protect us even from thee, oh terrible one!" and such as these were the exclamations and religious confidences of Benjamin Haydon when he met a dun, or had a bill presented, or found an execution in his house. But we must pass on. Next comes a little series of Soldiers' Memoirs. Great steadiness, great coolness, imperturbable courage, and "dash," where need be, will probably, in the British or in any other army, lead to an early death or a late commission. There is a story told of King William the Fourth, that he was one day inspecting a militia regiment, with the Duke of Buckingham on one side, and a sun-burnt Indian veteran on the other. The King suddenly found it necessary to make a speech, and the natural topic was the glorious contingencies of a military career. By way of illustration, he pointed to the Duke on his left, and said, "You see me supported here, on one side, by a descendant of the Plantagenets-one whose lineage is equal to my own; while, on the other, my side is pressed by a man sprung from the very dregs of the people." The veteran thought the illustration too strong, and we are not sure that the Curetons, the Elleys, and others mentioned in this volume, may not think that their progenitors' deeds of heroism might have been celebrated under a less expressive title-page. In good sooth, although this is an amusing little volume, the title-page is-we will not say a deception, but certainly a misnomer. Cureton and Elley had doubtless touched the King's money as proffered by a recruiting-officer, and so had Waterloo Ewart; but General Whitelock did not rise from the ranks: it is mere trifling with words to say that Sir Robert Wilson rose from the ranks. Major Semple Lisle was never, even in name, a private. Sir Hudson Lowe commenced his career as an ensign in the Devonshire Militia. Lord George Sackville, one of the favourite "Juniuses," so far from rising from the ranks, was a lieutenant-general before the world had an opportunity of discovering that he was a coward. The volume is a series of sketchy military biographies with an inappropriate title.

There is, among the novelties of the quarter, a strangert who has learned our language, and become a member of the Royal College of Surgeons; who, if we may credit his portrait, wears a long beard and an outrè oriental dress, whereby perchance to cultivate the favour of that somewhat unintellectual class of British females, who, if they cannot entice a lord to their drawing-rooms, are content to doat upon a Turk, a flowering aloe, a Chinese mandarin,

or a Piccadilly showman. An effendi, who is so complaisant as to say of the British isles that "their religion is the purest, their government and laws the best in the world, and they are second to no people in the enjoyment of privileges and blessings such as could only be enjoyed by a peculiar people under the immediate protection of the Almighty Benefactor," is a gentleman who cannot fail to be popular in the smaller petti-côteries of this metropolis.

The volume in question is "a brief sketch of Habeeb Risk Allah's life and travels. Why it is called the "Thistle and the Cedar of Lebanon" we are not very clearly told. It is, indeed, intimated that the Thistle is the Eastern Church, and the Cedar is the Church of England; but by which of these two vegetables Mr. Risk Allah may consider himself typified, is not said, and perhaps it is not absolutely necessary to inquire.

Mr. Risk Allah, be it known to all who are interested in the fortunes of the hero, was born at Shuwei fât on the Lebanon, which he describes in just such fashion as a man generally describes a place where he has never been. As Risk Allah lived there with his uncle (whom he declares to be a person of some importance); for ten years, he ought to know something of the place, and of the religion of the Drusesstill a problem among Eastern travellers. All we shall say is, that if any one will take the first chapter of this book, and compare it with Colonel Churchill's recently-published "Ten Years' Residence at Mount Lebanon," and shall, after that comparison, believe that the writer ever passed ten years upon that mountain, he will differ very much from us upon many canons of criticism. Whether, however, the writer be the son of a Syrian Sheik, or a Syrian peasant, of a Jewish or Christian denomination

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No wonder he spoke good English, and was exceedingly polite and well-bred, for the worthy man had passed some time in England, and in the best society too. That humble haberdasher at Beyrout had been a lion here at the very best houses of the great people, and had actually made his appearance at Windsor, where he was received as a Syrian prince, and treated with great huspitality by royalty itself."

We happen to know something of the Lebanon curselves, and could rectify several little matters related in this volume if it were at all worth while.

is of no possible importance, especially as he has the tact to pass over all his own early history, or to tone it down to the proper bourgeoisie taste of "gentility:" but we cannot get rid of the feeling that there is something not genuine, nor even very well simulated in this volume. There is no air of the East, no Eastern thought, no oriental expression. There is such baldness and poverty of idea and imagination, that we are instinctively inclined to question the possibility of the work being the writing of an oriental. Of course we are not doubting Mr. Risk Allah's word. If there be such a gentleman as Risk Allah, and if he be like the individual portrayed in front of the book, and if he be a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, and if he have really written this poor, trashy volume in English, we of course thoroughly believe all he says, and congratulate him upon having described Damascus in language and ideas as thoroughly western as those last employed upon the same subject by the last cockney tourist. Still we must be allowed, in our uncertainty, to say, that not being assured of the existence of Risk Allah, out of his book, we should not be surprised if Mr. Brown, or Mr. Jones, or Mr. Robinson, should come forward, at some future time, and own the volume. Whenever Mr. Brown does this, we hereby protest that we shall affirm that we were not taken in. Lord Hardwicke, as the Persian spy in Athens, was much more like a Persian; Montesquieu, as the Turkish ambassador, was much more like a Turk; Goldsmith was much more like a Chinese, than is this Mr. Brown like a Syrian Christian. If, however, there be really and truly an actual Risk Allah, we beg pardon, and congratulate him upon his success in thoroughly deorientalizing himself.

The "Lives of the Laureates" we have dealt fully with, in a separate article, and we believe we have now run through every production of the quarter which can advance even a colourable claim to rank as a biography; unless, indeed, it be insisted that we ought not to pass uncatalogued an impenetrable mass of print, called "A Life of Savanarola," and a of Madame de Staël," whereof we have fully spoken in our after pages.

"Life

The Right Hon. George Bankes, in his capacity of Patron of the Mutual Improvement Society of Corfe Castle, has undertaken to write a book of the composite order, partaking of the characteristics of the history, the memoir, and the guide-book. Not satisfied with provincial plaudits, he has chosen a London publisher, and sent forth his "Story of Corfe Castle" as

"The Story of Corfe Castle, and of many who have lived there," by the Right Hon. George Bankes, M.P. for the County of Dorset. London: Murray. 1853.

a real literary achievement. Now we doubt the prudence of this. The "Story of Corfe Castle is adapted to the climate of Dorset: the county newspaper there will honestly reverence it as an inspiration; the farmers will buy "the Squire's book," and make their daughters read it to them, in small modicums, as the nights grow long: then will they dream of invading Danes, or of Lady Bankes "with her daughters, women, and five soldiers," holding out against an army of rebels, and "heaving over stones and hot embers" on the assailants; or, perchance, of Queen Elfrida flogging her son with the castle-clock! Poachers, perchance, may be scared from trespassing in woods where Edward the Martyr was dragged by the stirrup after being stabbed in the back.

"In the following year," [the Wareham rustics will reverently read] "the body of the murdered king was found: a pillar of fire, descending from above, illuminated the place where he was hid. Some devout people of Wareham brought it to the church of St. Mary in that village, and buried it in a plain manner."

William of Malmesbury and Roger of Wendover agree, in opposition to Mr. Bankes, that "the wicked woman, Alfdritha, and her son Ethelred, ordered the corpse of the king and martyr, St. Eadward, to be ignominiously buried at Wareham, in the midst of public rejoicing and festivity." "Envying him," says the latter, "even holy ground when dead."

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From this time," Mr Bankes proceeds," the fountain where the body had lain yielded pure and sweet water, being called St. Edward's fountain,' and infirm people were daily healed there. The news of these transactions being deceased king, resolved to remove the body to a more suitcirculated, Alfer, Earl of Mercia, a faithful adherent to the able place of sepulture. Inviting all bishops, abbots, and nobility to assist him, he sent to Wolfrida, abbess of Wilton, to come with her nuns and perform the funeral rites with due solemnity. The noble company thus convened, being joined by a great number of the country people, came to Wareham, where the body, on being taken out of the tomb in which it had lain three years, was found as free from corruption as on the day when it was placed there: it was carried on a bier to Shaftesbury. Among the concourse of people were two poor lame persons, who were cured on approaching the bier. Elfrida, struck with remorse, prepared to join this noble funeral procession, hoping thus to make some atonement for her crime; but her utmost efforts could not prevent the horse horses, being an intrepid lady, but not one of them would she rode from running backwards. She tried several advance a step: she then attempted to go on foot, but with no better success."

What "mutual improvement" can be derived from these silly old monkish legends, repeated without a word indicative of the causes that led to their invention, it would be vain to guess. We must warn the Dorsetshire farmers, however, that if they desire to know any thing of the History of England, they must not take their county member as their guide. They will get a far better notion of the character of Saint Dunstan even from Hume than they

will from Bankes, and a much clearer view of the wars of the Commonwealth from Brodie's "British Empire" than they will from either. The three great topics of the quarter have been the re-settlement of the Government of India; the Revolution in China; and last, and largest, the attempt of Russia upon Turkey. Each of these topics has its article in the NEW QUARTERLY, and its little swarm of books. We here mark them only as they have borne upon the literature of the quarter.

The attention directed to India has encouraged the publication of two separate journals of travel in that peninsula by British Ladies. It would appear, however, from the Governor-General's despatches, that the next works upon Indian soil will be works of a very public nature, which will be got up upon a very large scale, and will have a considerable run all through British India.

The

Among the political pamphlets the most generally read has been Mr. Cobden's brochure, "How wars are got up in In lia." "Public opinion," says the member for the West Riding, "has not hitherto been opposed to an extension of our dominion in the East. On the contrary, it is believed to be profitable to the nation, and all classes are ready to hail with approbation every fresh acquisition of territory." readers of the NEW QUARTERLY are already fully aware of the facts and arguments by which the fallacy of the money profit of extended dominion can be exposed. The greater the territory, the greater the debt," is a theme we have descanted upon too fully in former Numbers to render it necessary that we should shew how Mr. Cobden labours the same point. As to China, so little is known upon the subject, that all that can be done is to put that little into readable shape. Huc's travels in Tartary, and the recent correspondence in the Times, must be the basis of any tolerable narrative of this change in the government, habits, and religion, of one half of the human race.

Of the many catchpennies which the event has generated, the French book we have made the basis of our article is undoubtedly the best. The Russian question has produced a hailstorm of books, some of them as weighty as those that fell around the Jesuit Missionaries in the mountains of Thibet.

*Mr. Urquhart's "Progress of Russia" is not, as its title would appear to suggest, a pamphlet, but a thick octavo volume, containing thirty-nine chapters, and treating de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis. In an Introduction

of forty-five pages the author states his opinion upon the crisis in the East; and his opinion is, that the present demonstration against Turkey is all a stratagem, the real deSuch is the new True sign being Denmark. Faith according to the prophet Urquhart. Now Mr. David Urquhart is, in some respects, a very kindred mind to the late Mr. Benjamin Haydon, of whom we have just spoken. He claims to found a school, to have his dicta received with an autos épǹ, to be a guide infallible. He collected, long ago, a few crazy followers, who, we believe, still abide by him; and he attracted also some young men of good parts, who outgrew their folly, and discovered the real metal of their idol. Unfortunately for this great High Priest of Urquhartism, his adherents pushed him into the House of Commons. Tried by that infallible test, Urquhart at once appeared to be a monomaniac and a bore. His ruling idea is, that Russia is at the bottom of every thing-that Russia arranges the bargains upon our stock exchangethat Russia bribes Lord Palmerston—that Russia got up the revolts of 1848-that Russian diplomacy rules the world-that every thing is done by Russia, and that without Russia nothing is that is.

pages.

This dreary, fatuous idea is here distended over five hundred We have Russia in Spain, Russia in Hungary, Russia in Scandinavia, Russia in Denmark, Russia on the Danube, Russia on the Euxine, Russia in the Levant, and Russia in the Red Sea; in which last locality we devoutly hope that some charitable priest will lay the foul Russian bogey that SO haunts poor David Urquhart.

All the travellers of course press forward to tell us about Moldavia and Wallachia, and the Golden Horn, and Adrianople, and Syria, and the Holy Places. Colonel Churchill's work is decidedly the most important: it is, indeed, the only book of Eastern travel which contains really original information. Some others, however, are much more amusing. Of the flitters to and fro upon the earth, the St. Johns are legion, and their industry is indefatigable. They skim every thing; but woe to the reader who confides that the mass is at all like the specimen they bring away. "There and Back Again in search of Beauty" is a pilgrimage by Mr. James Augustus St. John, whose search after beauty is somewhat tedious. When Mr. St. John finds beauty in a calm at sea we are not disposed to quarrel with him; but when he tells us that he "seems to have got within the serene halls of eternity," we inhale a strong flavour of cockneyism. However, our readers know what Mr. J. A. St. John's book is likely to be. He is, we believe, the patriarch of the tribe-a tribe which has given us "Isis," "Lybian Desert,"