members, among whom the fine is apportioned; and it frequently happens that the culprit himself, if he has a large number of male relations, pays a very trifling part of the sum. There are several tribes of Aenezes and northern Bedouins, where the culprit alone pays the fine. The rest of the de tails on the blood revenge, given in the treatise on Bedouin manners, are correct. Among the Bedouins of Kezek, the price of blood is the Eafye, or 1000 piastres; besides the Zola, which is called by the Southern Arabs Tolba wa ghorra; and consists, among the Turks of Kezek, in a mare, a sword, and a gun; and among the Christians, in a maid and a mare. The murderer's family is obliged to furnish the nearest relation of the deceased with a young girl; for which he pays nothing to her father; and he is at liberty either to marry her himself, or to cede her to some of his friends, who pay him the same sum they would have paid for marrying her to her father. Among the Arabs el Kebly, the price of blood is fixed at a thousand piastres, if a stranger has committed the deed; but if an individual of the tribe itself has killed his neighbour, his nearest relations are obliged to pay a fine of 1000 piastres, and besides a Tolba wa ghorra of a mare, a girl, a slave, a gun &c.; this is generally subject to diminution from the generosity of the dead man's family. It is a law among the Bedouins, that if a wife is killed for adultery, (a punishment which is invariably inflicted on her, not by her husband, but by her own father or brother,) her blood is asked from the adulterer, who was the reason of her being killed. He is thus generally driven into exile, with his whole family, until the husband relents; but debts of blood of this species are seldom expiated but with the death of one of the adulterer's family. There are Bedouin tribes, who are in continual national warfare with each other, and slaughter, without mercy, all the individuals of their enemies they can lay hold of. The tribes thus circumstanced live generally at a great distance from each other; and this resentment is generally nourished, by strolling parties going to and fro. This is the case with the Howeytat, and the Aenezes of the Hedjed, who never take any prisoners of each other. If an Arab is to swear before the judge, that he is innocent of the murder of which he stands accused; he does not swear that he has not killed him; but he takes an oath," that he has not cut open his skin." LINES, Addressed to Mr. John D. Hunter on his returning to the simplicity of Indian life and manners, since his late arrival from England. Child of the forest! is thy nature still Wild and untamed, as the cold gushing rill, That bursts in torrents from the mountain's side, Thou hast been where the noble and the gay Then did thy spirit lingering look behind, In thought, the distant cat'ract's thund'ring roar ; Where seemed a thousand rivers rushing by? Thy spirit borne upon the mountain wind, To sigh among the trees, in autumn's leafless bower. And while thy foot the silken carpet prest, Soft was the velvet sod, and rich I ween, Where, clustering round the bubbling spring, was seen, Vol. I. No. V. 46 The purple violet and daisy pied; Where buttercups in yellow lustre vied With water lillies bright; and many a flower, Thy lip has scarcely prest the sparkling shrine, And canst thou the delicious draught resign? Slaked is thy thirst so soon, for light divine? See how she bares her breast, and offers free, The deep rich draught, exhaustless as the sea, From that bright dazzling fount, to nurture thee. There lay thy fever'd lip; nor fear too long Its grateful sweets to taste-the draught prolong. Through life 'twill energy and vigour give; That thirst shall ne'er be quench'd, but thou shalt live To lead the Red Man there, and bid him lave His darkened soul in that bright flowing wave. In some soft moment, did thy heart ne'er know Glittering with pearl, with trembling dew drops wet; And say, the wreath her polish'd temples bore She would not change for what an earldom's mistress wore! By hill, by rock and stream, thou wand'rest slow, By some uprooted tree, or shiver'd rock, ད་ Sleep!-Softly sleep! and when the lightning's flash * Lake Huron, in the region of "Thunder Bay." C. A Few Days in Athens, being the translation of a Greek manuscript, discovered in Herculaneum. By Frances Wright, author of "Views of Society, and Manners in America." London, 1822. Few of our readers, probably, have ever seen or heard of the little work under the above title, the production of a lady who visited the United States with such kindly feelings; and whose misfortune, perhaps, it was, that her predisposition in favour of our institutions led her to view every thing good through a magnifying medium. If the simple statement of facts, that are creditable to our civil or social character, throws our grandmother over the water into a passion, and makes the old lady savage and scurrilous, what else could be expected, in the case of a downright panegyric by one of her own daughters, than that she should forthwith proceed to cuff, scratch, and bemaul the delinquent, with all the vigour that her advanced age and infirm health would afford? Some of the sages of English criticism declared Miss Wright's book on America to be, from internal evidence, the work of no Englishwoman, but of an American Jacobin! We owe the amiable and accomplished authoress of "Views of Society and Manners in America," much regard for the good will she has shown towards us; and much gratitude for the flattering, though sometimes over-coloured picture, which she has drawn of those portions of our republic which she visited. For our own part, we have perused her" Few days in Athens," with a delight not merely arising from the spirit and beauty of the sketch, but enhanced by the reflection that the writer had been the encomiast of America; and that though she had travelled, unmarried and unattended, through several portions of our country, she was not only neither massacred nor gouged, but not even insulted or offended. It is truly a subject of wonder. We extract a part of the preface, in which the author accounts for not giving the name of the supposed Italian scholar to whom she was indebted for the version of the Greek manuscript, referred to in the title. "Since the establishment of the saintly domination of the Vandals through out the territories of the rebellious and heterodox Italy, and particularly in consequence of the ordonnance of his most orthodox, most legitimate, and most Austrian Majesty, bearing that his dominions being in want of good subjects, his colleges are forbidden to send forth good scholars,* it has *Je ne veux pas de savans dans mes etâts, je veux de bons sujets, was the dictum of the Austrian Autocrat to an Italian Professor. |