France. Wine comes from France, give us another bumper to the bonne cause." We drank it together. "Will the 'bonne cause' turn Protestant ?" asked Mr. Esmond.

"No, hang it," says the other, "he 'll defend our Faith as in duty bound, but he 'll stick by his own. The hind and the panther shall run in the same car, by Jove. Righteousness and peace shall kiss each other,

and we'll have Father Massilon to walk down the aisle

of St. Paul's, cheek by jowl with Dr. Sacheverel. Give us more wine: here's a health to the 'bonne cause,' kneeling-damme, let's drink it kneeling."-He was quite flushed and wild with wine as he was talking. "And suppose," says Esmond, who had always this gloomy apprehension, the "bonne cause' should give us up to the French, as his father and uncle did before him." "Give us up to the French!" starts up Bolingbroke, "is there any English gentleman that fears that? You who have seen Blenheim and Ramillies, afraid of the French! Your ancestors and mine, and brave old Webb's yonder, have met them in a hundred fields, and our children will be ready to do the like. Who's he that wishes for more men from England. My cousin Westmoreland? Give us up to the French, pshaw!" "His uncle did," says Mr. Esmond.

"And what happened to his grandfather ?" broke out St. John, filling out another bumper. "Here's to the greatest monarch England ever saw, here's to the Englishman that made a kingdom of her. Our great king came from Huntingdon, not Hanover; our fathers didn't look for a Dutchman to rule us.-Let him come and we'll keep him, and we'll show him Whitehall. If be's a traitor let us have him here to deal with him; and then there are spirits here as great as any that have gone before. There are men here that can look at danger in the face and not be frightened at it. Traitor, treason! what names are these to scare you or me?

Are all Oliver's men dead, or his glorious name forgotten in fifty years? Are there no men equal to him, think you, as good, aye, as good? God save the King! and if the monarchy fails us, God save the British Re

public!"

He filled another great bumper, and tossed it and up drained it wildly, just as the noise of rapid carriagewheels approaching was stopped at our door; and after a hurried knock and a moment's interval, Mr. Swift came into the hall, ran upstairs to the room we were dining in, and entered it with a perturbed face.

We were obliged six months since to defend We were obliged six months since to defend poor Goldsmith from some strong liberties taken with him by Lady Lytton. We feel almost a remorse, for Mr. Thackeray's utter and evident incapacity of understanding, comprehending, or in the least degree imagining, what such a man as Bolingbroke could possibly have been, makes us feel that Goldsmith might have fallen into worse hands than those of Lady Lytton: but to our extract

St. John, excited with drink, was making some wild gortation out of Macbeth, but Swift stopped him.

Drink no more, my lord, for God's sake," says he, "I come with the most dreadful news."

Is the Queen dead P" cries out Bolingbroke, seizing on a water-glass.

"No, Duke Hamilton is dead; he was murdered an hour ago by Mohun and Macartney: they had a quarrel this morning: they gave him not so much time as to write a letter. He went for a couple of his friends, and he is dead, and Mohun, too, the bloody villain, who was set on him. They fought in Hyde Park just before sunset: the Duke killed Mohun, and Macartney came up and stabbed him, and the dog is fled. I have your charist below: send to every part of the country and

apprehend that villain: come to the duke's house and see if any life be left in him."

"O Beatrix, Beatrix," thought Esmond, "and here ends my poor girl's ambition!"

Beatrix is hurt in vanity, but whole in heart. Now, however, the family circle know that Esmond is the true Lord Castlewood. To gain another peerage and win his Beatrix, "Le Grand Serieux," engages in a Jacobite plot. A ridiculous travestie of the History of the last moments of Queen Anne follows. The Pretender, it seems, was in England at the time of Queen Anne's death; and if it had not occured that he rode off to Castlewood on a love

making journey to Beatrix, the appearance of the whig noblemen at the council-board had been all in vain, and James the Third would have been king of England. As it happened, he came back to Charing Cross just in time to hear the proclamation of George the First.

The idol of Esmond's heart-the beautiful Beatrix-who is now about eight and twenty, escapes to France, and becomes the mistress of the Pretender, and his companion in those orgies which made that excellent young man mauvais ton even in the not-intolerant city of Paris. Henry immediately marries her mother!

So ends this strange tale.

Our present object is not to criticise the plot of this marvellously incoherent work. Every reader will do that as he reads.

We were struck at first with the care wherewith Mr. Thackeray managed all the haberof history. dashery The sword-knots and sedan-chairs, the names of contemporary painters, and the titles that figure in Burnet, Swift, forth with tolerable accuracy; nor were we and the writers of the period, are all brought prepared to quarrel with a few absurd inconsistencies, such as the making Swift, in such an age of dress, mistake Colonel Esmond of the Queen's The imitation of the paper in the Spectator is Guards for a messenger in a printing office. uncommonly well done; and Mr. Thackeray takes due note that the ladies of the time wore red-heeled shoes. But as we progressed we pression, and compelled to wonder what in the were very quickly startled out of this first im

world the author of such a book could have proposed to himself. Mr. Thackeray is not an ignorant man: he cannot be ignorant of the common ordinary events of English history: he must know that these volumes are no more a faithful description of the men and manners tion of the manners of the court of Japan. of Queen Anne's time, than they are a descripIs it carelessness, wilfulness, or a vulgar and unworthy striving after mere grotesqueness? or has he adopted the method of M. Dumas, and set some scrub to write him the groundwork of an historical novel, reserving to himself only

the task of embroidering the cheaply-produced fabric?

Let us take one from an hundred instances of inconceivable misconception. The author had read in Macaulay that "the coarse and ignorant country squire, who thought it belonged to his dignity to have grace said at his table by an ecclesiastic in full canonicals, found means to reconcile dignity with economy, and hired a young Levite for his board and ten pounds a year." He had read, also, that, if "this reverend man was permitted to dine with the family, he was expected to content himself with the plainest fare; and as soon as the tarts and cheesecakes made their appearance, he quitted his seat, and stood aloof till he was summoned to return thanks for the repast." Having read this, our author sets to work to make a close copy of the picture, and shocks us constantly by making, not chaplains, but beneficed clergymen, rise from the dinner-table to which they had been invited as guests, and leave the room as soon as the cheesecakes The vraisemblance of such a picture in the age of the seven bishops and of Doctor Sacheverell is, of course, not to be questioned. It provokes, however, a doubt whether Mr. Thackeray is laughing at Mr. Macaulay, or whether he really does believe that he is describing the manners of the time of Queen Anne.

appear.

But if Mr. Thackeray sometimes startles us by his evident incapacity to catch the spirit of the manners of the time he essays to depict, what shall we say to his portraiture of events. Great novelists have no doubt committed great sins in this particular. Scott's "Quentin Durward" is a case in every one's memory; and Dumas has taken sad liberties with the History of France.

But in all these cases, some single anachronism has been committed for a great object. Scott wished to introduce a highly dramatic character, who figured in a time and a history not very popularly known, so he took him out of his age bodily, and transplanted him. Forgive the one liberty, and all the rest was consistent. Mr. Thackeray has taken a piece of English history which every man, woman, and child of the present day knows perfectly, and which they would be ashamed to be found tripping in in mere conversation; and having taken out all the names, he wilfully; and apparently for mere amusement, falsifies all the facts. Now it does appear to us that this is perfectly unjustifiable. The licence of an historical novelist is, as we have always understood it, this that he may invent every thing not inconsistent with what we know as historic fact. The writer who abuses this licence always does harm, however considerable his object, and however single his offence. But if this is to be done systematically, in mere

sport and wilfulness, the sooner we interdict the circulation of such trash the better-it is buffoonery pushed into a wrong sphere.

We should have found little fault with the nonsense of the young Pretender listening to the proclamation of George the First; but seeing that the catastrophe of the novel is made to turn upon the Duke of Hamilton being killed when upon the point of marriage with the heroine, we think that Mr. Thackeray could hardly have been aware that at least one half of his readers knew all the time they were reading his book that the Duke of Hamilton, at the time of his death, was a married man, and that probably at least one-third of them had read in Swift's Journal to Stella, of the widow's sorrow and despair at the event. We will, however, quote this passage of the journal to Stella.

"Before this comes to your hands, you will have heard of the most terrible accident that hath almost ever happened. This morning, at eight, my man brought me word, that Duke Hamilton had fought with Lord Mohun, and killed him, and was brought home wounded. I immediately sent him to the duke's house, in St. James's square; but the porter could hardly answer for tears, and a great rabble was about the house. In short, they fought at seven this morning. The dog Mohun was killed on the spot; and, while the duke was over him, Mohun shortened his sword, stabbed him in at

the shoulder to the heart. The duke was helped toward the Cake-house, by the ring in Hyde Park (where they fought), and died on the grass, before he could reach

the house; and was brought home in his coach by eight, while the poor duchess was asleep. Macartney and one Hamilton were the seconds, who fought likewise, and

are both fled. I am told that a footman of Lord Mohun's stabbed Duke Hamilton; and some say Mac

artney did so too. Mohun gave the affront, and yet sent the challenge. I am infinitely concerned for the poor duke, who was a frank, honest, good-natured man. I loved him very well, and I think he loved me better. He had the greatest mind in the world to have me go with him to France, but durst not tell it me; and those he did tell, said, "I could not be spared;" which was true. They have removed the poor duchess to a lodging in the neighbourhood, where I have been I never with her two hours, and am just come away. saw so melancholy a scene; for inded all reasons for real grief belong to her; nor is it possible for any body to be a greater loser in all regards. She has moved my very scul. The lodging was inconvenient, and they would have removed her to another; but I and she must have been tortured with the noise of the would not suffer it, because it had no room backward, Grub-street screamers mentioning her husband's murder in her ears.

Boy,' to be out to-morrow, and as malicious as possible, and very proper for Abel Roper, the printer of it.

"I have been drawing up a paragraph for the Post

"Nov. 18. The Committee of Council is to sit this afternoon upon the affair of Duke Hamilton's murder, and I hope a proclamation will be out against Macartney. her know Lord Treasurer will see her. She is mightily I was just now (it is now noon) with the duchess, to let indisposed. The jury have not yet brought in their verdict upon the coroner's inquest. We suspect Macartney stabbed the duke while he was fighting."

There was no foundation for this invention of Swift's. But the Duke of Hamilton was

a Tory, and a Jacobite, and Swift and his friends made a little political capital out of the event. He repeats this same slander in his History." Macartney, however, although he escaped to Hanover, surrendered himself in 1716, took his trial in the King's Bench, and was acquitted of the murder, but was found guilty of manslaughter.

Burnet says that the duke was the aggressor: upon a very high provocation the Lord Mohun sent him a challenge." From other testimony we learn that the real occasion of the duel was, that the duke and Lord Mohun, having married two ladies who were near relativesboth nieces to the Earl of Macclesfield-and having been at law some time, they met on the 13th December at Mr. Orlebor's chambers in the Rolls, when, upon examination of Mr. Whitworth, who had been steward to the Lady Gerrard and the Macclesfield family, the duke said, "He had neither truth nor justice in him." Lord Mohun replied, "He had as much truth as His Grace;" upon which a challenge was carried by Lieut.-Gen. Macartney, Lord Mohun's second.

Mr. Thackeray's betrothed lover was not only married at the time when he describes him as settling the preliminaries with Beatrix, but be actually was the father of seven children. One of these, Lady Charlotte Edwin, was living within the memory of the present generation. The Duchess of Hamilton was daughter and sole heiress of Lord Gerrard of Bromley. It is rather hard that Mr. Thackeray should insist upon thrusting ladies of light character, like his Beatrix, into respectable quiet families.

Surely even the most voracious novel reader would find his interest in a story much decreased if he knew all the parties described, and also knew that the acts attributed to them, and the events imagined in respect of them, were ludicrously impossible. Many an Englishman has laughed at, but few have been much interested by, that French novel, wherein the whole plot is made to turn upon the struggles and intrigues of the Duc de Salisbury and the Comte de Derby, as to which shall obtain the dignity of Lord Mayor. Falsifying of familiar facts is not only an offence against historic truth: it is a blunder even in the story-maker.

We forbear from any further remark upon the characters of great men as imagined in this work, partly because we have already occupied a space incommensurate with the merits of the book, but still more because the public has already passed an unanimous and unmistakeable judgment upon the subject. Moreover, Mr. Thackeray is about to publish his lectures, and these topics will recur.

We would not be misunderstood to think lightly of Mr. Thackeray's powers as a novelIn his own walk he is the greatest of our

ist.

day. His pictures of contemporary society stand alone for exquisite finish; his quiet satire, so laboriously polished, and so smoothly sharpened, penetrates without a sound. "Vanity Fair" and "Pendennis" are works we cannot spare from our language. But even Mr. Thackeray cannot afford to write two such works as Henry Esmond. Let him keep his hands off history, or let him respect her truth.

THERE is no subject within the range of human knowledge whereon the ordinary English gentleman-well read in his classics, fluent in modern languages, careful in his history, omnivorous in general literature is so hopelessly and 50 contentedly ignorant as upon the languages of the East. The Polyglot title-page to Bagster's Greek Testaments arrests his eye for a moment, and raises a smile which has in it naught of curiosity. Every alphabet that is The Primeval Language, by the Rev. Charles Forster. 2 Vols. Bentley. London, 1852.

Discoveries in Egypt, Ethiopia, and the Peninsula of Sinai, in the Years 1842-45. By Dr. Richard Lepsius. Edited, with Notes, by Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie. London, Bentley, 1852.

India in Greece, or Truth in Mythology, by E. Poeoeke, Esq. London, Griffin, 1852.

Etudes sur le droit civil des Hindous; recherches de législation comparée sur les lois de l'Inde, les lois d'Athènes et de Rome et les coutumes des Germains. Par E. Gibelin. 2 Tomes, 8vo. Pondichery.

not either English, German, or Greek, is to him but a collection of scratches mysteriously absurd. As to the hieroglyphic character, he knows generally the purport of what Champollion and his successors have said; and as to the arrow-headed inscriptions, he awaits the revelations of Colonel Rawlinson. On all matters of eastern learning, from the character of Mohammad to the deciphering of the inscription at Bísitún, he is content to take upon trust the testimony of the first translator at hand, or to adopt the opinion of any one who professes to be an eastern scholar.

No wonder that we have mountebanks taking advantage of this comfortable and contented ignorance. The temptation is so great, that even men of real learning like Colonel Rawlinson are led to give themselves airs of confidence which circumstances do not warrant, and, as we shall some day take opportunity to

C

shew in detail, to hazard rash guesses quite unworthy of the reputation of men of science and searchers after truth.

We propose now to take a few of the most flagrant cases of imposture, and to shew the real character of the oriental acquirements of some one or two writers, who, if left alone, may possibly acquire a sort of prescriptive right to the repute of oriental scholars, bringing thus discredit upon the eastern learning which does exist among us.

We must, however, premise, that we by no means intend to include the name of Lepsius in our category. We have quoted the title of his work, simply to say that it is not the great work of this considerable Prussian scholar. It may amuse the scientific reader for a moment, to see the history of a Prussian dinner-party written in hieroglyphic character; and perhaps he may feel some interest in knowing the track the philosopher followed while fulfilling his scientific mission. There is nothing, however, in this book but a personal narrative of travels. They are no further amusing than as they contain the adventure and observation looked for in the diary of an ordinary traveller; and as M. Lepsius was not of a very enterprising or danger-seeking temperament, the volume is more than a trifle tedious. The real result of the labours of Lepsius is the great work now publishing in Prussia, the "Monuments of Egypt and Ethiopia," whereof two hundred and forty plates have already appeared, and seven hundred and sixty are to follow. Ten years ago the mission was undertaken, and this volume contains only the letters written home during its progress. We do not think that any reader would thank us were we to recommend him to buy this very unsatisfactory specimen of the mere shavings and chips of the material of a great work.†

We come now to that much pretending performance, "The Primeval Language," with its maps, its curious types, its wood engravings,

We cannot extend the exception so as to include the editor. Mr. Kenneth Mackenzie appears to be just capable of admiring Mr. Forster, and scarcely equal to emulating Mr. Pococke.

Mr. Bayle St. John; whom we were very much tempted to include in our list of smatterers, since he, too, pretends to have an opinion upon the interpretation of hieroglyphics; in his recent work entitled "Village Life in Egypt," makes grave charges against Dr. Lepsius, not only of "smashing whole inscriptions for the sake of carrying away some favourite bit," but of actually forging a cartouche on the breast of a statue in the front court of the great Temple of Carnac. How far this may be true we have no means of ascertaining; but a recent letter from Lord Talbot of Malahide to the Times newspaper gives some corroboration to the statement. We have noticed Mr. St. John's book elsewhere, but solely with a view to its merits as an entertaining volume of travels.

its stage properties of wisdom, wherewith the author surrounds himself, just as a conjuror at a village fair puts on a long robe and flourishes a divining rod, in order that he may look awful in the eyes of the rustics.

The object of these volumes is to shew that the inscriptions on the rocks of Sinai and the monuments of Egypt are all purely alphabetic, and written in what the author calls the old Arabic language.

This being an entirely new view of a subject to which we happen to have paid considerable attention, at once attracted our notice. On looking at the very first inscription (Part I. p. 48), we were, however, shocked to find that the reverend Mr. Forster is not only ignorant of the Arabic language; but, as we strongly suspect, that he is actually unacquainted with its alphabet. His ignorance of the language itself is sufficiently obvious; not two words that he offers being placed in grammatical construction or idiomatic order, and the translations given, shewing that he does not know the first rudiments of the system of Arabic inflexion, and cannot even distinguish between a verb and a noun. To explain our suspicion that Mr. Forster cannot read the Arabic character, it is necessary to inform our readers that most of the letters of the alphabet take different forms when they occur at the beginning, middle, or end of a word, and when they are joined to the preceding or succeeding letter, or isolated. This distinction is almost totally disregarded in the first volume, and the various forms are very often employed indiscriminately.

These may be errors of the press; but we can only say, that if a reading-boy at Messrs. Watts' or Cox's printing-houses were to pass over two such errors in a whole sheet, as occur by threes and fours in a page in the first part of the work before us, he would be at once dismissed. It is quite impossible that the person who corrected the press could have been acquainted with the Arabic alphabet.‡

Mr. Forster starts with the following "simple canon," as "the only sound rule of experimental decypherment," viz. "That, in comparing an unknown with known alphabets, letters of the same known forms be assumed to possess the same known powers," and he adds, "For however, in Greece and the idioms of the West, this rule might prove uncertain, there was, in the nature of the case, a moral assurance of its certainty and safety in the opposite quarter, arising from the unchanging character of all things in the East.

The second part is more correct. Did Mr. Forster in the interval between writing the first and second parts conscientiously apply himself to the Arabic ABC, or has he prevailed upon some "accomplished Orientalist" to assist him?

The reverend gentleman must have considerable "assurance" to make such an assertion. Let him compare the ancient alphabets of India with the modern; let him look at a Kufic coin and a MS. in Shikastah or Díwání; let him place side by side the old Chinese characters and a Japanese syllabarium; he will find that all things in the East are not quite so unchangeable as he suspected.

We must now turn to the versions given by Mr. Forster; but it will be necessary first to tell our readers that the Arabic language has two peculiarities; 1st, that there are a vast number of words signifying the same thing, or nearly the same thing; as, for instance, the well-known examples produced by Sir W. Jones, that there are 500 names for a lion, 200 for a serpent, more than 80 for honey, and above 1000 for a sword. In further proof, we may here add an anecdote, in which it is related that Sahban the poet, who was famed for his eloquence and knowledge of the Arabic language, on one occasion, whilst endeavouring to conclude a treaty of peace between two tribes, spoke for half a day without using the same word twice. 2dly, that one word very often, indeed most often, signifies many things. We may refer in illustration of this to the word, which, according to the dictionaries, has no less than 79 different meanings. These peculiarities obviously afford an immense latitude to a decypherer of unknown inscriptions, since, if it be desirable to give the meaning of a sword to a certain group of characters, he has more than a thousand words to choose from, and whatever power he may previously have assigned to the said characters, some one of these words will surely fit on the other hand, if he find three or four of his own letters in apposition, giving an Arabic word, it is easy to choose one of the many meanings of such word which will tally with the version of the context he may wish to support. Thus, nothing is more convenient than to adopt the Arabic language, if you wish to read an unknown inscription in your own way; and if you have sufficient strength of mind to disregard altogether the structure of the tongue there remains no further obstacle.

The first of the Sinai inscriptions, which we have chosen simply because it comes first, is

thus rendered:

عم كرع عدر اما عم عدرن رمح هزر نر عين مررف

Now this is no more Arabic than it is Chinese, except, indeed, that the words themselves are Arabic

and even if we allow Mr. Forster

*Mr. Pococke at present has India all to himself. We long to see Mr. Forster attack the old inscriptions in that country, and set Professor Wilson and Colonel Sykes right as to the Buddhist controversy.

the benefit of his own choice of their meanings, they can only signify as follows:

Čoetus hominum-os immisit aquæ; eamque sorpsit-aquâ abundavit locus (that is, if the word be a verb; if a noun, it signifies pluvia multa et vehemens)-coetus hominum-duæ pluvia multæ (the word is here a noun, as our interpreter asserts that the n which he adds is án, the dual affix of nouns)-calcitravit asinuspercussit fuste-ramus arboris-fons-amara res-curavit.

This curious agglomeration of words the reverend and learned gentleman translates thus:

"The people with prone mouth drinketh (at) the watersprings. The people (at) the two watersprings kicketh (like) an ass, smiting with the branch of a tree the well of bitterness he heals."

This sapient interpretation is fitly illustrated by a portrait of a wild donkey, which, however, might have been still more appropriately placed had it faced the title-page.

We must observe that the word nar, which is here rendered as the branch of a tree, (though it certainly has that sense) almost invariably means "male, masculine," and is a pure Persian word, having as much relation to "old Arabic" as it has to electricity.

After a long disquisition on wild asses, the author proceeds to give a short account of the contents of the Sinai inscriptions, according to his reading of them :

Among the events of the Exode these records comprise, besides the healing of the waters of Marah, the passage of the Red Sea, with the introduction of Pharaoh twice by name, and two notices of the Egyptian tyrant's vain attempt to save himself, by flight on horseback, from the returning waters; together with hieroglyphic representations of himself, and of his horse, in accordance with a hitherto unexplained passage of the Song of Moses: "For the horse of Pharaoh

went in, with his chariots and with his horsemen into the sea, and the Lord brought again the waters of the sea upon them." They comprise, further, the miraculous supplies of manna and of flesh; the battle of and of Aaron and Hur by their names; the same Rephidim, with the mention of Moses by his office, inscription repeated, describing the holding up of Moses' hands by Aaron and, Hur, and their supporting him with a stone, illustrated by a drawing, apparently of the stone, containing within it the inscription, and the figure of Moses over it with uplifted hands; and, lastly, the plague of fiery serpents, with the representation of a serpent in the act of coming down, as it were, from heaven upon a prostrate Israelite.