fortified by three successive fetwas from the mufti, who declared that the Mamlukes-by their alliance with the Persian Sheahs--by their allowing the intermarriage of Moslems and Giaours-and by their suffering coins inscribed with the formula of Islam to pass into circulation among infidels had forfeited their claim to rank as true believers, and might lawfully be slain or made captive by the faithful -that the devout sons of Hadji-Bektash consented to follow the imperial horsetails from the Bosphorus to the rendezvous of the army at Marash.

The Egyptian Sultan had quitted Cairo early in the spring of 1516, at the head of 13,000 of his own Mamlukes, besides the Korsans or stipendiaries, and the household troops of the different beys; and after joining the Syrian troops, awaited the enemy near Aleppo, where a gallant army of 70,000 men was now assembled under his orders. But both dissension and treachery were rife among the chiefs; the perpetual jealousies and insubordination of the emirs had been dexterously fomented by the emissaries of Selim; and both Khayer-Bey, governor of Aleppo, and Jan-berdi Ghazali, one of the principal emirs of the Tabul-Khani, had been secretly found accessible to Ottoman gold; while the denunciation of their treason by the fearless and faithful Sibey of Damas cus, (surnamed from his prowess Pehlwan or the champion,) were disregarded by Kansuh, who, warned by an astrologer against the designs of an enemy whose name began with S, had marked this valiant leader as the object of his suspicions. The Ottomans had already advanced to Aintab, when a last effort at negotiation was made by the mission of an Egyptian emir to their camp; but Selim, who had the previous year infringed the laws of nations by the execution of a Persian ambassador, was roused to violent wrath by the warlike equipments and martial bearing of the envoy and his suite, and furiously demanding whether there were no longer any men of the law in Egypt qualified for such a duty, ordered the instant decapitation of the whole party.

The attendants of the emir were massacred on the spot; and though the life of the envoy himself was spared at the earnest intercession of the grand vizir, he was sent back to the head-quarters of Kansuh mounted on an ass, with his beard and eyebrows shaved, and loaded with every mark of oriental opprobrium. The Mamlukes, indignant at the spectacle, clamoured loudly for battle; and on August 24, 1516, four days after the return of the luckless messenger, the two armies encountered each other on the plain of Mardj-Dabik, between Aintab and Aleppo.

The battle which decided the fate of Syria was, however, neither long nor obstinately contested. In the disposition of his army, Kansuh had formed the leading division almost wholly of the Korsans, and of those Mamlukes who had belonged to former sultans-a description of troops in whom he placed but limited confidence, and whose numbers he was consequently anxious to diminish by throwing on them the brunt of the battle, while his own Mamlukes and personal adherents were reserved at some distance in the rear for the final encounter. But this arrangement was productive of fatal results; the first line, led by the gallant Bey of Damascus, bore down with levelled lances, at the commencement of the action, with such rapidity and impetuosity, that the Ottoman order of battle, though protected, as usual, by a long line of artillery in front, was thrown into some confusion by the violence of the charge; but at this critical juncture the household troops, who formed the main body, ignorant of the hidden motives of the sultan, and indignant at being deprived of the post of honour which they considered as their right, refused to advance to the support of the Korsans, and quitted the field without striking a blow; while the corps already engaged, finding themselves deserted by their comrades, and galled by the heavy fire of the Turkish cannon, turned their horses, and joined in the retreat, which was speedily changed into a confused and panicstricken flight.* Scarcely a thousand

Korsans and Mamlukes (among whom was the brave Pehlwan Sibey) fell on the field of battle; but in the retreat they suffered severely from the pursuit of the Turkish horse, and the rout and demoralization of their army was complete: the emirs, collecting around them their households, sought by different routes to gain, in all haste, the frontier of Egypt, while their camp, with the immense treasures which it contained, was abandoned, without resistance, to the victors; and the triumph of Selim was crowned by the fall of the Mamluke sultan himself, who was found dead on the brink of a marsh, at a short distance from the scene of action, having either been overborne and trampled by the crowd of fugitives, or (as the Venetian reports given by Marini Sanuto state) having fallen in an apoplectic fit, to which his great age and corpulence rendered him liable, in the attempt to mount his horse without assistance. His head was severed from his body by a Turkish officer, who brought it as a trophy into the presence of Selim; but the sultan punished, by the degradation of the offender from his rank, the indignity which had been offered to the remains of a monarch, and directed their honourable interment on an eminence near the battle-field, where the tomb of the last Circassian ruler of Syria is still pointed out by the Arabs.

The victorious Ottomans marched from the scene of their triumph straight upon Aleppo, where the traitor Khayer-Bey, who now openly avowed his defection from the Mamluke cause, threw open the gates at their approach, and came forth in procession to salute the conqueror. Selim entered the city in triumph, amidst the acclamations of the inhabitants, who were indifferent whether the foreign yoke under which they were coerced was that of

an Osmanli or a Circassian ruler, and crowded with apparent alacrity to swear allegiance to their new sovereign. On Friday the sultan repaired in state to the jami or great mosque, where the imam read the khotbah in his name, with the dexterous addition to his titles, of "servant of the two holy cities"-a designation hitherto restricted to the Mamluke sultans; and Selim, who hailed in this welltimed phrase an omen of his future conquests, rewarded it by divesting himself on the spot of his imperial mantle,† which he threw with his own hands over the shoulders of the adroit flatterer. In the mean time, the detachments of the Turkish army were rapidly reducing district after district of Syria; the cities and fortresses from the frontiers of Anatolia to Palestine, despairing of resistance and hopeless of aid from the routed Mamlukes, submitted at the first appearance of the horsetails before their walls. Hamah, the former dominion of the historian Abul Feda, was visited and occupied by the sultan in person, who advanced from Aleppo after a few days' sojourn. A number of the Circassian chiefs, in their flight from Mardj-Dabik, had halted at Damascus, where they collected round them a considerable force of Syrian Mamlukes, and attempted to make a stand, and to proceed to the election of a new sultan; but the approach of the enemy disturbed their tumultuous deliberations, and they hastily continued their retreat into Egypt, after confiding to an Arab emir, named Nasser-ed-deen, the defence of the city, the massive fortifications and ample magazines of which they hoped would check the progress of the invaders till the arrival of winter compelled them to retreat. But the commandant, who had been privately gained over by Khayer- Bey, yielded at the first sum

mons; and, at the end of September, Selim took up his residence in the ancient palace of the Ayoobites, where he received the homage of the Druse and Arab sheiks, who flocked from all quarters to make their submission.

Thus was Syria absorbed into the wide-spread empire of the Ottoman sultans, of which it has ever since continued to form part, till in our days the ancient Syro-Egyptian kingdom of the Mamlukes has for a moment seemed on the point of re-establishment, with nearly its original extent and boundaries, by the successful revolt of a Turkish governor, the destroyer in Egypt of the last relics of the Mamluke corps. But notwithstanding the lapse of more than three centuries since the conquests of Selim, and the community of faith and government, no amalgamation has ever taken place between the Turkish and Arab races thus united under one sovereign; and the national antipathy which previously prevailed has con

tinued unimpaired to the present day. Even where, as along the northern frontier, the encampments and pasture grounds of the Turkmans and the Bedoweens are separated only by a rivulet or a narrow tract of barren country, the distinction is still as unequivocally marked as between their forefathers a thousand years ago, ere the Turkish name was known west of the Oxus: " and even the pronunciation and accent of the two languages have so little analogy that they always continue foreign to each other."-(Volney.) But the Arab monarchy of Selim was incomplete so long as the Mamlukes still remained erect and independent in Egypt: and no sooner had he provided for the temporary tranquillity and regulation of his newly acquired dominions, than the Ottoman columns were put in motion from Damascus in the depth of winter, and pressed forward through Palestine to encounter the enemy in their last stronghold.

THOSE who were in the habit, some forty years ago,of wandering at the west end of London, must have remarked an individual frequently seen in St James's Street, about the hour when, the morning papers having been looked over, the clubs pour out their members into St James's Street and PallMall. There and then groups were to be met with in all directions, composed of the most celebrated men of the day-when England possessed celebrated men-busily conversing on the proceedings of Parliament the night before, or which were to take place before another night had passed away. From the close of the American war, those groups were chiefly composed of the Opposition; for the unrivalled ascendancy of the greatest minister that England had ever seen, gave the Whigs the leisure for those conferences which the occupations of public life generally denied to the Tories, or their reliance on their great leader rendered unnecessary. There were to be met, from the hours of two to four, the elite of the Foxites, mingled occasionally with a few of the leading

peers and country gentlemen who formed the small neutrality of Parlia ment; there stood Fox, with his ponderous figure, good-humoured smile, and heavy step; Grey, grim from his cradle, perpendicular, and repulsive; Sheridan, with a face purpled over with claret-the stamp of his habitual excesses a stooping form and neglected dress, but with an eye among the blackest, largest, and most beaming that ever was set in the head of man; Tierney, grave, sly, and with a look of inveterate subtlety, that might have established him as the most crafty of men, even before he had uttered one of his cunning syllables; Whitbread, short, strong, and broad-shouldered, the complete model of the brewer that he was, even to his pepper-and-salt coat, but with a countenance of singular manliness, and indicative of the John Bullism of his character; Wyndham, with the graceful figure, airy step, and handsome countenance that seemed made for courts-if the oddity, fantasy, and ill-fortune of his career had not left him in a state of oscillation between the Whigs and Tories, and,

like other pendulums, left him to swing while the hands in front were gaining ground at every move; Dundas, who feared no one, and had a lively word for all, sometimes mingling with the circle; for a moment throwing in his easy jest, and easily bearing its return, doubtless amused by the sense that he was the possessor of power, while they were but nibblers at the hook. There too was Jenkinson, with the profound brow that seemed surcharged with the secrets of an empire; silent, if not sullen, and returning their salutations as cautiously as if a bow were a betrayal. There too, on his two huge legs, was the Duke of Norfolk, in his gray coat and black cape. Fluttering round and among those groups, was to be seen the individual to whom we have alluded a man of remarkably expressive features, with a determined and even stern air, which, however, frequently relaxed into a smile of the liveliest hilarity-his dress rather neglige, yet always that of a gentle man; his step alert, and evidently formed by the drill; and the whole man bearing evidence of one who had acquired the art of using his limbs on the parade of the Horse Guards. This was Charles Morris, the Whig Apollo, the volunteer laureate of the Opposition, of whomsoever it might be composed; the head of the Beefsteak Club, and the leader of pleasantry wherever he appeared.

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We shall now give some specimens of those flowers, or gems, or by whatever graceful nomenclature they are best to be described, which the bard offered upon the shrine of the muses. We are perfectly aware that Captain Morris has been charged with humiliating his talents to occasional productions, the reverse of honourable to his taste; but, without defending these errors, it is only fair to remember that the extravagances of early life are not always to imply culpability in age; that nothing is more common than to find obscure and vicious writers seeking security for their offences, by the protection of some well-known name; and above all, that in the present collection-which, formed and authenticated as it is by the writer himself, is entitled to be considered as the only one by which he thought fit to represent his feelings, his merits, or his talents-he has not given a syllable to the public, which the

most refined delicacy could wish expunged.

Lyric poetry has never been a favourite with England, or it has been only a tolerated favourite. National talents every where have a strong connexion with the national temperament. English emotion is deep, powerful, and permanent. Our taste, perhaps, looking too much on the gloomy side of things, loves the force that is to be acquired by perpetual struggle of either mind or body. The labours of that political life, which involves all the higher ranks of English minds like a perpetual tempest, gives a certain portion of that vigour which is the fruit of toiling against the tempest. The effect of climate and manners is universally stamped upon national poetry. The French are the first of chansoniers. In the toils and terrors of their Revolution, they began to be poets; but their vigour has died away in peace, and they are now again chansoniers, and no more. All the great poets of Italy rose in the time of her republican and warlike struggles. Dante was the creature of revolution; Petrarch was a brilliant, though softer, emanation from that public flame which blazed out in Rienzi; and even the pompous and glittering chivalry of Tasso found its existence, like the horse and olive of the rival deities of Athens, in the struggles for national supremacy. But the lyric poetry of later Italy is Horatian, and, like the verses of Horace, if it shows the elegance of courts, it betrays the polished debility of the national mind.

These volumes contain some exquisite Lyrics, charming developments of sensibility, and polished forms of thought. But our selections shall be chiefly from the more strongly marked portion of the work-sketches, sometimes of the ludicrous, sometimes of the natural, sometimes almost bacchanalian; but at all times exhibiting the easy pleasantry of a poet, and the keen knowledge of a man of the world. The chief fault of those songs lies in their desultory nature; but, with out binding ourselves to quote the whole of any one of them, we shall quote merely those stanzas which please us best, and seem to give the happiest impression of the writer. Here is a song for that plague of London life, a day in the "gloomy month of November:"

"Come, a toast!-'tis dismal weather,

Wine must clear this darken'd air; Sunshine from the glass we'll gather, Beauty's image slumbers there: Bright in Passion's magic mirror,

Glow her charms when touch'd with wine;

Venus wakes if Fancy stir her,

And her sweetest smile is thine.

"Like those icy clouds that blight us, Reasoning sinks the heart with spleen; But the sparkling goblets light us

Up to love's celestial sceneDreams of joy will there transport thee, Hope in fair fruition shine: Sweetly-varying visions court thee;

And a sip will make them thine.

"Take from me this truth, while drinking

Life looks best through Fancy's eye. Measure not its charms by thinking,

Till its brighter aspects die ;
Dive not in that sea of trouble

Where no sun on man will shine-
Love's at top, a precious bubble;
And a sip will make it thine.

"Leave to fate man's chequer'd measure,
Bless the mingled cup we drink;
With life's care still mix its pleasure;
Firmly hope and justly think.
Gay, 'midst earth's still shifting sorrows,
Dip the cypress wreath in wine;
Darken'd days have fairer morrows,
And a sip will make them thine."

All this is flowing and fanciful, the elegance of a polished bon-vivant, a "Carlton House" companion enjoying the burgundy of princes. But he now strikes a more sportive, yet not less harmonious string :

In the captain's early day, Whiggism was the fashion. All the nobility were Whig; with the exception of the few immediately about the person of the king, and the still fewer who sincerely adhered to Pitt. All the women of fashion were Whigs, at least all the fashionable were; for there is a line between the rank which entitles to fashion, and the taste which confers its renown. The great minister, who alone kept all the Whigs at bay, was the object of universal assault. On his lofty crest every weapon of party poured a perpetual shower. The powerful lance of Fox, the sullen though feebler missiles of the Greys, Courtneys, Wyndhams, and all the second rank of Opposition; the sparkling shafts of Sheridan, as pungent as they were polished; and the light arrows of pleasantry launched from the hundred hands of the more nameless party-all fell on him, aud all fell in vain. He wore that armour which nothing could penetrate; and,

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