We lament that our limits will only permit us to mention the subjects of the remaining letters which compose this vo lume: they are employed in proving the inspiration of the Scripture, and answering various miscellaneous objections and cavils advanced against the Bible. We must at present take a reluctant leave of the author. Although we have already adduced some specimens of his style and composition, and shall have occasion to produce more in the course of our strictures on the second volume, yet we cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of laying before our readers the following highly beautiful and eloquent passage. Speaking of the analogy betwixt the difficulties offered in the sciences, and the mysteries of religion, he observes :

Philosophers, notwithstanding all these difficulties, recommend the cultivation and diffusion of the sciences, because of their tendency to sharpen the intellectual faculties of man, and meliorate his condition in society. With how much greater reason and earnestness, then, should Christians recommend the dissemination and adoption of "pure and undefiled religion," considering its direct tendency to enlarge the understanding, and yet fill it with the contemplation of Deity; to purify and harmonize the passions, to refine the moral sense, to qualify and strengthen for every function in life, to sustain under the pressure of affliction, to afford consolation in sickness, and enable us to triumph in death! What other science can even make a pretension to dethrone oppression, to abolish slavery, to exclude war, to extirpate fraud, to banish violence, to revive the withered blossoms of Paradise? Such are the pretensions and blessings of genuine Christianity; and wherever genuine Christianity prevails, they are experienced. Thus it accomplishes its promises on earth, where alone it has enemies; it will therefore accomplish them in heaven, where its friends reign. Here, indeed, its advocate must be reduced to silence; for how shall he display the meaning of its celestial promises! How describe dignity so vast, or picture glory so brilliant! How shall language delineate what mind cannot imagine! And where is that mind, among puny and ephemeral creatures, that can penetrate the thick obscure; that can describe the light of Perfect Knowledge; that can feel the glow of Perfect Love; that can breathe the air of Perfect Happiness! Vol. I. pp. 75, 76.

Art. II. Travels in Greece, Palestine, Egypt, and Barbary, during the Years 1806 and 1807. By F. A. De Chateaubriand. Translated from the French by Frederic Shoberl, 8vo. 2 vols. pp. 815. Price 17. 14s. Colburn. 1811.

IT

seems that M. de Chateaubriand, a grandson of the distinguished Malesherbes, has attained much celebrity in France by means of works comparatively very little known in England. The last of these works, preceding this book of Travels, was intitled "The Martyrs; or, the Triumph of the Christian Religion," and is here denominated by the author an epopee. He thought the scenery of that work might be the most effectually poetical by being true to reality; and as his heroes were to be

represented accomplishing their labours, and finishing their lives, in several regions of the East, he was desirous that the general ground of the representation should be composed of images immediately taken from the landscapes, the edifices, and whatever is permanent in the manners of the people, of those regions. For this purpose, therefore, as a leading object, he resolved on the adventurous expedition narrated in the present work. He was determined to acquire the power of composing, in effect, in Greece or Palestine, even while sitting in a back parlour of a house in Paris. And never, certainly, was there a more costly preparation for securing the perfection of the secondary parts and merits of a fictitious work; for displaying its personages and transactions on a field characteristically marked in all its features of earth and water, wood and rock; for faithfully exhibiting the appropriate phenomena of the morning and evening in the climate of the Greeks and Hebrews; or for selecting the epithets most accurately expressive of the appearance of marble ruins in the light of the setting sun.

So earnest and ambitious an exertion for excellence in the delineation of the scenery, must bring on an author some cause for solicitude and extraordinary effort, lest the story should be less striking than the pictures, and lest his characters, like the people now inhabiting Greece, should seem unworthy of their place.

But whatever effect such an expedient may have had on the book, it is certain the enthusiasm that could conceive and execute such an enterprize for such an object, must render a man, when possessing, besides, the literary qualifications of an author, an interesting traveller. Indeed, from the impression we take of the character and talents of the man, as disclosed in the present work, we should strongly surmise that he is better fitted to interest and instruct as the journalist of travels than in any other literary capacity. While he is on this ground, there are palpable matters of fact to keep his imagination in order by means of the exercise of his senses. So long as he is constrained to be telling what he sees and hears, he cannot well go off into a measureless flight of fanciful speculation. We have him at such an advantage as we should have a man ascending by a balloon, which should be withheld by a cord from going beyond a certain distance, where he could be an useful observer and intelligencer; whereas, but for this retention by matters of fact, we do not know what would sometimes become of the mind of M.Chateaubriand,-for he now and then seems actuated by a mighty power of gas. We mean, in plain terms, that, from the character of this performance, we might question whether the author, if let loose to voluntary thought, so to speak, on a merely intellectual subject, would not have an imagination too much aiming at a certain largeness of range to permit the

most sound and accurate kind of thinking: but while he is viewing countries, and cities, and ruins, and caravans, the chief portion of his ideas is dictated to his mind, through his senses, by steady substantial realities; and if these ideas are faithfully transmitted to the reader, we are certain of at least so much pleasing and perhaps valuable truth as can be conveyed in these just pictures. We may be very happy to receive as a literary painter the man that we could not accept as our great Apollo' in the department of abstracted doctrine.

We do not know which of our author's qualities and qualifications ought to be put foremost in the enumeration; but he certainly has many excellent ones, both as a traveller and as a man; a good share of taste and learning, and a considerable portion of genius; inquisitiveness and courage; great sensibility, prone to pensive reflection; and piety that bears so strong an aspect of genuineness, as to maintain an amiable respectability even amidst all the superstition with which it is mingled. All this is accompanied by a great deal of, what we must still submit to borrow his countrymen's term to denominate, naiveté. He every where ingenuously discloses himself; turns his moral reflections as readily on himself as on any other man or thing; and talks before us all just as he would with his confidential friends. Indeed it should seem that he has much less to hazard than most men, by such frankness; for he avows honestly that he has nothing in his heart that he is ashamed to display to all the world.' We are quite of opinion that so unique a man ought to be known to all the world. And to this be has contributed all that could be derived from the unreserved communication of the record of his feelings, kept during his peregrination: for he says, I have made no retrenchments from my original notes. The object which I have in view will be accomplished if the reader perceives a perfect sincerity from the beginning of the work to the end.' It is the man more than the author that will be discovered throughout; I am continually speaking of myself, and spoke, as I thought, in security, for I had no intention of publishing these memoirs.' He does not say what determined him to the publication; but he begins his preface thus:

'If I were to assert that these travels were not intended to see the light; that I give them to the public with regret, and as it were in spite of myself, I should tell the truth, and probably nobody would believe me.'

We quote one paragraph more from the preface, in explanation of his own estimate of his work.

'I must therefore request the reader to consider this work rather as memoirs of year of my life, than as a book of travels. I pretend not to tread in the steps of a Chardin, a Tavernier, a Chandler, a Mungo Park, a Hun

boldt; or to be thoroughly acquainted with people through whose country I have merely passed. A moment is sufficient for a landscape painter to sketch a tree, to take a view, to draw a ruin: but whole years are too short for the study of men and manners, and for the profound investigation of arts and sciences. I am, nevertheless, fully aware of the respect that is due to the public, and it would be wrong to imagine I am here ushering into the world a work that has cost me no pains, no researches, no labour: it will be seen on the contrary, that I have scrupulously fulfilled my duties as a writer. Had I done nothing but determine the site of Lacedæmon, discover a new tomb at Mycena, and ascertain the situation of the ports of Carthage, still I shall deserve the gratitude of travellers.'

Two memoirs precede the travelling narration. The first sketches rapidly the history of Athens, from about the age of Augustus to the present time, and recounts, in order, the travellers who have visited and described it, during the last three centuries. It is briefly noted in what state the monuments were found, at several successive periods; the progress of their dilapidation is thus ascertained; and the memoir closes with expressions of regret. It is a melancholy reflection, that the civilized nations of Europe have done more injury to the monuments of Athens in the space of one hundred and fifty years, than all the barbarians together in a long series of ages: it is cruel to think that Alaric and Mahomet II. respected the Parthenon, and that it was demolished by Morosini and Lord Elgin.'

The second memoir, a work of much labour, learning, and zeal, is designed to establish the authenticity, indeed the infallability, of those traditions which have continued through the whole Christian æra to mark certain places in and near Jerusalem as the precise spots where the most memorable circumstan ces in the History of Christ and his Apostles took place. The author inakes too little allowance for the well known credulity of many of the Christian Fathers, and is not scrupulous of admitting the aid of here and there a groundless assumption; as, for instance, that the sanctuaries of the Christians, at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, being without the walls, must not have suffered much by the siege. On the whole, however, the argument is ably managed, and rendered very strong. The following paragraph affords a very brief summary of it.

What an astonishing body of evidence is here! The Apostles saw Jesus Christ, they knew the places honoured by the Son of Man; they transmitted the tradition to the first Christian church of Judea; a regular succession of bishops was established, and religiously preserved the sacred tradition. Eusebius appeared, and the history of the sacred places commenced. It was continued by Socrates, Sozomenes, Theodoret, Evagrius, and St. Jerome. Pilgrims thronged thither from all parts. From this period to the present day, an uninterrupted series of travels for fourteen centuries, gives us the same facts and the same descriptions. What tradi

tion was ever supported by such a host of witnesses? Besides, I have not made all the use of the crusades that I might have done.'

Is it not easy to ascertain exactly in what degree of faith and submissiveness our traveller is an adherent to the Catholic Church. We have some doubt whether his fidelity is of the most punctilious and reverential kind; partly because we do not discern among these memoranda of a portion of his life the traces of any competent number of ceremonial exercises, (which, however, he might perform and say nothing about); and partly because his observations and reflections sometimes appear to indicate a freer use of his faculties, than a dutiful son of the Ronrish Church should trust himself to make. At the same time, his veneration for holy places,' his large faith in traditions, and the zeal with which he vindicates Monks and Crusades, certainly look well for his orthodoxy. And it must be acknowledged, too, that he has not sought any subterfuge, from the philosophical ridicule of his countrymen, in professions of being actuated by no other principles than a liberal curiosity and a passion for the arts. On the contrary, he accompanies the mention of these principles, as a subordinate inducement, with a full surrender of himself, at the outset of the work, to. the scorn or pity which he lays his account with incurring, by an avowal that his principal motive to the journey was one that has nearly ceased to operate in Christendom, in this degenerate age.

To the principal motive which impelled me, after so many peregrinations, to leave France once more, were added other considerations. A voy. age to the east would complete the circle of studies which I had always promised myself to accomplish. In the deserts of America I had contemplated the monuments of nature; among the monuments of man, I was as yet acquainted with only two species of antiquities, the Celtic and the Roman. I had yet to visit the ruins of Athens, of Memphis, and of Carthage. I was therefore solicitous to perform a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.'At the present day it may appear somewhat strange to talk of vows and pilgrimages; but in regard to this subject I have no sense of shame, and have long ranged myself in the class of the weak and superstitious. Probably I shall be the last Frenchman that will ever quit his country to travel to the Holy Land, with the idea, the object, and the sentiments, of an ancient pilgrim. But if I have not the virtues which shone of yore, in the Sires de Coucy, de Nesle, de Castillon, de Montfort, faith at least is left me; and by this mark 1 might yet be recognized by the ancient crusaders.'

He makes commendable haste to reach Greece, and we may as well meet him on the coast of the Island of Calypso,' delivering his observations on the climate and its influence.

• In Greece, a suavity, a softness, a repose, pervade all nature, as well as the works of the ancients. You may almost conceive, as it were by intui