periment, that a hundred weight of sugar is equal, in point of nutriment, to a quarter of barley, or of a quarter of wheat, it seems to follow that the coarser kinds of grain, formerly in general use for the manufacture of bread, are daily giving way to more palatable articles of nutriment.

With regard to animal food, the abundance of which has been at all times the peculiar boast of the British islands, we know, by the direct evidence of the markets in the metropolis, that the quantity consumed is regularly increasing. This, indeed, as we have seen, has been considered by many writers as a proof that our tillage has not improved in a degree at all proportionate to our pasture lands; but in truth it is the peculiar advantage of the modern husbandry, that the quantity of winter and summer provender for cattle, yielded by the plough, greatly exceeds the annual produce of grass and hay from the same quantity of land. If, however, this were not notoriously true, there can be no doubt that our fisheries might, for centuries to come, effectually supply the deficiencies of our agriculture. There are, indeed, no bounds to the possible accumulation of animal food; and its efficiency as a resource, in the failure of other nutriment, is only limited by its very perishable nature; an inconvenience, however, very easily remedied, so that we may perhaps be justified in expressing our belief, that if the proposed imposition of a duty on foreign grain were accompanied by a repeal of the tax on salt, the growing population of these islands might be supported, for centuries to come, in the enjoyment of increasing abundance.

ART. VIII. A Journey through Albania, and other Provinces of Turkey, in Europe and Asia, to Constantinople, during the years 1809 and 1810. By J. C. Hobhouse. Cawthorn. 1813. pp. 1152.

AFTER the complaints, which we have been accustomed to

hear, of the indolence of our travelled countrymen in communicating their observations to the world, and their unwillingness to expose themselves to the censure of our literary tribunals, we begin to think it not a little probable, that the current of opinion will shortly set in a contrary direction, and the dread of repletion succeed to the sufferings of a spare diet. The last and present year have been abundant, at least, in accounts of the countries bordering upon the Mediterranean; and some additions have been made to the stock of original information. On many points, indeed, much novelty is not to be expected. It would not, for instance, be

very easy to make discoveries respecting the Turks, a people whose general character and external appearance might be as correctly taken from the earliest, as from the latest writers. We do not, indeed, mean to say, that the Turks will be found existing, in the present day, in the exact state described by Busbequius; but we believe that the changes which have taken place, will be found to have been chiefly political, and that in the gradual decay of their empire, their individual character has remained unaltered. Their manner of living has varied but little, and that little has been in general for the worse. Their baths are less magnificent, their houses more mean, their intercourse with strangers less free, their story-tellers less entertaining; they no longer allow the infidels to reside in the city of Faith, and carefully exclude them from the female slave-market. Yet the vivacity of a recent description may give charms to the recital of what was before known; and the scepticism of the modern may induce him to search more closely into the evidence of some stories, which have enjoyed a prescriptive character for truth, though originally, perhaps, the invention of some talkative dragoman. Besides all this, we like to be assured of the fact, though nothing more be gained by it, that the distant world is still going on as it did twenty years ago; that the Bosphorus of Thrace, in spite of the reveries of politicians, and the prophecies of divines, is still inhabited by men in green and white turbans, and that the Dardanelles, though not impervious during war to a British fleet, are since the peace hermetically sealed against every stranger, without the special permission of the Grand Signor himself. We like also to be informed, for we all love to speculate, as to the probability of a change in the situation of the Greeks; we anxiously catch at the idea, we were about to say of the renovation of such a people, but at all events, at the prospect of a restoration of their country, if not to independence, at least to quiet and prosperity. In the same course of feeling we cannot be indifferent to the possible fate of that lesser Asia, which contained, in the period of its glory, so many trophies of art and learning, and which still presents to the enraptured view, a country rivalled only by that garden formed by the sovereign Planter,

'when he fram'd

All things for man's delightful use."

Lastly, the hopes of finding fresh specimens of ancient art rescued from the destruction that awaits them in the land of barbarism and ignorance, or new positions ascertained or established in ancient geography, afford additional motives to the reader, and give a liberal interest to the descriptions of the latest traveller.

Upon all these points, both the general reader and the scholar may look for no small portion of information and amusement, from

the

the present volume. It is written in a style entirely free from pedantry, but erring on the side of ease; and from the dread of falling into the poised sentences and ten syllabled words of later writers, sometimes sinking below what the epistolary form of the composition might be thought to justify. It is eminently successful in the description of natural scenery, of which we would willingly produce not a few specimens; but the contents of the book are so multifarious that we must confine our remarks to a part of it, referring to the work itself for the confirmation of our judgment on its excellencies and defects. Among the latter we reckon a want of condensation and arrangement, which, though common to travellers in general, we must not overlook, when the main excuse for it is, that, except the account of Albania, the journey was sent page by page to the press, and not previously collected in one entire manuscript volume, so as to enable the author to revise and polish the whole work by a collation and comparison of the several parts.' As critics we must protest against this excuse; because, however justly it may be urged by an author who writes upon the spur of the moment, because his dinner, perhaps, depends upon the printing of the next sheet, it is wholly inadmissible in a work of considerable research, containing references to a variety of other works, and which, as far at least as we are informed, there existed no absolute or imperious necessity for publishing in April, May, or June, 1813, rather than in the same months of the year following. We suspect, indeed, that the work grew and assumed a new form under the hands of the builder; that what was originally intended for an account of Albania, has been added to it till it reached its present bulk, as a gentleman's house in the hands of a skilful architect, from a plain cottage in the estimate, becomes, in the execution, a chateau, or a palace. We mention this, not as a discouragement to those who are inclined to read the work, but in the hope that, in a future edition, the author himself will take the pains of reducing his materials a little more into order; and we doubt not that an opportunity will be afforded him of so doing, while he yet retains much of the freshness of his recollection, and the distinctness of his conceptions with regard to the countries through which he passed.

As it would be vain to attempt the complete analysis of a work of this extent in the compass of an article, we shall lay before our readers, what appears to us upon the whole most interesting and novel; and under this head, the account of Albania undoubtedly claims the first place.

Of this country, which stretches along the coast of the Adriatic, from the gulf of Arta, in the 39° of latitude, to the ancient Venetian provinces in the 42o, and about a degree further to the north

within

within land, but no where exceeding eighty miles in breadth, Mr. Hobhouse's is the first detailed account presented to English readers. Some information upon the subject has been before given to the readers of French, by Dr. Pouqueville, a physician attached to the expedition against Egypt under Buonaparte, who appended to his account of the Morea, the substance of the narrative of two French officers, detained for some time in Albania, during the war between France and Turkey, in 1798. From this Mr. Hobhouse professes to have taken, without scruple, whatever he found agreeing with his own observations or inquiries. The union of the two accounts, however, though probably sufficiently full as to the manners and character of the people, leaves much to be supplied as to the topography and political importance of the country; neither Mr. Hobhouse's observations, nor those of the persons from whom he derived assistance, extending with any degree of certainty or minuteness, beyond that part of the country under the dominion or influence of Ali Pashaw. Ali's power, except, perhaps, partially in Ocrida, has never extended northward, beyond the 41° of lat. and in the part of Albania, south of that line, he has not yet been able to make himself master of the Pashalik of Vallona, nor to reduce to entire subjection the inhabitants of the Chimæriot mountains; who, though at peace with him, and acknowledging him as their Lord, live in a state of constant warfare with one another, village against village, and district against district, with an independence truly feudal. The same may be observed of the more peaceable district of Philathi, to the south and south east of Butrinto. These, with the small town of Parga, opposite Corfu, in the possession of the French, all lying upon the coast, are, no small obstacles to the advancement of Ali's power, by limiting in a great degree his communication with the Adriatic, and are therefore of importance to be remembered in our estimate of his influence and resources.

The general face of the country, diversified throughout with all the variety of extended plains and lofty mountains, and abounding in consequence with romantic scenery, must be already familiar to the readers of Childe Harolde; the noble author of which was Mr. Hobhouse's companion throughout his travels. But that picturesque beauty, which so strongly recommends it to the notice both of the painter and the poet, is not its only praise. Though mountainous and wild, it readily yields itself to the wishes of the cultivator, and repays his toil with abundance, not only of the necessaries, but of many of the luxuries of life. While the hills produce the olive, the vine, and the dwarf oak of Vallona, the noble plains, of which they are the boundaries, display the varied fertility of the soil, in rich harvests of corn, rice, tobacco, maize,

&c.

&c. while they maintain large flocks of sheep and goats, and herds of cattle and horses, as well as abundance of pigs and poultry. The best snuff in Turkey is made from the tobacco raised near Delvinaki, in Upper Albania; and the gardens of Ioannina are celebrated for the excellence of the otto of roses, manufactured from them. Add to these the timber which descends from the mountains, and which before the war supplied the dock-yards of Marseilles and Toulon, and we shall readily believe, that the natural productions of the country would be of themselves sufficient to sustain a valuable commerce, though from its situation it derives still further advantages from the transit of goods and merchandize through it. It is from the great fair held annually at Ioannina, that all the richer Turks and Greeks, not only of Albania, but of great part of the Morea and Roumelia, supply themselves with loose robes and pelisses for their winter dresses, the manufacture of France and Germany. It is from hence that the spun cotton's of Triccala are distributed through the other parts of Turkey, and in part forwarded by land carriage to Germany; and it is here that are collected the annual droves of live stock and horses, the former for the supply of the islands of the Adriatic and Ionian seas, the latter for dispersion in the different districts of the country itself.

Of the city of Ioannina, the capital of Ali's dominions, little has, till of late years, been noticed but its existence. It has, indeed, been inserted in our maps, and the few who have given any attention to Romaic literature, may have observed its name in the title-page of some of their books; but of the city all that seems to have been known or suspected, was, that it was situated in the country of the most warlike and barbarous nation of European Turkey. Yet if we are to credit the relations of those who have lately visited it, it is, both from its romantic situation and the importance of the transactions carried on in it, very worthy of our regard; and if, as they assert, the Romaic muses have chosen Ioannina for their most favoured dwelling, we must allow from the following description, that the site is by no means unworthy of their preference.

Imagine to yourself a large sheet of water of ten or twelve miles in length, and at least three miles in breadth, enclosed on one side by green plains, an extensive city, and a long succession of groves and gardens, and on the other, by a chain of lofty mountains, that rise almost abruptly from its banks. Such is the appearance of the lake of Ioannina and its surrounding scenery.'-p. 59.

The city stands on the western banks of the lake, at about two miles from its northern extremity. In its utmost length it may be, perhaps, two miles and a half, and in breadth, though in some places it is much narrower, nearly a mile. Immediately near the lake it stands on a flat, but the north and north western parts of it are built on slopes of rising and uneven ground. A triangular peninsula juts into the lake,

M 2