warm heart.

Hitherto Mr. Irving had catered for the New World. He was now to identify himself with the literators of the Old, by publishing "The Sketch-Book," under (to use his own words) "the kind and cordial auspices of Sir Walter Scott," and by the agency of the prince of book-sellers, John Murray. This Sketch-Book he compares with that of a wayward travelling artist, who, following the bent of his vagrant inclination, copies objects in nooks, and corners, and by-places; the result being a volume crowded with cottages, and landscapes, and obscure ruins, but neglectful of St. Peter's, or the Colosseum, the cascade of Terni, or the bay of Naples, and without a single glacier or volcano in the whole collection. This absence of aught volcanic or violent, removes the sketches from participation in Diderot's judgment, that "les esquisses ont communément un feu que le tableau n'a pas. C'est le moment de chaleur de l'artiste, &c." Look not in these esquisses for feu or chaleur. They are the placid, dreamy droppings of a limner's truant crayon, wandering over the paper at its own sweet will. Variety the collection designedly has; the collector's design being that it should contain something to suit each reader, to harmonize with every note in the gamut of taste. "Few guests," argued he, in arranging his Miscellany-"few guests sit down to a varied table with an equal appetite for every dish. One has an elegant horror of a roasted pig; another holds a curry or a devil in utter abomination; a third cannot tolerate the ancient flavor of venison and wild fowl; and a fourth, of truly masculine stomach, looks with sovereign contempt on those knick-knacks here and there dished up for the ladies. Thus each article is condemned in its turn; and yet amidst this variety of appetites, seldom does a dish go away from the table without being tasted and relished by some one or other of the

DE L'ALLEMAGNE, IV., § ii. This "wise saw," in its warning against the perverting tendencies of satire, reminds us of a "modern instance." Thomas Moore, a man of as gay and kindly a disposition as the author of "Salmagundi," had attained a far greater renown as a satirist, and with far greater pretensions to that "bad eminence," when appre hensive of its corroding power, as well on agent as patient, he wrote in his diary (1819): "Resolved never to have anything more to do with satire; it is a path in which one not only strews, but gathers thorns." Five years previously, Lady Donegal had urged him to take the same resolution, on the same grounds.

18 "The Widow and her Son," to ope the sacred scource of sympathetic tears-the affliction of a widow, aged, solitary, destitute, bereaved of her last solace; and there is "The Pride of the Village," a love tale, and a tale of sorrow unto death-a prose elegy, most musical, most melancholy, on as pretty a low-born lass as ever ran on the green sward. Is humor to you a metal more attractive (though every true taste for pathos involves a hearty relish for humor, and vice versâ)? There is the discursive chapter on "Little Britain"-that heart's core of the city, that stronghold of John Bullism, as it seemed to Mr. Crayon, looking as usual through colored spectacles, so that he here recognized a fragment of London as it was in its better days, with its antiquated folks and fashions, where flourish in great preservation many of the holiday games and customs of yore, and where still revisit the glimpses of the moon not a few ghosts in full-bottomed wigs and hanging sleeves, or in lappets, hoops, and brocade. Such a little Britain was hardly to be found in Great Britain when Geoffrey pilgrimized amongst us; and is now traceable, in its merest outline, only in his Sketch-Book. Then, again, there is the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," recording the expedition of Ichabod Crane, and his adventure with the Goblin Horseman; and the essay on" John Bull," from an American point of view; and the "Christmas Dinner" at Bracebridge Hall, with boar's head and carol, with wassail bowl of "gentle lamb's wool," celebrated by Master Simon, in certain roistering staves about the " merry browne bowle" and the "merry deep canne," and followed by a Christmas mummery, superintended by a Lord of Misrule, in which Ancient Christmas duly figures away with a frostbitten nose, and Dame Mince Pie, in the venerable magnificence of a faded brocade, long stomacher, peaked hat, and high-heeled shoes. Or, if your demand be for the romantic and the superstitious, is there not "The Spectre Bridegroom," and the peerless narrative of "Rip Van Winkle?" Or, should you be of literary predilections, there are the essay on "The Art of Book-making," and the Shakspearean researches in the Boar's Head Tavern, and Stratford-on-Avon. A like miscellaneous character pertains to "Bracebridge Hall," and the same refractive medium of colored spectacles everywhere oc

curs.

The merry England described, is almost in the state of the old lady in the ballad, market-bound, egg-laden, and sleepily

recubans sub tegmine fagi, to whom, locked in dreamland, "there came by a pedlar, and his name was Stout, and he cut her petticoats all round about;" so that when the matron recovered her consciousness, it was (Hibernice) not to know herself, and to infer from the new guise of her scant classic drapery that her personal ME (Teutonicè) had evaporated, or transmigrated, or disintegrated itself in some ineffable fashion, precipitating this ineffable residuum or result. Geoffrey Crayon has played more amiable but equally revolutionary pranks on "merry England," adorning her in vestments so out of date (alas!), and so dreadfully fictitious, that she fails to recognize in the glass even the general resemblance. He has painted her, not as the sun paints portraits, with harsh and unflattering fidelity, blackening every frown, deepening every furrow, indenting every crow's foot, but rather as the sentimental artist, who has a soul above accuracy, and who groups together prosy people in poetic attitudes, after the manner of the family piece in the "Vicar of Wakefield." These Yorkshire squires and villagers are but demi-semi-realities. They are mostly too good to be true. The angularities of the originals are too much smoothed down, their crooked ways made straight, and their rough places plain. Distance seems to lend enchantment to the view, and a dreamy haze to soften the vision. Be it far from us, never

the plains of Italy provided him with copious matériel for legendary lore; but the critics decided that of this matériel he did not make the most. Notwithstanding his advantages, he might have written the tales, it was averred, without being a traveller at all; instead of spending three years on them, he might have finished the thing in three months, without stirring out of London. The ghost stories, it was alleged, were some of them old, and nearly all badly told—that is, not told seriously, but in a sort of half-witty vein, with little dancing quirks interspersed. "Good Heavens!" cried a Blackwood censor, "are we come to this, that men of this rank cannot even make a robbery terrific, or a love story tolerable?" The story of the Inn at Terracina, of the Beheaded Lady, of Buckthorne, &c., all were more or less found wanting; in descriptive passages, where the traveller had taken up his rest at Venice, Florence, Naples, and other such inspiring abodes, he was declared to have produced either a blank or a blunder; and the only meed of praise awarded him was for that section of the book devoted to 66 some of his old genuine stuff-the quaintnesses of the ancient Dutch heers and frows of the delicious land of the Manhattoes." He was therefore counselled to eschew European and classical subjects, and to riot once more, as Knickerbocker, in pumpkin pies, grinning negroes, smoking skippers, plump little Dutch maidens, and their grizzly-periwigged papas. If he would have honor, he was bid go seek it by prophesying and historicising about his own country, and his father's house.

So far he followed this counsel as to

romances.

Who the great secret of the Deep possess'd, And, issuing through the portals of the West, Fearless, resolved, with every sail unfurl'd, Planted his standard on the Unknown World.*

Verily, a fascinating narrative—a strange, saddening, yet inspiring tale of the great Genoese sea-king, and of his great fight of

66

Poll,

not to lend a willing ear to what the one had to say of the other. Prior's life was voted a pattern of industry, but left unread. Forster's was highly, widely, and deservedly admired, and remains the Life-being executed, as Mr. Irving himself testifies, with a spirit, a feeling, a grace, and an eloquence, that leave nothing to be desired. That Mr. Irving's biography made its appearance at all, when by its own averment it was no desideratum, is explained by the fact that its author had already published it in a meagre and fragmentary form, which attracted slight notice; and now, in the course of revising and republishing his opera omnia, felt called upon to reproduce it in a more complete and satisfactory shape. He writes con amore, and with ever-prompt indulgence, of one to whose literary genius his own is indebted and akin. Whereas Johnson said of poor Goldsmith, "Let not his frailties be remembered he was a very great man,"-it is Mr. Irving's course to say, let them rather be remembered, since their tendency is to endear; since he was no man's enemy but his own; since his errors, in the main, inflicted evil on none but himself, and were so blended with humorous and touching circumstances as to disarm anger and conciliate kind

161

ness; since there is something in the harmless infirmities of a good and great, but erring creature, that pleads affectingly to our common nature-as being ourselves also in the body, wg xas ȧuroi övres Év dwuari. Prudish censors may scout this sort of indulgence on the part of a critical biographer. For ourselves, we have too much fellow-feeling with Elia's veneration for an honest obliquity of mind, to find the indulgence culpable; thinking with Elia, that the more laughable blunders a man shall commit in your company, the more tests he giveth you that he will not bewray or overreach you. "I love the safety," protests dear, canonized Charles, "which a palpable hallucination warrants, the security which a word out of season ratifies. And take my word for this, reader, and say a fool told you, if you please, that he who hath not a dram of folly in his mixture, hath pounds of much worse matter in his composition." Goldy was no fool, though; but his nature found it occasionally dulce desipere, and not always in loco.

a

The "Life of Mahomet," like the preceding, seemed to require explanation, since it confessedly could add no new fact to those prophet. The author tells us it forms part of already known concerning the Arabian projected series of writings illustrative of the domination of the Arabs in Spain-most of the particulars being drawn from Spanish sources, with the addition of assistance from the elaborate work by Dr. Weil, and other recent authorities; his object in constructing it being, to digest into an easy, perspicuous, and flowing narrative (wherein so few can compete with him) the admitted facts concerning Mahomet, together with the leading legends and traditions connected with his creed, and a summary of the creed itself. The pretensions of this memoir are, therefore, small, as regards historical weight. It is deficient, moreover, in the matter of contemporary history, so essential to a due understanding of Mahomet's political and religious standpoint. The criticism on Mahomet's personal character is of that moderate and judicious kind which the author's antecedents might have warranted us to expect-neither condemning the prophet as an impudent impostor, juggler, and sensualist, nor exalting him' to the honors of hero-worship. Mahomet is neither taxed with heartless selfishness, and ruinous imbecility, nor eulogized for "total freedom from cant," 29.66 and "annihilation of self."* deadly earnestness,"

Carlyle.

He is por

CHAPTER III.

Points of Similitude and of Contrast between the Ancient Persian and the Modern Turkish Em

pires.-Egypt as a Persian and as a Turkish Province.-Importance of Egypt and Syria, with a view to the Conquest of Central Asia and India. -Alexander, Cæsar, and Napoleon, Conquerors of Egypt.-Glory of the Foundation of Alexandria. Compared with Charlemagne's Project for Uniting the Danube and the Rhine.Splendor of Alexandria under the Ptolemies.Caesar's Egyptian Campaign.-Cleopatra.-Napoleon's Egyptian Expedition.

"THIS old Europe is weary and stale to me. It is in the East that Genius must seek for Empire and Glory." So said Napoleon, in the plentitude of his power: and his fondest day-dreams, when he was First Consul, and when he was Emperor, were of renewing the attempt which he had made, when he was the simple Republican General, the attempt to retrace Alexander's path of conquest, and become Lord of the Oriental world. Similar visions had haunted the ardent mind of Cæsar. The great Roman is said to have wept with emulative envy, when, during his first command in Spain, he gazed in the Temple of Hercules at Gades on the statue of the Macedonian conqueror; and the last projects which he was forming, when his career was cut short by assassination, were schemes of leading

his legions against Parthia, and the other powers of the Eastern world.

The part of Alexander's life, that possesses most interest for modern readers, probably consists of his operations in the remote East, in Central Asia, and the north of Hindostan. His campaigns in those districts fix our attention, on account of the formidable difficulties, arising both from the natural features of the country, and the obstinate bravery of the inhabitants, which he encountered and overcame. We, and not we alone, have learned by bitter experience, during the last few years, how to appreciate those difficulties. The Russian expedition against Khiva and Bokhara, in 1840, and our own recent wars in Affghanistan and the Punjaub, have done more to aggrandize the fame of Alexander, than to build up the reputation of any of the modern European commanders. The disastrous fates of Peroffski's and Elphinstone's armies must make both Muscovite and English military students envy the superior fortune, or admire the superior genius, with which the Macedonian columns were conducted. And the carnage of our troops, even when successful, at Moodkee, at Ferozeshah, at Sobraon, and at Chillianwallah, ought effectually to hinder us from depreciating the triumphs which Alexander gained in the same regions over the ancestors of our own foes.