the Temple of Minerva; leaving, as it appears, no more than twenty-eight behind him, one of which only was in a tolerable state of preservation. This was sufficiently vexatious.-But the Count has his revenge; and grows quite brilliant at his lordship's expense. A l'époque de l'expédition de Lord Elgin, on remplaça, par un pilier de maçonnerie, la Cariatide de l'angle de la Chapelle de Pandrose; cette statue qu'il emporta était la mieux conservée. On écrivit sur la plus voisine, Opus Phidia; et sur le pilier informe, Opus Elgin.' (p. 11.)

This would have been fair enough; but unluckily it is not true : -the inscription on the first pillar (which the Count could not read) is in Greek,- Exy eroine'; that on the other, (which the Count could not see,) is in Latin-—

But though we may indulge a smile at this facetious sally on Lord Elgin, we cannot extend our complaisance quite so far as to humour the Director General of Museums in the effusion of his spleen against a most industrious and meritorious body of artists, to whose labours we are indebted for the best models in ancient art which time has spared to us.

'J'y trouvai aussi plusieurs artistes Anglais ou Allemands, dessinant, mesurant, depuis plusieurs années, avec l'exactitude minutieuse des commentateurs les plus scrupuleux, ces monumens, noble création du génie. Esclaves malheureux des règles, des moindres caprices des anciens, ils écrivent des volumes pour relever une erreur de trois lignes commise en 1680, sur la mesure d'une architrave; ils s'appesantissent, s'endorment, et demeurent huit ans à Athènes pour dessiner trois colonnes.' (p. 13.)

We can easily believe that this spruce Frenchman and his companions would have carried away in their portfolios, not only the 'three columns,' but all Athens, nay, all Greece, in one-third of the time that these unhappy slaves of rules' have been 'poring and dosing, and lingering over their labours:' but then, these labours will bear to be examined and compared with the originals; and when they come to be submitted to public inspection, it will not be found that the authors of them, whether English or German, have represented black for white, blue for yellow, red for green, round for square, a land tortoise for a river-horse, or the inverted heads of goats for cherubs on the wing to the abodes of bliss!* Nor will the members of the Institutes or Academies of their respective countries, who may have vouched for their accuracy, need to blush at having imposed on the world their idle conceits and misrepre

Quarterly Review, No. XXXVIII. page 240.
F3

sentations,

sentations, as 'faithful copies of ancient art, carefully traced and accurately coloured from the originals.'

The vanity and self-sufficiency of the Count are mortified beyond measure by the popularity of the English; and his imagination is perpetually haunted by the idea of their intruding themselves into every corner of the East. He is equally offended at the snail-paced diligence of one set of our countrymen, and at the rapidity with which another set are whirled round the world;-' des Anglais riches, dont l'affaire importante était de traverser la Grèce le plus promptement possible.' (p. 13.) We suspect however that it would be difficult to find any rich Englishman' travelling with greater celerity, or passing the most interesting objects with greater indifference, than the Count himself. It will hardly be credited that this virtuoso, who presides over the paintings, the statuary, and the vast collection of antiquities in the great city of Paris, who travelled with all the pomp and parade of artists and savans in his train, had not the curiosity to go a few miles out of his way to visit the plains of Marathon, the strait of Thermopyla, or the ruins of Corinth!—that when he quitted 'the city of Minerva,' (to which his researches were confined,) for Constantinople, he blest the favourable south-west breeze which hurried him past the shores of the Troad!—and that he flew from Constantinople to Smyrna, and from Smyrna to St. Jean d'Acre, without attempting to land on a single island of that archipelago which his comprehensive vision had taken in at a glance, or without visiting one spot of classical renown, with the solitary exception of Ephesus!

It was a fine day (it is generally so in September) when the Count arrived at Constantinople, and his eyes were dazzled with the view; the passage-boats were skimming the surface of the water, the domes of the mosques and the gilded shafts of the minarets were illumined with the sun's rays; and no Englishman as yet had crossed his path to disturb his enjoyment of the grand prospect. His heart began to sink, however, when he heard that the plague was raging, and had found its way into the corps diplomatique; and the impossibility of passing the narrow and slippery streets of Constantinople without coming in contact with the end of a shawl, or the loose robe or caftan,' was not calculated to allay the agitation of his nerves.

Other troubles assailed him in this great city. Every where the Turks elbowed him, the Jews bowed the head to him, the Greeks grinned at him, the Armenians cheated him, (p. 46.) the dogs barked at him, the pigeons alighted on his shoulders, (this requires confirmation, as his countrymen say,) and while some light-heeled groups were dancing around him, others were dying in agonies; and thus he constantly found himself surrounded with mirth and

mourning,

mourning, and peril of the plague. Still no Englishman'seared his eye-balls,' though their traces were every where visible; and he took the favourable opportunity of speculating on the unaccountable duration of the Ottoman empire. At first, it struck him to be the title alone that supports the sultan on the most tottering throne of Europe ;no, not that alone; a moment's reflection told him it was the influence of Russia,-no, that would not do neither :-he reflects for another moment; and the truth bursts upon him in full radiance—' it was England that protected this tottering empire, the weakness of which is favourable to the commercial tyranny of that country!'The 'commercial tyranny of England' is a cant phrase in the mouth of a Frenchman, which means-what he is always unwilling to express-superior skill, enterprize, punctuality, integrity, and ho

nour.

Having for our own purpose explained what is meant by commercial tyranny,' we will, for the individual benefit of Count Forbin, tell him what we consider as an act of commercial meanness.' Is the Count acquainted with a certain person, who, when he was sent officially to negociate an exchange of casts of the metopes and other works of art with the British Museum, took advantage of the circumstance, and endeavoured to make it a condition that two hundred copies of his huge volume should be admitted into England duty-free, which, at £2: 8s. 6d. a volume, (the duty on each,) would have put into his own pocket about five hundred pounds! This act, of which he may be assured no English gentleman would or could be guilty, comes under that description-the Count, perhaps, may give it another name; but its nature will remain unchanged.

At Ephesus, where we left our traveller, he saw several Greek inscriptions on the gate of the Stadium, which he did not copy, and two on an arcade in the theatre which he would have copied but could not, parce qu'elles avaient été laissées rempli de plâtre par des Anglais, amis des sciences et toujours soigneux des jouissances des autres.' The sneer against the hated English could scarcely by any possibility have been so ill applied as in this place; but it shows the utter ignorance of the man of art' in matters intimately connected with his profession. Had he really been able to copy Greek, no method could have assisted him so effectually as that of filling up the letters with plaster: this was first ingeniously practised by Colonel Squire while serving in Egypt under the command of Lord Hutchinson; and by it he was enabled to decypher an inscription which had hitherto baffled the efforts of every traveller, (including the whole of Buonaparte's corps of savans,) and to shew that the column vulgarly named after Pompey was in fact erected under the reign of the Emperor Dioclesian. We fur

ther infer the Count's ignorance of Greek from his taking no notice of the several inscriptions on the gates of the Stadium' in that language; but contenting himself with placing before the eyes of his readers, one in large Roman capitals, (and it is the only one in his book,)-ACCENSO RENSI ET ASIE, which he tells us is Latin. We will take his word for it:—and as he modestly abstains from translating this precious morsel, lest, we suppose, he should appear to insult the understanding of his readers, we cannot do better than follow his example.

As the south-west wind had favoured the Count with a rapid passage through the Dardanelles, so a fresh breeze from the northwest now happily relieved him from the fatigue of landing on any of the islands usually visited by travellers,-Scio, Nacri, Lipso, Patmos, Lero, Colminé, Stanco, or even Rhodes itself,-and on the 6th November he was safely put on shore at St. Jean d'Acre.

Many years have not elapsed since a French army sat down before this city, and put in practice all the means that a ferocious soldiery, headed by a blood-thirsty commander, could devise, to destroy the unoffending inhabitants, and reduce their dwellings to heaps of ashes; and European travellers, as might be expected, have heard only curses loud and deep against the unprovoked aggression. Not so, however, Count Forbin-his ear was soothed with the most enchanting panegyrics of his brave and humane countrymen-'Ils parlaient avec admiration des efforts de l'armée Française dans l'orient!' This is almost too much for the politicians of the Palais Royal to digest.-What! on the very spot distinguished (according to his own avowal) by the most sanguinary transactions of his countrymen are the inhabitants so lost to every sense of feeling, that, ere the tear is dry upon the widow's cheek, they celebrate the achievements of the French? We should just as soon believe that the people of Jaffa, whose plains are still white with the bones of massacred prisoners,' are lavish in their praise and admiration of the prowess and bland humanity of Buonaparte. It would be useless to follow the Count over various parts of Palestine, or to extract any of his reveries' in the Holy city; where, as in Athens, he enjoys a sort of second-sight, different however from that of our northern neighbours, and more safe, as it shews him the past instead of the future, thus the most terrible scenes are presented to his view-the flames of the temple mount into the highest regions of the air, which they kindle into a blaze -the celestial hosts behold them with a holy terror, &c.' (p. 40.) If he enters into any particular remarks, they are generally trite, very often childish, and almost always calculated to give false impressions: they are the less likely to mislead, however, as he generally takes care to refute them himself.

'Dans

'Dans toute la Judée, quelques pluies seulement indiquent l'hiver; l'automne n'apporte point de fruits, le printemps ne fait pas éclore une fleur, et cependant les ardeurs de l'été consument Haceldama, et tarissent la source de Siloé; on croiroit qu'il n'y a plus de saisons pour cette contrée malheureuse.'-p. 32.

In all Judæa a few showers only indicate winter,' says Count Forbin. (p. 44.) The climate of Jerusalem is frequently rigorous during winter; snow sometimes falls; and the cold was somewhat intense when we prepared to leave it,' says the Director General of Museums. (p. 45.) There are no longer any seasons for this unhappy country,' says the Count; it was winter at Jerusalem, and spring at Jaffa,' says the Director. (p. 45.) There are no fruits in autumn, and no flowers in the spring in all Judæa.' Yet he found great plenty of fruit-trees, and ate also of their fruits! Had he condescended to open Hasselquist, or to look into the pages of any of the more recent travellers before he wrote, he might have learned that no country in the world possesses a greater profusion of wild flowers than the land of Judah ;-that it is peculiarly adapted for flocks and herds, and bees, and eminently entitled to be called, in the language of Scripture, 'a land flowing with milk and honey.' But it is needless to dwell longer on the Director General's perplexing description of this unhappy country,-which has no seasons-no flowers in the spring, and no fruits in the autumn'—when it appears, from his own account, that he never saw it either in spring, summer, or autumn, but only galloped through it at a prodigious rate in the month of November.

The Count left Jerusalem on the 2d December, and returned by Jaffa, where, he says, the Aga frequently spoke of the French armies; but he prudently suppresses the nature of the conversation. He makes amends, however, for his silence on this subject by the following paragraph, which is in the very best style of sentimental gallimaufry. How often in this fine climate have I regretted the fogs and cloudy sky of France! How often have my eyes been turned sorrowfully towards the west!-A young swallow was the companion of my chamber; it settled every evening on a peg in the wall, and every morning at sun-rise I gave my little friend his liberty. It is not improbable that he came from France; and he may have quitted a roof which sheltered the object of my tender solicitude.' (p. 47.) How rural! as Peter Pastoral says.

From Jaffa he proceeded by Ashdad, Gaza, and El Arish, across the desert, to Egypt. To shorten the tedious uniformity of the way, he listened to a melting tale of love and murder told by an Arab, which he has printed, as an interesting episode'; and embellished with a lithographic print, for the edification of the Parisian antiquaries.

The