were half concealed in the limpid stream. We passed the rivulet by an arch formed by these fallen remains, and mounting a narrow breach, were soon lost in admiration of the scene which surrounded us. At every step a fresh exclamation of surprise broke from our lips. Every one of the stones of which that wall was composed was from eight to ten feet in length, by five or six in breadth, and as much in height. They rest, without cement, one upon the other, and almost all bear the mark of Indian or Egyptian sculpture. At a single glance, you see that these enormous stones are not placed in their original sitethat they are the precious remains of temples of still more remote antiquity, which were made use of to encircle this colony of Grecian and Roman citizens.

The environs of Jerusalem are described | stone, fallen from the top of the wall which with equal force by the same master-hand :- obstructed its course. Beautiful sculptures "The general aspect of the environs of Jerusalem may be described in a few words. Mountains without shade, and valleys without water-the earth without verdure, rocks withut grandeur. Here and there a few blocks of gray stone start up out of the dry and fissured earth, between which, beneath the shade of an old fig-tree, a gazelle or a hyæna are occasionally seen to emerge from the fissures of the rock. A few plants or vines creep over the surface of that gray and parched soil; in the distance, is occasionally seen a grove of olive-trees, casting a shade over the arid side of the mountain-the mouldering walls and towers of the city appearing from afar on the summit of Mount Sion. Such is the general character of the country. The sky is ever pure, bright, and cloudless; never does even the slightest film of mist obscure the purple tint of evening and morning. On the side of Arabia, a wide gulf opens amidst the black ridges, and presents a vista of the shining surface of the Dead Sea, and the violet summits of the mountains of Moab. Rarely is a breath of air heard to murmur, in the fissures of the rocks, or among the branches of the aged olives; not a bird sings, nor an insect chirps in the waterless furrows. Silence reigns universally, in the city, in the roads, in the fields. Such was Jerusalem during all the time that we spent within its walls. Not a sound ever met our ears, but the neighing of the horses, who grew impatient under the burning rays of he sun, or who furrowed the earth with their feet, as they stood picketed round our camp, mingled occasionally with the crying of the hour from the minarets, or the mournful cadences of the Turks as they accompanied the dead to their cemeteries. Jerusalem, to which the world hastens to visit a sepulchre, is itself a vast tomb of a people; but it is a tomb without cypresses, without inscriptions, without monuments, of which they have broken the gravestones, and the ashes of which appear to cover the earth which surrounds it with mourn-around that platform were a series of lesser ing, silence and sterility. We cast our eyes back frequently from the top of every hill which we passed on this mournful and desolate region, and at length we saw for the last time, the crown of olives which surmounts the Mount of the same name, and which long rises above the horizon after you have lost sight of the town itself. At length it also sank beneath the rocky screen, and disappeared like the chaplets of flowers which we throw on a sepulchre."-(II. 275—276.)

From Jerusalem he made an expedition to Balbec in the desert, which produced the same impression upon him that it does upon all other travellers:

"We rose with the sun, the first rays of which struck on the temples of Balbec, and gave to those mysterious ruins that eclat which his brilliant light throws ever over ruins which it illuminates. Soon we arrived, on the northern side, at the foot of the gigantic walls which surround those beautiful remains. A clear stream, flowing over a bed of granite, murmured around the enormous blocks of

"When we reached the summit of the breach, our eyes knew not to what object first to turn. On all sides were gates of marble of prodigious height and magnitude; windows or niches, fringed with the richest friezes; fallen pieces of cornices, of entablatures, or capitals, thick as the dust beneath our feet; magnificent vaulted roots above our heads; everywhere a chaos of confused beauty, the remains of which lay scattered about, or piled on each other in endless variety. So prodigious was the accumulation of architectural remains, that it defies all attempts at classification, or conjecture of the kind of buildings to which the greater part of them had belonged. After passing through this scene of ruined magnificence, we reached an inner wall, which we also ascended; and from its summit the view of the interior was yet more splendid. Of much greater extent, far more richly decorated than the outer circle, it presented an immense platform in the form of a long rectangle, the level surface of which was frequently broken by the remains of still more elevated pavements, on which temples to the sun, the object of adoration at Balbec, had been erected. All

temples-or chapels, as we should call themdecorated with niches, admirably engraved, and loaded with sculptured ornaments to a degree that appeared excessive to those who had seen the severe simplicity of the Parthenon or the Coliseum. But how prodigious the accumulation of architectural riches in the middle of an eastern desert! Combine in imagination the Temple of Jupiter Stator and the Coliseum at Rome, of Jupiter Olympius and the Acropolis at Athens, and you will yet fall short of that marvellous assemblage of admirable edifices and sculptures. Many of the temples rest on columns seventy feet in height, and seven feet in diameter, yet composed only of two or three blocks of stone, so perfectly joined together that to this day you can barely discern the lines of their junction. Silence is the only language which befits man when words are inadequate to convey his impressions. We remained mute with admiration, gazing on the eternal ruins.

"The shades of night overtook us while we yet rested in amazement at the scene by which

we were surrounded. One by one they enveloped the columns in their obscurity, and added a mystery the more to that magical and mysterious work of time and man. We appeared, as compared with the gigantic mass and long duration of these monuments, as the swallows which nestle a season in the crevices of the capitals, without knowing by whom, or for whom, they have been constructed. The thoughts, th: wishes, which moved these masses, are tc is unknown. The dust of marble which we tread beneath our feet knows more of it than we do, but it cannot tell us what it has seen; and in a few ages the generations which shall come in their turn to visit our monuments, will ask, in like manner, wherefore we have built and engraved. The works of man survive his thought. Movement is the law of the human mind; the definite is the dream of his pride and his ignorance. God is a limit which appears ever to recede as humanity approaches him; we are ever advanc-ingham tells us in his Travels beyond the Jordan, ing, and never arrive. This great Divine Figure which man from his infancy is ever striving to reach, and to imprison in his structures raised by hands, for ever enlarges and expands; it outsteps the narrow limits of temples, and leaves the altars to crumble into dust; and calls man to seek for it where alone it resides in thought, in intelligence, in virtue, in nature, in infinity."—(II. 39, 46, 47.)

creased direction of the popular mind to lofty and spiritual objects, the more complete subjugation of sense, the enlarged perception of the useful and the beautiful, been in proportion to the extended facilities given to the great body of the people? Alas! the fact is just the reverse. Balbec was a mere station in the desert, without territory, harbour, or subjec maintained solely by the commerce of East with Europe which flowed throughts walls. Yet Balbec raised, in less than a entury, a more glorious pile of structures devoted to religious and lofty objects, than London, Paris, and St. Petersburg united can now boast. The Decapolis was a small and remote mountain district of Palestine, not larger in proportion to the Roman, than Morayshire is in proportion to the British empire; yet it contained, as its name indicates, and as their remains still attest, ten cities, the least considerable of which, Gebora, contains, as Buck

the ruins of more sumptuous edifices than any city in the British islands, London itself not excepted, can now boast. It was the same all over the east, and in all the southern provinces of the Roman empire. Whence has arisen this astonishing disproportion between the great things done by the citizens in ancient and in modern times, when in the latter the means of enlarged cultivation have been so immeasurably extendThis passage conveys an idea of the peculiar ed? It is in vain to say, it is because we have style, and perhaps unique charm, of Lamar- more social and domestic happiness, and our tine's work. It is the mixture of vivid paint- wealth is devoted to these objects, not external ing with moral reflection—of nature with sen-embellishment. Social and domestic happiness timent of sensibility to beauty, with gratitude are in the direct, not in the inverse ratio of geneto its Author, which constitutes its great attrac-ral refinement and the spread of intellectual tion. Considering in what spirit the French intelligence. The domestic duties are better Revolution was cradled, and from what infide- nourished in the temple than in the gin-shop; lity it arose, it is consoling to see such senti- the admirers of sculpture will make better ments conceived and published among them. fathers and husbands than the lovers of whisky. True they are not the sentiments of the major- Is it that we want funds for such undertakings? ity, at least in towns; but what then? The Why, London is richer than ever Rome was; majority is ever guided by the thoughts of the the commerce of the world, not of the eastern great, not in its own but a preceding age. It caravans, flows through its bosom. The sums is the opinions of the great among our grand- annually squandered in Manchester and Glasfathers that govern the majority at this time; gow on intoxicating liquors, would soon make our great men will guide our grandsons. If them rival the eternal structures of Tadmor we would foresee what a future age is to and Palmyra. Is it that the great bulk of our think, we must observe what a few great men people are unavoidably chained by their chaare now thinking. Voltaire and Rousseau racter and climate to gross and degrading enhave ruled France for two generations; the joyments? Is it that the spreading of knowday of Chateaubriand and Guizot and Lamar-ledge, intelligence, and free institutions, only time will come in due time. confirms the sway of sensual gratification; and But the extraordinary magnitude of these that a pure and spiritual religion tends only ruins in the middle of an Asiatic wilderness, to strengthen the fetters of passion and selfsuggests another consideration. We are per-ishness? Is it that the inherent depravity of petually speaking of the march of intellect, the vast spread of intelligence, the advancing civilization of the world; and in some respect our boasts are well founded. Certainly, in one particular, society has made a mighty step in advance. The abolition of domestic slavery has emancipated the millions who formerly toiled in bondage; the art of printing has multiplied an hundred fold the reading and think ing world. Our opportunities, therefore, have been prodigiously enlarged; our means of elevation are tenfold what they were in ancient times. But has our elevation itself kept pace with these enlarged means? Has the in

the human heart appears the more clearly as man is emancipated from the fetters of autho rity: must we go back to early ages for noble and elevated motives of action; is the spread of freedom but another word for the extension of brutality? God forbid that so melancholy a doctrine should have any foundation in human nature! We mention the facts, and leave it to future ages to discover their solution: contenting ourselves with pointing out to our self-applauding countrymen how much they have to do before they attain the level of their advantages, or justify the boundless blessings which Providence has bestowed upon them.

The plain of Troy, seen by moonlight, fur- | of the seraglio, which prolongs those of the city, nishes the subject of one of our author's most and form at the extremity of the hill which sup

by hills covered with houses, and covered by | Mussulmen, and descend from the heights of innumerable lines of ships lying at anchor Pera to the shores of the sea. No one evet along the quays. Vessels of every description are to be seen there, from the Arabian bark, the prow of which is raised, and darts along like the ancient galleys, to the ship of the line, with three decks, and its sides studded with brazen mouths. Multitudes of Turkish barks circulate through that forest of masts, serving the purpose of carriages in that maritime city, and disturb, in their swift progress through the waves, clouds of albatros, which, like beautiful white pigeons, rise from the sea on their approach, to descend and repose again on the unruffled surface. It is impossible to count the vessels which lie on the water from the Seraglio point to the suburb of Eyoub and the delicious valley of the Sweet Waters. The Thames at London exhibits nothing comparable to it."-(II. 262—265.)

passes at that hour: you would suppose your. self an hundred miles from the capital, if a confused hum, wafted by the wind, was not occasionally heard, which speedily died away among the branches of the cypress. These sounds weakened by distance; the songs of the sailors in the vessels; the stroke of the oars in the water; the drums of the military bands in the barracks; the songs of the women who lulled their children to sleep; the cries of the Muetzlim who, from the summits of the minarets, called the faithful to evening prayers; the evening gun which boomed across the Bosphorus, the signal of repose to the fleetall these sounds combined to form one confused murmur, which strangely contrasted with the perfect silence around me, and produced the deepest impression. The seraglio, with its vast peninsula, dark with plane-trees and cypresses, stood forth like a promontory of forests between the two seas which slept beneath my eyes. The moon shone on the numerous kiosks; and the old walls of the palace of Amurath stood forth like huge rocks from the obscure gloom of the plane-trees. Before me was the scene, in my mind was the recollection, of all the glorious and sinister events which had there taken place. The impression was the strongest, the most overwhelming, which a sensitive mind could receive. All was there mingled-man and God, society and nature, mental agitation, the melancholy repose of thought. I know not whether I participated in the great movement of associated beings who enjoy or suffer in that mighty assemblage, or in that nocturnal slumber of the elements, which murmured thus, and raised the mind above the cares of cities and empires into the bosom of nature and of God."-(III. 283, 284.)

"Beautiful as the European side of the Bosphorus is, the Asiatic is infinitely more striking. It owes nothing to man, but every thing to nature. There is neither a Buyukdéré nor a Therapia; nor palaces of ambassadors, nor an Armenian nor Frank city; there is nothing but mountains with glens which separate them; little valleys enamelled with green, which lie at the foot of the overhanging rocks; torrents which enliven the scene with their foam; forests which darken it by their shade, or dip their boughs in the waves; a variety of forms, of tints, and of foliage, which the pencil of the painter is alike unable to represent or the pen of the poet to describe. A few cottages perched on the summit of projecting rocks, or sheltered in the bosom of a deeply indented bay, alone tell you of the presence of man. The evergreen oaks hang in such masses over the waves that the boatmen glide under their branches, and often sleep cradled in their arms. Such is the character of the "Il faut du tems," says Voltaire, “pourque coast on the Asiatic side as far as the castle les grandes reputations murissent." As a deof Mahomet II., which seems to shut it in as scriber of nature, we place Lamartine at the closely as any Swiss lake. Beyond that, the head of all writers, ancient or modern-above character changes; the hills are less rugged, Scott or Chateaubriand, Madame de Staël or and descend in gentler slopes to the water's Humboldt. He aims at a different object from edge; charming little plains, checkered with any of these great writers. He does not, like fruit-trees and shaded by planes, frequently them, describe the emotion produced on the open; and the delicious Sweet Waters of Asia mind by the contemplation of nature; he exhibit a scene of enchantment equal to any paints the objects in the scene itself, their described in the Arabian Nights. Women, colours and traits, their forms and substance, children, and black slaves in every variety of their lights and shadows. A painter following costume and colour; veiled ladies from Con- exactly what he portrays, would make a glostantinople; cattle and buffaloes ruminating in rious gallery of landscapes. He is, moreover, the pastures; Arab horses clothed in the most a charming poet, an eloquent debater, and has sumptuous trappings of velvet and gold; written many able and important works on caïques filled with Armenian and Circassian politics, yet we never recollect, during the last young women, seated under the shade or play-twenty years, to have heard his name mening with their children, some of the most ravishing beauty, form a scene of variety and interest probably unique in the world."-(III. 331, 332.)

These are the details of the piece: here is the general impression:

"One evening, by the light of a splendid moon, which was reflected from the sea of Marmora, and the violet summits of Mount Olympus, I sat alone under the cypresses of The Ladders of the Dead; those cypresses which overshadow innumerable tombs of

tioned in English society except once, when an old and caustic, but most able judge, now no more, said, "I have been reading Lamartine's Travels in the East-it seems a perfect rhapsody."

We must not suppose, however, from this, that the English nation is incapable cf appreciating the highest degree of eminence in the fine arts, or that we are never destined to rise to excellence in any but the mechanical. It is the multitude of subordinate writers of mode. rate merit who obstruct all the avenues to

great distinction, which really occasions the phenomenon. Strange as it may appear, it is a fact abundantly proved by literary history, and which may be verified by every day's experience, that men are in general insensible to the highest class of intellectual merit when it first appears, and that it is by slow degrees and the opinion oft repeated, of the really superior in successive generations, that it is at length raised to its deserved and lasting pedestal. There are instances to the contrary, such as Scott and Byron: but they are the exception, not the rule. We seldom do justice but

to the dead. Contemporary jealousy, literary envy, general timidity, the dread of ridicule, the confusion of rival works, form so many obsta cles to the speedy acquisition of a great living reputation. To the illustrious of past ages. however, we pay a universal and willing homage. Contemporary genius appears with a twinkling and uncertain glow, like the shifting and confused lights of a great city seen at night from a distance: while the spirits of the dead shine with an imperishable lustre, far re moved in the upper firmament from the dis tractions of the rivalry of a lower world.

THE COPYRIGHT QUESTION.*

dent, from the very different character and price of the editions of the older works which have been published of late years, that the desire to possess these standard works, and this thirst for solid information, is not confined to any one class of society; but that it embraces all ranks, and promises, before a long period has elapsed, to extend through the middle and even the working classes in the state a mass of useful and valuable information to which they have hitherto, in great part at least, been strangers. Not to mention the great extent to which extracts from these more valuable works

WHOEVER has contemplated of late years the | state of British literature, and compared it with the works of other countries who have preceded England in the career of arts or of arms, must have become sensible that some very powerful cause has, for a long period, been at work in producing the ephemeral character by which it is at present distinguished. It is a matter of common complaint, that every thing is now sacrificed to the desires or the gratification of the moment; that philosophy, descending from its high station as the instructor of men, has degenerated into the mere handmaid of art; that literature is devoted rather to afford amuse-have appeared in Chambers' Journal, the Penny ment for a passing hour, than furnish improvement to a long life; and that poetry itself has become rather the reflection of the fleeting fervour of the public mind, than the well from which noble and elevated sentiments are to be derived. We have only to take up the columns of a newspaper, to see how varied and endless are the efforts made to amuse the public, and how few the attempts to instruct or improve them; and if we examine the books which lie upon every drawing-room table, or the cata-lumns, for the tradesman and the shopkeeper. logues which show the purchases that have been made by any of the numerous book-clubs or circulating libraries which have sprung up in the country, we shall feel no surprise at the ephemeral nature of the literature which abounds, from the evidence there afforded of the transitory character of the public wishes which require to be gratified.

Magazines, and other similar publications of the day, it is sufficient to mention two facts, which show at once what a thirst for valuable information exists among the middle classes of society. Regularly every two years, there issues from the press a new edition of Gibbon's Rome; and Burke's Works are now published, one year, in sixteen handsome volumes octavo, for the peer and the legislator, and next year in two volumes royal octavo, in double co

As little is the false and vitiated taste of our general literature the result of any want of ability which is now directed to its prosecution. We have only to examine the periodical litera ture, or criticism of the day, to be convinced that the talent which is now devoted to literature is incomparably greater than it ever was in any former period of our history; and that It is not to be supposed, however, from this ample genius exists in Great Britain, to render circumstance, which is so well known as to this age as distinguished in philosophy and the have attracted universal observation, that the higher branches of knowledge, as the last was taste for standard or more solid literature has in military prowess and martial renown. If either materially declined, or is in any danger any one doubts this, let him compare the milkof becoming extinct. Decisive evidence to the and-water pages of the Monthly Review forty contrary is to be found in the fact, that a years ago, with the brilliant criticisms of greater number of reprints of standard works, Lockhart and Macaulay in the Quarterly or Edboth on theology, history, and philosophy, have inburgh Review at this time; or the periodical issued from the press within the last ten years, literature at the close of the war, with that than in any former corresponding period of which is now to be seen in the standard maBritish history. And what is still more re-gazines of the present day. To a person markable, and not a little gratifying, it is evi

Blackwood's Magazine, January, 1812.-Written when Lord Mahon's Copyright Bill, since passed into a law. was before Parliament.

habituated to the dazzling conceptions of the periodical writers in these times, the corre sponding literature in the eighteenth century appears insupportably pedantic and tedious