general one against all unbelief, but a specific one against the gospel. According to the Koran, they are Cafirs or Infidels, par eminence, and the zealous Musselman cannot vindicate his orthodoxy more triumphantly than by spitting in the face of every Frank whom he encounters in the lanes of Constantinople, or on the wharves of Alexandria. The first Christian travellers in the east had, therefore, a twofold difficulty to encounter, one resulting from the imperfect civilization, the other from the religious prejudice of the nations whom they visited. The first circumstance which wrought a change in the views of the orientals, was their inevitable discovery of the superior value of European manufactures. When they had once allowed themselves to be convinced, that for firearms, cutlery, and many other articles of luxury and convenience, they must be indebted to the Franks, they began to court their intercourse; but it is curious to observe how they continued to do it, without abating a tittle of their orthodox contempt. Europeans found more favour in their eyes, but it was the favour shown to craftsmen and mechanics, and the Turkish Aga, while he bargained for a pair of pistols or a shirt, made no scruple of spitting on the beard of the vile giaour who offered them for sale. The notion now prevailed, that all Europeans were manufacturers and pedlars, an opinion which gained them freer access to those countries, but by no means added greatly to their dignity. A second discovery soon followed. The residence of one or two physicians from the west, in Egypt and the Levant, opened the eyes of the inhabitants to a new trait of superiority in the unclean dogs, as they politely call us, and one of more moment than all others previously known. The gift of healing is valued every where beyond all price, but no where so extravagantly as in those countries where disease abounds, and medicine is only known by name. A few simple cures performed by surgeons to the European factories, or by travelling physicians, spread like wildfire through the miserable population of the west of Asia. The Russels of Aleppo received every thing but an apotheosis, and many an awkward operator whom necessity had palmed upon the French and English factories in Asia as their medical advisers, acquired a reputation never earned by the most successful practice in the wards of the Hotel Dieu and St Bartholomew's. Every Frank was now a doctor. The most solemn disavowals were unable to rescue the most unpretending stranger from this honourable imputation. Natu

ralists, traders, soldiers, missionaries, all received a medical degree, on getting into Asia; but the multitude of their patients, the unreasonableness of their demands, and the moderation of their fees, made it a dear bought honour.

This false idea of the sanative abilities of all Christian travellers, annoying as it has been in its effects to many individuals, has opened a new source of information with respect to oriental countries. Domestic society among Mohammedans is, like their dwelling-houses, protected on the outside by a uniform dead wall. Nothing can be seen upon the surface. To know any thing about them you must get inside; a privilege which none but a physician can enjoy. So long as the Mohammedans retain their present views, with respect to female character and manners, the harem must be kept inviolate from all but necessary visiters. And it is only there that the real disposition of the individual appears to be revealed. The uniform monotony of character exhibited by Turks and other Moslems when abroad, is obviously constrained and artificial; it is only in domestic privacy that those distinctive traits which mark the individual become apparent. It seems probable, therefore, that for many years to come, medical men must be relied upon for information of this kind; a circumstance which has suggested the propriety of travellers and missionaries furnishing themselves with some degree of skill in that profession, if for no other purpose, merely as a passport, and the surest means of conciliating favour. That this device will prove successful there can be no doubt; for nothing can exceed the confidence reposed in European therapeutics by the orientals. It seems as if their extreme religious and political antipathy to Franks and Christians, as such, had reacted to produce an opposite extreme of superstitious admiration of their merits in a medical capacity. And yet it is amusing to observe here, as in a former case, with what facility this reverential awe is made to coalesce with a cordial detestation of the same men as unbelievers, and a profound contempt for them as savages. A curious example of this kind is given by Mr Madden. His Greek drogueman had been applauding, in no measured terms, the skill of his employer, at a coffee-shop in Constantinople. After some extravagant falsehood of this kind, " one turned up his eyes and said there was but one God; another praised my skill and cried, Mahomet is the friend of God! The latter gentleman held out his wrist to have his pulse felt, and said in a very civil tone of voice,

'Guehl giaour,' 'Come you dog!' This endearing epithet Turks consider ought not to give an infidel offence, because it is more a man's misfortune than his fault to be born a Christian, and consequently a dog."" The fact indeed is, that they attribute the immense superiority of European doctors to their dealings with the evil one, and consequently view their persons with the same admiring horror which the vulgar among us would entertain for an accomplished conjurer. Those who travel in the east must, therefore, still prepare themselves to be despised and abhorred, while they are wondered at and lauded. Most travellers, it is to be presumed, will have philosophy enough to face this danger, and few will probably neglect hereafter to provide themselves with so useful a recommendation and protection as the medical profession undoubtedly affords.

It seems to have been a consideration of the great advantages enjoyed by medical men in oriental travel, that induced the writer of the book before us to record his observations for the public eye. We know nothing of him further than his book reveals, and that amounts to this, that he is an English surgeon, led to travel in the east by a desire to pursue the study of the plague in the countries where it rages. From his style, and the tone of his reflections, we should infer that he was quite a young man, of good sense, and tolerable education, but neither very strict in his principles, nor refined in taste and sentiment. We know not whether to consider it a virtue or a fault, that he is wholly free from any tincture of romance. He sees nothing with a poet's eye*. Most travellers, whatever their profession, have exhibited some symptoms of enthusiastic temperament, at some point of their progress. So natural, indeed, is it to look for this in travellers, that even Mr Madden tries occasionally to support the character by loud declamations in "Cambyses's vein" upon the lapse of time, the mutability of earthly things, &c. These flights, however, are most evidently not expressions of strong feeling, but set speeches. The only subject upon which the author seems at all enthusiastic is the plague, a circumstance which might have been expected from his profession, "the primary object of his travels, and the fact that he has written "a volu

• We do not regard as an exception the poetic mood in which he found himself while at Jerusalem. His enthusiasm there, as elsewhere, has a very factitious aspect, and his lyrics are, as he justly terms them, "feeble verses.'

minous work," to use his own expression, on that scourge of the Levant. The reader must not conclude, however, that our author is a dull, dry, matter-of-fact proser. We have seldom read a book more uniformly lively and amusing. In all circumstances, even the most irksome and appalling, at sea, in the desert, in the pest-house, he would seem, from his own account at least, to have maintained his spirits unimpaired, according to his own maxim, that cheerfulness and a fearless heart will do more to preserve the traveller from disease than all the prophylactics of Currie or of Moseley. But though this light-heartedness undoubtedly adds interest to his narrative, there is something in it which we do not like. It is too professional. He describes the horrors of the oriental lazar-house with too much sang froid and levity for ordinary readers. The same spirit runs through the whole book. We look in vain for kindly feeling, sympathy, and moral sensibility. The author's fortitude and cheerfulness are too exclusively of that sort which may be acquired by long familiarity with scenes of misery, without the operation of a moral principle. The following description is undoubtedly a graphic one; but is its tone agreeable?

"The plague daily increased in violence, eighteen a day of the natives perished, and few days passed over without the death of Europeans. For so small a population as that of Alexandria, say sixteen thousand souls, the mortality was considerable: every house was shut up, the servants were not suffered to go out, money was passed through vinegar before it was touched, letters were smoked, papers were handled with tongs, passengers in the streets poked unwary strangers with their sticks, to avoid communication, people thronged round the doctors' shops to know how many died in the night, the plague was discussed at breakfast, contagion was described at dinner, buboes and carbuncles (horresco refferens) were our themes at supper. The laws of infection were handled by young ladies in the drawing-room; a cat could communicate the plague, but a dog was less dangerous; an ass was a pestiferous animal, but a horse was non-contagious. Fresh bread was highly susceptible, but butcher's meat was non-productive.' If you looked at a man, he felt his groin; if you complained of a headache, there was a general flight; if you went abroad with a sallow cheek, the people fled in all directions; if you touched the skirt of a Christian's coat, you raised his choler; and if you talked of M'Clean, your intellect was suspected to be impaired. Heaven preserve you from a quarantine in Egypt! It is not the death of one's neighbours which is so overcoming, I am now accustomed to coffins; I can hear of a

case next door without a sympathetic pain in my axilla; but it is the horror of eternally hearing of plague; it is the terror of contagion, which is depicted in every face; it is the presentation of pestilential apparitions and discourses to the eye and to the ear, morning, noon, and night, which make a house in quarantine a lazar domicile, for the anticipation of death and the anatomy of melancholy,"

When we add that Mr Madden is habitually flippant and too fond of saying piquant things, even at the expense of decency, as well as prone to embellish and exaggerate in matters that concern himself, we have indicated nearly all the faults which injure the book as a whole. Its merits are considerable. Mr M. is obviously a man of sense, who takes clear and just views, when unprejudiced. On subjects which he understands from personal investigation, he avoids the weakness of retailing the cheap common-places of his predecessors, by expressing his own views. The following paragraph contains, in a few words, an excellent description of the Koran:

"It unfortunately happens, that the study requisite to attain a competent knowledge of Arabic or Turkish, to make a translation of the Koran, is so intense, that men appreciate the value of the volume they interpret, by the labour it has cost them to comprehend it. Hence Sale's translation of the Koran is, of all, the most correct and literal as to the text, and yet the most erroneous in the commentary. In every absurdity (and there are not a few in the perspicuous book') he points out a beauty. In every contradiction (and they abound in the first five chapters) he reconciles the difference. In every monstrous doctrine (and most abominable ones pervade the volume) he makes an allegory of what is lustful, and deprives sensuality of half its grossness. In short, Sale was the apologist of Mahometanism, and gives by far too favourable a view of the religion, as Maracci does an unworthy and a vile one of it. I had the patience to read over the Koran twice, and I am disposed to think the term 'fade,' applied to it by Volney, was extremely appropriate. The Koreish dialect, in which it was written, is now only known to the learned, and much of the boasted beauty of its poetry is unintelligible even to them. In our translation there has been no attempt to preserve the jingling terminations of the original, which is similar in style to some of the ancient sacred songs of the Jews. Every alternate passage is a repetition of the former; in every alternate page you have a recurrence of the injunction to exterminate unbelievers. The promise to the faithful, of a garden of delights, with a river flowing through it,' sickens with its frequency; and the threat to the Christian, of a couch of hell fire, and a grievous couch it shall be,' is doled out till the reader is cloyed with the repetition. It would be difficult to put together a greater tissue of

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