusing or uninstructive to those who re member his youthful and inconsiderate declamations in what he hastily conceived to be the cause of liberty, to contrast with them his sentiments at this period, when nearly the whole atmosphere of Europe being already contaminated by the spirit of revolution, the French had chosen the East as the scene of their revolutionary intrigues and infuriated ambition. "I am the most decided enemy of the great nation; their monstrous and diabolical conduct makes me ashamed that I ever could imagine that their motives were more puré, or their ends more salutary. My opinions are not changed with regard to our mode of commencing the war, and the views of dismemberment, &c. &c. but they are most completely changed with respect to the nature of French principles, French morals, French views, and the final result of the French revolution. The conduct of the present government towards America and Switzeriand, but especially Switzerland, is the ne plus ultra of barbarous despotism, rioting in the consciousness of impunity and the lust of evil. There is no longer any good to be expected from these ruffian trumpeters of false freedom. I am strongly convinced, and have the best and most melancholy proofs, that there is less liberty in France than in alt most any country of the earth. In short, I lose all patience upon this subject. I abhor and execrate the pretended republic, with all her compulsory affiliations, in the exact proportion of my for. mer hopes from her efforts in the cause of mankind. I prefer the downright sincere despotism which avows its nature and publishes its maxims, to the hollow workings and masked designs of an hy pocrital liberty." P. 239. Having had the good fortune to engage in his service Mons. Preaux, an eminent artist, who had been employed by the Comte de Choiseul, he embarked at Scutari, with a full determination to explore the classic regions of Greece, to illustrate its antiquities and delineate its remains. Having touched at the island of Tino, where he remained a short time, he re-embarked and landed at the Piræus in the month of December, 1798. The feelings of an enlightened traveller on his arrival at these cenes of past renown, may be better imagined than described. The soft and varied outline of the Attic scenery, the sublime remains of ancient art, the sepulchres of heroes, poets, orators, and historians, the recollections which crowd upon the mind, will ever render Athens the delight of him who shall be blessed with an ardent and excursive mind, a refined imagination, and a cultivated taste. Tweddell's emotions of admiration are best described in his own emphatic language. "I have not yet had time, as you will easily imagine, to examine what is to be seen-yet my impatience to visit some of the principal monuments of this illustrious spot, would not permit me either to eat or to sit down, till I had made the circuit of the Acropolis, and had venerated the successful labours of Attic genius. I have seen these stupendous remains only with a glance, and cannot collect words to express my admiration. I feel as if hi therto I had seen nothing-since no comparison can be instituted between all the efforts of human talent which I have hitherto witnessed, and the objects which have this day struck my astonished senses. When I shall have been here a fortnight more, I shall be able to give you a better account of all that surrounds me." P. 275. Congenial as the soil which he now pressed was to his feelings, yet we cannot but think that his correspondence from thence is the least interesting part of the volume. This may be accounted for from the difficulty and hazard of sending letters in that country, by which means many of his may have been lost, from the monotony of his manners, and want of polished society to employ his pen; and above all, from his constant and assi duous labour of investigation and research. "Depuis que je suis ici," he observes to Mr. Bigge," je n'ai pas eu un moment de repos: depuis huit heures du matin jusqu'à onze heures du soir je m'occupe de la maniere la plus assidue. Je ne sais si je tire grand fruit de mes recherches; vous en jugerez à mon retour." Posterity we are afraid will have to regret the loss of these researches; for a mysterious, though, without doubt, wise, Providence forbade his return to his native shores. After a tour through the northern provinces of Grecia Propria, and a visit to Mount Athos, where he led the way to the discovery of some antient MSS. which have since, we hear, been brought away by some English travellers, he died at Athens, July 25, 1799, and was interred, with all the honours that the poor inhabitants of this once-celebrated city could bestow, in the Temple of Theseus. * Si miserandus in morte Having followed this amiable and enlightened traveller from the time he left his native land, until he closed his short but bright career, in the prime of youth and vigour of intellect, it remains for us to say something concerning the disappearance of his journals, papers, and drawings, a very large collection of which he had diligently prepared for the amusement of his friends and the information of his countrymen. As soon as Tweddell had breathed his last, in the house of Spiriction Logotheti, the interpreter attached to the English consulship at Athens, the consul, Procopio Macri, attended by six witnesses, proceeded immediately to affix the official seal to the effects of the deceased. Accordingly, in three successive visits which they made for this purpose, they secured the whole of the literary and other property of the defunct in one trunk and three boxes. These were put on board a ship for Constantinople, tinder the special care of a Greek priest, named Simeon, and consigned to Mr. Spencer Smythe, the British minister then resident at the Porte: the ship was unfortunately wrecked on the coast of Anadoli, and great part of the property much injured by the salt water, though it appears that most of it, if not all, was preserved. Upon the arrival of the vessel at Constantinople, the property was taken possession of by an order under the hand of Lord Elgin, who had just arrived as ambassador extrordinary from England. It was then deposited in the vaults of the Eng lish palace, about the latter end of November, 1799, without any notice being taken of it until near the end of January, 1800, when it was opened under the inspection of an artist, who was desired to exercise his skill in saving or restoring the drawings which had received injury from the effects of the sea-water: at the same time Lord Elgin ordered Mr. Thornton, an English merchant of Constantinople, to bring to the English palace, certain packages which had been left under his care by Mr. Tweddell at the time of his departure for Athens, and which, besides other kinds of property, contained his journals of Switzerland and the Crimea, with a valuable collection of views and coştumes, &c. These were opened with the rest, and "The contents," as the editor observes, "spread abroad for inspection and examination upon the chairs and tables of the room, and when the parties present withdrew, they were left ex * These lines are quoted from the epitaph, written by Lord Byron, on Mr. Watson, whose ashes repose in the Theseum, by the side of Tweddell. posed posed in that state, the door of the room being locked by Lord Elgin, and the key kept in his own possession. Several weeks after this transaction, Mr. Thornton, on going one morning to his warehouse in Galata, found some boxes which had been brought there from the English palace: he examined the contents of them; they appeared to correspond to a certain extent with those which he had seen unpacked from the trunks formerly in his possession-with this material exception, however, that all the drawings and manuscripts were missing; these, after the most diligent and repeated research among the returned boxes could not be found; no satisfactory intelligence of them could be procured at the time; no subsequent communication on the subject was ever made; and in fact they never were returned.” P. 353. The property is now traced fairly into Lord Elgin's hands, who acknowledges the same in a letter to a friend, dated Constantinople, Dec. 19, 1809, in which he also intimates his intention of transmitting it to England; when a considerable time, however, had elapsed, and neither the effects arrived, nor any communication whatever on the subject was made by Lord Elgin to the family of the deceased, when their own hopes also were, much diminished by the arrival of a letter from Mr. Spencer Smythe, in which he expresses "strong regret that his good offices towards procuring an arrangement of Mr. Tweddell's affairs, had been frustrated by an interference highly officious and indelicate, and which condemned him to be an impotent spectator of such mismanagement;" under these circumstances measures were set on foot in concert with the late Dr. Raine, Dr. Parr, Mr. Losh, and other friends, in order to investigate the causes of the loss or detention of the property. All personal application in consequence to Lord Elgin produced no other answer than a general declaration," that the property had been sent home in compliance with the instructions. of Mr. Tweddell's father; and that the interference of the gentleman referred to was equally superfluous and unauthorised;" and to this declaration he adhered upon his own arrival in England. Affairs remained in this state until the attention of the Editor was excited by a discussion of this subject in the Naval Chronicle for the year 1810, which induced him to renew his applications to Lord Elgin for information regarding his brother's property: his Lordship annoyed by successive importunities now affirms, that "His memory, however, he is sorry to say, does not supply him with any recollections sufficiently precise for that purpose; though he is not without some 'impressions' remaining on his mind, by the help of which he ventures to state, in substance, as follows: "That certain effects of Mr. Tweddell, sent from Greece by sea, were brought to the residence of the English mission at Péray after having first suffered shipwreck; that among them were se veral drawings executed by a French artist, some memoranda of inscriptions, and a few trifling notes' on his tour in Greece; and 、 that the whole had been so much damaged by salt water as to warrant the description (for so it is expressed) of being 'in a very deplorable state.' His Lordship's impression' further is, that some of the gentlemen attached to the embassy did charge themselves with the more immediate care of the property in question; and he believes that it was sent home, either under the personal care of the late Professor Carlyle, or, by his direction, in a merchantship called the Duncan, along with several boxes of presents to Mr. Pitt and Lord Grenville." P. 352. Upon the questions being put to him whether he had not allowed the drawings and manuscripts to be copied whilst they were in his possession, and whether he ever received two trunks from Mr. Thornton, containing the journals of Switzerland and the Crimea, together with other literary effects; he replies, to the first, that it is possible that some of the notes or inscriptions may have been copied, "being in the hands of the several gentlemen of the embassy, engaged in similar researches ; but he has none in his possession, nor does he know of any." And to the second, "that he has no recollection of any such delivery being made by Mr. Thornton." Though he wishes it to be understood, that such things might have been received into the custody of the Mission, without coming under his own knowledge. After this communication, Lord Elgin declines. entering into any further explanations. The Editor then gives a recapitulation of facts, the chief of which we have laid before our readers, and ends with the following remarks. "It has already been intimated, that Lord Elgin caused Mr. Tweddell's effects, just arrived from Athens, to be removed from the British Chancery, where on landing they had been deposited by the orders of Mr. Smythe (awaiting his early examination and disposal), and to be brought to his own mansion, which, at that time, was within the precinct of the French Palace, and had been granted by the Porte as a temporary residence for the ambassador, after the British Palace had been destroyed by fire. It is not for me, doubtless, to attempt to fathom those reasons which influenced this proceeding; but it may be allowed me to observe, that property thus deposited in the public office of an embassy (especially that of a British subject dying intestate), seems to become, from that moment, a sacred thing; and that in this instance it could not, without a violation of law, be taken from under the public security, by any individual however exalted, and tranferred to his own residence, without any reason being assigned for such removal, |