Capel, and of Addison, and Congreve, have little resemblance to the old; the distinctive character of the faces is wholly lost. The best of the portraits to our taste are those of Lord Godolphin,-noble and elevated; of Sir Samuel Garth,-somewhat affected, but sharp and characteristic; and of Dartneuf,-very pe culiar and individual, and, in Faber's print, decidedly foreign. This latter point is the more remarkable, because we know nothing of the extraction of this celebrated epicure. He is said to have been an illegitimate son of Charles the Second, but the portrait bears no resemblance to that monarch; and there is something in the air and form of the countenance which is peculiarly and entirely French. If Dartneuf was the son of Charles, his mother, no doubt, was French. On the whole, the plates with their faults, such as we have stated, are incomparably too good for the wretched letter-press to which they are attached; and we may repeat to the editor, with a very slight change of his own elegant words, that, as Virgil reports of Mezentius, he is, amongst other enormities,-guilty of binding good prints and bad letter-press together, and thus dooming the former to the most dreadful of all punishments, that of rotting to destruction by a premature conjunction with putrescence.' ART. XI.—1. Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia, Ancient Babylonia, &c. &c. during the Years 1817, 18, 19, and 20. By Sir Robert Ker Porter. With numerous engravings of portraits, costumes, and antiquities, &c. Vol. I. 4to. London. 1821. 2. A Second Journey through Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor, to Constantinople, between the Years 1810 and 1816. With an Account of the Proceedings of His Majesty's Embassy under His Excellency Sir Gore Ouseley, Bart. K. L.S. By James Morier, Esq. late Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of Persia. With Maps, and Engravings from the Designs of the Author. 4to. London. THE author of the first of these works is neither a geographer, nor an antiquary, nor a botanist, nor a mineralogist: the manners of the people and the face of the country through which he travelled are almost all that he attempts to describe; and even this he has but indifferently executed: but as Journies in Persia are not every-day occurrences, it is impossible not to feel some interest in the perusal of his narrative. There is besides the additional novelty arising from his having entered the country at its northern extremity, passing through the defiles of Mount Caucasus, whereas most of our recent accounts are from persons who have proceeded from the shores of the Persian Gulph to Shiraz, Ispahan, and the present capital Taheran. The drapery are fightly stippled in)—is at once agreeable and effective; but this merit of execution is not enough. In the first place it is evident that the drawings have not been made, as they profess to have been, from the original PICTURES, which neither the Editor nor the artists appear ever to have seen. Secondly, they are copied from Faber's copies so servilely, that some petty errors and mistakes in the titles of the plates have been preserved. And thirdly, they are reduced from Faber's large mezzotintos; and we need hardly add that, to preserve so fugacious a quality as resemblance by copying from a copy-(the original and the copies being all of different sizes, styles, and modes of process)—is next to impossible. Accordingly the new portraits seem to us very deficient in characteristic resemblance. It is so generally admitted, that even the simple editor has heard of it, that one of Sir Godfrey's chief faults as a portrait painter was the family look which he gave to all his persons. In the original pictures there is a sameness—not diminished, of course, in Faber's mezzotinto-but in these new plates so far increased, that some of the portraits have lost all individuality. There are, we think, nearly one-fourth of the whole, which, if you cover the names, you would find some difficulty in distinguishing from one another. For instances, we will mention Sir Godfrey himself, the Duke of Somerset, the Duke of Devonshire, Duke of Kingston, Duke of Manchester, the old Lord Dorset, Lord Godolphin, Lord Halifax, Lord Cornwallis, Lord Somers, Sir Robert Walpole, Sir J. Vanbrugh, Addison, and Stanyan. A great deal of this fault arises no doubt from the sameness of the overwhelming costume in which they are buried; something also is to be attributed to a kind of mechanical process, which Sir Godfrey seems to have adopted; but what we have a right to complain of is, that these errors are aggravated in the new plates. We will add a comparison of a few of them with a few of Faber's, in which we think the latter have a manifest advantage in force and character. We begin with the portrait of Charles Lenox, first Duke of Richmond. In the new plate we see a plump man, of no very peculiar countenance, who might as well be the Duke of Devon or Sir Richard Steele. Turn to Faber-and you are struck at once with an image of Charles the Second, to whom, Mackay tells us, the Duke was strikingly like. The new portraits of the Dukes of Devon and Newcastle, Lords Carlisle and Stanhope, we turn over without observation; while Faber's plates of these uoblemen remind us forcibly of the present representatives of the blood and honours of these noble persons: this may be, in some degree, fancy; but it is certainly no fancy to think the old portraits the most forcible and characteristic. The new plates of the Duke of Grafton, of Lords Berkeley and Capel, Capel, and of Addison, and Congreve, have little resemblance to the old; the distinctive character of the faces is wholly lost. The best of the portraits to our taste are those of Lord Godol phin,—noble and elevated; of Sir Samuel Garth,—somewhat affected, but sharp and characteristic; and of Dartneuf,-very peculiar and individual, and, in Faber's print, decidedly foreign. This latter point is the more remarkable, because we know nothing of the extraction of this celebrated epicure. He is said to have been an illegitimate son of Charles the Second, but the portrait bears no resemblance to that monarch; and there is something in the air and form of the countenance which is peculiarly and entirely French. If Dartneuf was the son of Charles, his mother, no doubt, was French. On the whole, the plates with their faults, such as we have stated, are incomparably too good for the wretched letter-press to which they are attached; and we may repeat to the editor, with a very slight change of his own elegant words, that, as Virgil reports of Mezentius, he is,-amongst other enormities,-guilty of binding good prints and bad letter-press together, and thus dooming the former to the most dreadful of all punishments, that of rotting to destruction by a premature conjunction with putrescence.' ART. XI.-1. Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia, Ancient Babylonia, &c. &c. during the Years 1817, 18, 19, and 20. By Sir Robert Ker Porter. With numerous engravings of portraits, costumes, and antiquities, &c. Vol. I. 4to. London. 1821. 2. A Second Journey through Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor, to Constantinople, between the Years 1810 and 1816. With an Account of the Proceedings of His Majesty's Embassy under His Excellency Sir Gore Ouseley, Bart. K.L.S. By James Morier, Esq. late Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of Persia. With Maps, and Engravings from the Designs of the Author. 4to. London. THE author of the first of these works is neither a geographer, nor an antiquary, nor a botanist, nor a mineralogist: the manners of the people and the face of the country through which he travelled are almost all that he attempts to describe; and even this he has but indifferently executed: but as Journies in Persia are not every-day occurrences, it is impossible not to feel some interest in the perusal of his narrative. There is besides the additional novelty arising from his having entered the country at its northern extremity, passing through the defiles of Mount Caucasus, whereas most of our recent accounts are from persons who have proceeded from the shores of the Persian Gulph to Shiraz, Ispahan, and the present capital Taheran. The The huge volume before us contains a description of the author's journey through Persia Proper; but he comforts us with the assurance that he meditates another, of equal dimensions, on Babylonia, Kourdistan, and those other countries of the empire which formed the subject of so many pages of deep interest in the old histories of the East, whether by classic or native writers.' His motives for undertaking so spirited an enterprize, he tells us, (though not in the most intelligible language) were that liberal speculation and generous curiosity, which foresaw a different empire than that of mere human ambition, in this extraordinary circumnavigation of the world-the empire of civilized man over brutal force-and which made him eager to view places which modern story had brought into celebrity, and to visit countries which the past and the present cover with an ever-during fame!' Yielding to an impulse so laudable, he left Petersburgh towards the latter end of August, 1817, and took the road to Odessa on the Black Sea, meaning to embark there for Constantinople: a plan, however, which he was obliged to abandon in consequence of the exaggerated accounts of the havock occasioned by the plague in that turbulent and ill-fated city. Odessa (to which recent transactions have given a considerable degree of importance) is distant 1833 wersts from Petersburgh, and is described as one of the most flourishing cities of the empire, bidding fair to realize the views of Peter the Great, who wished to extend the commerce of his country on the side of Asia. The Turkish fort of Gadgibei formed the nucleus of the present city; it stood on a high cliff, overlooking the sea, and commanding a great part of the coast, with a fine harbour below. A favourable report of its situation being made to government, orders were issued for the foundations of new structures; and, with the rapidity which characterizes the architectural schemes of Russia, in 1796 the Christian city of Odessa began to rise around the battered walls of the Mahometan fortress. Large offers, in the shape of personal privileges, were held out to certain orders of settlers; and the exportation of grain to the Méditerranean soon produced a degree of commercial activity in the adjoining country. In 1817 it was declared a free port; and its population is now said to consist of 30,000 souls. From Odessa, our traveller proceeds to Nicolaieff, which, he says, is rapidly improving under the good government of Admiral Greig. This officer he compliments in the highest style, as indeed he does all persons in authority: for Sir Robert is a great courtier, and loses no opportunity of bestowing due praise on those from whose protection or hospitality he has any thing to expect. On this occasion, he concludes his encomium by the following judicious remark. 'Without judgment in government and ability in agents, agents, empires cannot be built up; and when up, without the same system they cannot long be maintained.' Continuing his route across the steppe, he witnessed one of those destructive fires, occasioned by the carelessness of bullock drivers or of persons belonging to caravans of merchandise, who halt for the night on the open plain, and on departing in the morning, neglect to extinguish their fires. Near the town of Youchokrak he found himself in the centre of such a conflagration: the actual road was free, having nothing for the devouring element to feed on; but all around was covered with a moving mass of unquenchable flame. The effect produced was an apparently interminable avenue, dividing a volume of fire, which rolled over the face of the country with the awful steadiness and majesty of an advancing ocean. At Mariopol, Sir Robert reached the shores of the sea of Azof; and journeying onwards by Taganrog and Rostow, being eager, as he says, 'to shake hands, in his own land, with its illustrious Attaman, the ever-memorable Count Platoff, he made his glad entry, about twelve o'clock at night, into New Tcherkask, the present capital of the Donskoy country.' His arrival was the subject of a more general congratulation than falls, we suspect, to the lot of most travellers;-for, on announcing his name to the secretary of the Attaman, he was told by that good gentleman that his Excellency had only the day before received intimation from Petersburgh that the traveller was proceeding to Persia by a route so distant from Tcherkask, that he must abandon all hope of seeing him. The Attaman, thus unexpectedly relieved from despondency, 'embraced him, repeatedly felicitating himself on the events, whatever they might be, which had induced the traveller to pass through his territory: and'-but we must cut short the rest of his civil speech, on which our traveller expatiates with prolix delight, and which concluded quite sentimentally. With regard to you, Sir R. Porter, (alluding,' the author says, 'to my matrimonial alliance with a Russian princess,) the brother-in-law of Prince Alexander Scherbatoff, he whose career I have so often witnessed, and now, with his country, must ever lament its early termination!-did I not esteem you for yourself, you should, for his sake, claim my amplest services.' On the 23d of September, he left Tcherkask under an escort of Cossacks, and a little before he arrived at the town of Alexandroff, reached the brow of a very steep hill, from which, for the first time, he beheld the stupendous mountains of Caucasus. The prospect, no doubt, was magnificent: the author describes the impression produced by the first glimpse of that sublime range, in the following terms: • I had seen almost all the wildest and most gigantic chains in Portugal and Spain, but none gave me an idea of the vastness and grandeur of FF 2 |