conduct of Jussuff Pasha, twice Grand Vizier, was indeed very different. When he was Musselim of Erzeroum, a slave deprived him of his right eye by a similar accident: Jussuff, on recovering from the first stupefaction of the blow, ordered the man a purse of money, with an injunction to quit the city immediately; for," added he, though I am not angry now, I know not what I may be when I come to feel the consequences of this accident."" P. 633. The description of the country round Smyrna is very pleasing. We will extract the account of the favourite ride to the village of Bournabat, a large village about four miles up the country. "The whole road from the shore to Bournabat is between hedgerows. "When riding to the village, we found ourselves in a beautiful green lane, which, as we had seen nothing like it since the commencement of our tour, made us forget we were in Turkey. Trees thickly dispersed in the hedge, gave the whole country the woody appearance of one of our most cultivated English counties. They were chiefly of the sort producing amygdalon, or wild almond, which was then (March the 21st) green, and eaten by the peasants. The grounds on each side the road (which are of a chalky soil mixed with a portion of sand, and covered with a light black earth) were laid out in corn-fields, or cultivated with the cotton and tobacco plant, interspersed with many large gardens and olive-groves. The anemony, tulip, and ranunculus, were blooming in wild profusion under the hedges and beside the path. A little way from the village we passed a very large burying-ground, shaded by an extensive forest of cypresses. From the magnitude of this cemetery Bournabat is supposed to have been once a town of some note, and, indeed, the first patents granted to our Levant consuls, gave them jurisdiction at Smyrna and Bonavre. At present the village is chiefly composed of very elegant country-houses, built in the European fashion, belonging to the merchants of Smyrna, It contains one open space, surrounded by a few neat shops, and shaded by several large and aged cedar trees, whose branches are hung with storks' nests. These birds had arrived from their winter quarters nearly at the time when we passed into Asia. They were stalking about on the flat roofs of the houses, and even in the streets of Bournabat, perfectly unmolested. Such, indeed, is the attachment of the storks to the habitation of man, that I do not recollect to have ever seen their nests in a tree at any distance from some human dwelling, and they build even in the tops of moscks and inhabited houses: I have observed many in the suburbs of Constantinople.-The traveller, in his walks amidst the ruins of ancient cities, is often awakened from his reverie by the loud chatterings of one of these domestic birds, perched on the fragment of a column, or on the shed of the solitary shepherd. The clapping of their long bills produces a sound similar to, and full as loud as, that of a watchman's rattle when turned round slowly, or of the wheel put in a garden to scare the birds. The kind and salutary superstition, which grants to the storks the protection of the Mahometans, is justified by the real utility of these animals. They feed principally on the serpents, frogs, and other reptiles, with which the marshes, during the summer months, are almost choked up." P. 640. Of the great temple of Diana, not undeservedly esteemed one of the wonders of the world, whose marble columns (one hundred and twenty-seven in number) enclosed a space four hundred and twenty feet in length, and two hundred and twenty feet in breadth, nothing but dubious traces remain to feed conjecture, and supply topographical controversy. On the 11th of April Mr. Hobhouse and his companions embarked for Constantinople in the Salsette frigate, then bound for that city. Being at anchor off Tenedos, Mr. Hobhouse and his companions left the ship in two boats to visit the ruins of Alexandria Troas. Here the large cannon balls of granite, which lay scattered along the road, first attracted the attention of the travellers, and they are here informed that the ruins of Alexandria had supplied the fortresses of the Dardanelles with balls ever since the time of the famous Gazi Hassan Pasha. The facility of transporting to Constantinople the materials which these ruins afforded had exposed them to perpetual pillage. That city, which has been said to be adorned by the denudation of almost every other city, presents a melancholy testimony to the transitoriness of all works made with hands, in the fragments of ancient art and magnificence, which are blended with, the materials of which her structures are composed. The ruins which remain of the Alexandria Troas are still vast and striking: huge fragments of walls, and broken columns, blocks of granite and porphyry of enormous size, pedestals and cornices, portals and arches half buried in woods, form a spectacle of very solemn effect to him who loves to meditate upon objects that discipline the heart and mellow the affections, by shewing to man his honour in the dust, and how vain and perishing are all his towering purposes of terrestrial aggrandizement. It appears sufficiently plain, both from the reasoning and authorities adduced by Mr. Hobhouse, that this city, which at different times has been called Troas, Alexandria, and Alexandria Troas, could not, in any consistency either with Homer, or with the testimonies of ancient historians, travellers, or geographers, be considered as the city of Priam, and scene of the Iliad. Still less will its situation agree with the new city of Ilium, which was built, or rather enlarged, in fulfilment of the order of Alexander the Great, by Lysimachus, who surrounded it with a wall of forty stadia, and which afterwards was made a free city by the Romans on the peace with Antiochus. The town of Ilium is mentioned by Strabo as standing and flourishing in his time, though at the same time he declares decidedly, that not a vestige remained of ancient Troy; in which assertion he is supported by the authority of Demetrius, who was born at Scepsis, a town not far from Ilium. The Romans, as Mr. Hobhouse observes, endeavoured to persuade themselves that the Iliéans were the actual descendants of the true Trojans, and affected to call their town by the name of Troy; and in proof of this persuasion, he reminds us of the story told of Tiberius, who, to reproach the Iliéans for their late condolence for the death of Drusus, desired to sympathize with them in return for the loss of Hector. But we are told by Lucan that Julius Cæsar searched in vain for the vestiges of the Trojan wall, Circuit exustæ nomen memorabile Troja, LUCAN PHARS. lib. 9. 1. 964. The Ilium, at which Alexander sacrified to Minerva, is proved by Strabo not to have been the Ilium of Homer; and all the researches of the ancients have ended in establishing the fact of the total obliteration of ancient Troy. But though neither Julius Cæsar, nor Demetrius, nor Strabo, could find the least trace of the scene of the Iliad, M. Le Chevalier has succeeded in persuading his countrymen, that his search after this great object has been crowned with success. The pretended discovery of M. Le Chevalier Mr. Hobhouse treats with the contempt it deserves, and bestows the due praise upon his opponent our countryman-the learned Mr. Bryant. But though neither Julius Cæsar, nor Demetrius, nor Strabo, could discover the site of ancient Troy, that it once existed was a fact of which neither of them appeared to entertain any doubt. Herodotus makes frequent allusions to the Trojan war, and assigns the destruction of that city as the original cause of the enmity of the Persians towards the Greeks. Xerxes is said to have ascended the citadel of Priam and sacrificed to the Trojan Minerva; and Alexander, if we judge by his conduct, was satisfied of the former existence of Troy, and of the fact of the Trojan war, though he might have been deceived as to the true place of that celebrated event. We could never see any rational ground of scepticism in the want of exact agreement between Homer's description of places and the actual topography of the Troade. Accuracy in this respect ought not to be looked for in an epic poem. Virgil, in his description of the strait of Messina, preferred fiction to facts, where his departure from truth had the sanction of the muse. Under all the circumstances, we cannot doubt of the existence of Troy, or of the fact of the Trojan war, making, at the same time, due allowances for the liberties of poetry in respect both to places and events. The great confederacy and powerful armament of the Grecian states-the delay of nine years after the landing of the Greeks within view of Troy-the preservation of the Grecian leaders amidst pestilence and famine for so many years, and numerous other circumstances equally improbable, may be reasonably regarded as poetical appendages to the real story. We are sorry that the quantity of space already allotted to Mr. Hobhouse compels us to pretermit his sensible and laborious researches into the topography of the Troade, with a view to investigate the supposed station of Agamemnon's fleet-the site of the Ilium of Lysimachus-the confluence of the Scamander and the Simois-the Thrôsmos of Homer-and the claims of Bournabashi, to be considered as standing on the plain of Troy. We have the less regret in passing over this part of the work, as nothing that approaches certainty has rewarded the diligence (which has indeed been great) of Mr. Hobhouse, or that of any of his numerous precursors in the same perplexities of research. After following Mr. Hobhouse through his thorny detail of difficulties, surmises, doubts, and conjectures on the topography of the Homeric ground, it was not a little amusing to find the unhesitating author of the life and writings of Homer asserting of Demetrius's commentary that, "he ascertained the real places of Homer's descriptions, and pointed out the scenes of the remarkable actions." "It is astonishing," says Mr. Hobhouse, with great propriety of remark, "with what boldness these things are said, and with what facility they are believed." Nor were we less amused with the lively mendacity of Lady M. W. Montague, who declares herself in the prospect of the plains and . rivers as viewed from Sigeum, to have admired" the exact geography of Homer, whom she had in her hand;" to have found "almost every epithet he gives to a mountain, or a plain, still just for it;" and thus to have "passed several hours in as agreeable conversations as ever Don Quixote had on mount Montesinos." The next and last place of importance to which Mr. Hobhouse transports us in his interesting narrative, is Constantinople. And here it must be owned, and, to do him justice, it is owned by our traveller himself, he introduces us to little with which we were not before acquainted. Mr. Hobhouse makes his apology for this in the following very sensible terms: "A stranger at Constantinople would naturally wish to live amongst the Turks, as he would amongst the French at Paris and the Austrians at Vienna; but the differences of manners, customs, and language, render it absolutely impossible to become domesticated in a Mahometan family, or, during a short residence, even to join in the very little social intercourse enjoyed amongst the natives themselves. Thus those varieties, and nice distinctions of character, which must subsist in some degree between the individuals of every nation, and which a more intimate scrutiny might discover, cannot be noticed by passing travellers in their partial communications with the Turks, who seem to them to have so entire a monotony, not only of manner but of mind, as to induce a belief, that he who has observed one amongst them has seen the whole people, and may form an estimate of them nearly as well by the inspection of a week as by the acquaintance of a year. With this persuasion, a traveller passes through the country without forming an intimacy, or even an acquaintance, with a single Turk; and there is no part of the empire in which he will find himself less inclined to make such an attempt than at the capital itself. The water of the Golden Horn, which flows between the city and the suburbs, is a line of separation seldom transgressed by the Frank residents; and an English stranger, if he waited for the suggestions of his fellow-countrymen of the Levant Company, would pass many weeks at Pera without paying one visit to Constantinople." The dirt and the dogs in the suburbs introduce us with a disgust into the city of Constantinople, which there is little in the interior calculated to remove. The state of society is veiled from the scrutiny of the stranger; but as society is but the aggregation of individuals, the necessary dealings which strangers must have with individuals in travelling deliberately through their country, may enable them to form pretty secure conjectures concerning the real spirit and character of their social intermixture. Men do not gather figs from thistles. We have little hesitation in concluding, that the social, intellectual, and moral state of human beings must be at a low standard, where terror is the principle of the government under which they live; where property and life are m hourly jeopardy; where there is no motive to generous emulation; and where to live in peace, a man must live so as to escape observation. We have already confessed that we are not so emancipated from prejudice on the subject of religion as Mr. Hobhouse appears to be. We cannot look with complacency on the wide |