betwixt a Cherokee and a Chinaman -and not scared by any one's pistols, for once he volunteered to fight the first lieutenant across the table, sideways at that. None of your nonsense, Señor Gringo,' chimed in the commissary; I not only heard old Bogus yelling down the hatch, equal to an entire tribe of wild Comanchees, squaws and all, but what's more, it isn't by any means a small vol-au-vent that can throw this stiff ship on her beam-ends, and pitch your humble servant clean out of his bunk, and never to touch bottom until his cabeza brought up, like a roundshot, against that infernal mizzenmast.' 'Oho! you've been taking in sail again, you timid lubber,' screamed my jolly ally, Mr Montacute, from his state-room to leeward, enjoying the foregoing altercation with the outsiders, and whom, ensconced within his dormitory, old breczy Eolus, or any other motive power, save perhaps a corkscrew, would have found considerable difficulty to have ousted; for such tenacity for the vested rights and privileges of a commissioned officer when off guard, and such downright careless abandon for 'tobacco and ladies,' as my friend Monty possessed, was truly refreshing to contemplate.

"But," resumed the Lieutenant, after the foregoing digression, “perceiving that the individuals I was arraigned before were not only incredulous, but somewhat pugnaciously inclined, I said-The fact is, messmates, knowing your anxiety to get home, and since you have all, more or less, carped and complained a little at our extreme caution in carrying sail, I determined to oblige you in a

body this evening; and now it's my opinion that there isn't a whole bolt of dimity left in the frigate, except in the windsails-ringtail and bobstay spritsail-to catch the wind as it comes through the hawse-holes; and how or when,' I added, we are to make a harbour, the Lord only can tell.'

"Hereupon a few strong saucers and dish covers began to circulate quite freely about the gunroom; and I had every reason to believe that they were directed at my head, more especially since my remarks had been capped by a shout of approval from the watchofficers, in answer to the universal grunt of derision which emanated from the idlers. At this stage of the action, having, as I religiously hoped, poured oil on the troubled waters, Harry Greenfield and me proceeded to dash ourselves slightly with spirits; after which I turned in composedly, and slept like a top. But," added the Lieutenant, in concluding his narrative, "I never from that hour heard more complaints, carry sail how we would; and as for Commodore Bogus Bricks, he moped all the remainder of the voyage home."

"Why, uncle!" exclaimed Fred, "I thought you were going to be shipwrecked, and escape in the jollyboat-and then eat one another-and be frost-bitten, captured by a pirate, and sold for a slave-and all that sort of thing you know-instead of only taking a ducking and coming back quite safe!" The Lieutenant smiled at the youngster's enthusiasm ; and throwing his cheroot into the fire, he rang the bell, and after requesting his mayor-domo to lay out some bivalves and a pint of pale ale, he dismissed his audience for the night.

No one could have written this book except a member of presbytery; and very few members of presbytery could have written a volume so amusing, yet withal absurd. Every page of it is stamped with the idiosyncracy of the author. We lay down the majority of books, however commendable they may be in sentiment, and excellent in style, without having acquired any clue to the habits, tastes, prejudices, or character of the composers. We may understand the subject under treatment, but we gather little insight into the peculiarities of the operator. Not so with Dr Aiton. Like the showman in the panorama, he is never absent from our eye, adding not a little to the interest of the peristrephic painting, by the occasional oddity of the descriptions in which he indulges, and his constant revelations of himself. Indeed, without the personality of the Doctor, the work would lose half of its charm. We have had sketches over and over again, more or less vivid, of Mediterranean scenery, of Egypt and its colossal antiquities, of the Holy Land, the Isles of Greece, and of Rome; and, considering the high literary attainments of writers who have gone before him, it is no depreciation of Dr Aiton's volume to say, that several have excelled him in artistical accomplishment, and in graphic power.

Yet we doubt whether there has yet been produced a more amusing volume upon the East. It is precisely what we should expect an account of Great Britain to be, if written, after the experiences of a month or two, by the inhabitant of another zone, full of native feeling and strong prejudice. Such a onewere he Mussulman or Copt-would no doubt refer every object he beheld to the standard of his own recollections, and deliver judgment in a very summary way, upon what most of us would consider to be extremely slender evidence. And in just the same spirit Dr Aiton emerges from the

manse of Dolphinton, in the Upper Ward of Lanarkshire, determined to see everything with his own eyes, through his own peculiar spectacles, and to condemn or acquit according to his preconceived opinions. We find no fault with this-far otherwise. As a mere picture of travel, the work, though far from contemptible in point of merit, would have excited little attention; in the peculiarities, and constant appearance of the author on the stage, lies the absolute zest of the volume.

We could have wished, however, that a work, emanating from a mem ber of the Established Church of Scotland, who has attained the rank of Doctor of Divinity, had displayed less coarseness of expression and more refinement than this. We pass from simple absurdities, because in these there is no offence. But the reader may well be excused for experiencing an occasional qualm, when he finds the author recounting, with unnecessary minuteness, the sensations which beset his inner man when suffering under extreme tribulation, his manifold perspirations and toils, and a great deal more which had better have been left untold. All this is the more annoying, because it destroys the effect of other passages in the book. which are not liable to similar censure. With many of the best points of a Scottish divine, amongst which we may number his biblical knowledge and his strong enthusiasm, he unites the foibles which are only confined to a few. His eccentricities are such that we must protest against his book being received as a favourable or proper specimen of the literature of our national church. And yet we do not wish to pass indiscriminate censure. A more kindly man, in so far as the natural instincts are concerned, we believe it would be difficult to find. That he has within him a certain power of eloquence, many passages of this volume prove-though there are others which convince us that he

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not sail in the same ship with Saint Paul, and having convinced himself of the extreme probability of their companionship) went ashore, and was desperately beset at landing. "But now we are on the landingplace, and what a host of beggars calling out Nix mangiare; and this, too, is the name of the street. give coppers only increases the difficulty, and the crowd thickens around till licks and kicks are employed to get elbow room. Hurrying along amidst drought and dust, I crossed a crowded drawbridge over a deep fosse, covered at bottom with bananas and orange-trees. I passed under a deep dark gateway; then mounting up. wards, and through the markets, and still in the midst of brown, blear-eyed natives, I reached a long street of stairs, and here we toiled, and blew, and sweated as if we had been so many blackguards_condemned to the treadmill." The Doctor, it will be observed, is not very choice in his similes, even with regard to himself. However, notwithstanding such unpleasant perspiration, he managed to get up the stairs at last, and appears to have been pleased with La Valetta.

Landing at Alexandria, the Doctor proceeded to Cairo, where he made a narrow escape from being shot by a sentinel, to whose challenge he could not reply. Notwithstanding this sample of the dangers which beset travellers in a distant land, Dr Aiton was nothing dismayed. "In going," says he, "to the Pyramids, I resolved to be alone. I had heard much of the danger of being robbed, or perhaps murdered; and I had read that the donkey boys who attended the author of Eothen overheard an ill-looking fellow, in soldier's uniform, propose to the Sheik to put him to death whilst he was in the interior of the great pyramid. Fancy, says that lively writer, a struggle for life in one of those burialchambers, with acres and acres of solid masonry between myself and the daylight. But I weighed the danger of robbery and murder in one scale, against the heroism of the exploit and the enjoyment in the full influence of the solitary scene in the other; and accordingly I set out, soon after midnight, for the ferry of Gihez, to visit the Pyramids, the distance being

about ten or twelve miles." Far be it from us to question the attribute of heroism so distinctly claimed. So, as Coleridge writes

"Like one that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And, having once turned round, walks on And turns no more his head; Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread;' the Doctor made the best of his way through the mud-fields of Egypt, until he reached the edge of the Desert. In that lonely spot, where, as tradition tells, many an unwary traveller has surrendered both purse and life to the treacherous and cruel Arab, our friend appears to have experienced some blameless spasms; yet no grim child of Ishmael rushed upon him, and he reached his destination in safety. Dr Aiton's account of his ascent of the Pyramids is so graphic that we must give it in his own words; indeed, we question whether it would have been possible for Smollett, in his broadest comic mood, to heighten the effect of the picture :—

"I had read so much of the bulk of the Pyramids, and they now appeared so positively insignificant in their dimensions, that I felt mortified; but I remembered that I had the same impression many years ago when first approaching the Alps. And I began to consider that as the extreme clearness of the atmosphere gave them the appearance of proximity in the far distance, so it would also partly account for the diminutive aspect they persisted in presenting. I dismounted, and scrambled up the bold ledge of rock, and found myself already

a hundred feet above the level of the Nile. Here my Arab guide produced cold fowl, bread, wine, and Nile water in plenty at the foot of this mountain of stone, which now began to indicate its colossal magnitude. Standing beside the Pyramid, and looking from the base to the top, and especially examining the vast dimensions of each separate stone, I thus obtained an adequate impression of the magnitude of its dimensions, which produced a calm and speechless, but elevated feeling of awe.

The Arabs

men, women, and children-came crowding around me, but they seemed kind and

inoffensive. I was advised to mount up to the top before the sun gained strength; and, skipping like chamois on a mountain, two Arabs took hold of me by each