592 



Monthly Review of Literature., 



[Nov. 



though common enough from, are not 

 very frequent to India the usual route 

 is by the lied Sea, and there can never 

 be any reliance on a ready conveyance. 

 For a lady this same route has seldom 

 probably been thought of, and Mrs. 

 Colonel' Eiwood claims the distinction 

 of being the first to commit herself to 

 the venture. The undertaking it was 

 thought required good nerves, and Mrs. 

 Elwood's do not seem to have been par- 

 ticularly stout, for her fears were eter- 

 nal, and though pazienza, she says, was 

 her motto, she must, apparently, have 

 tried her husband's. Her experience 

 will turn to the advantage of those who 

 make the same attempt that is her com- 

 fort ; but though nothing really appalling 

 or scarcely very annoying was encoun- 

 tered, she will, we suspect, not tempt 

 many to follow her example, and cer- 

 tainly not encourage gentlemen to sub- 

 ject themselves to the unceasing anxiety 

 such an enterprize involves. 



The lady professes to have journalized 

 for her own amusement, and to have 

 communicated the contents of her jour- 

 nals in letters to a sister ; she gives, that 

 is, to the divisions of her subject, the 

 name of letters instead of chapters 

 They bear internal evidence of being 

 written at home. She describes, for 

 instance, the Egyptian female costume 

 (1826) as consisting of a coarse blue shift, 

 descending to the feet, with fashionably 

 long sleeves ; and in speaking of the port 

 of Yembo, she refers to Burckhardt's 

 book, which was not published till last 

 year. At home, too, it must have been 

 that she has hunted up all her history, 

 and antiquities, and learning, which 

 miserably mar the general naturalness 

 of her book. The whole of these are 

 mere interpolations not gathered in 

 her way, and of course just so many im- 

 pertinencies. King Solomon's ships, she 

 tells us, on the authority of her school 

 chronology, precisely 992 B.C., were 

 three years going and returning to Tar- 

 shish ; while of the Cathedral of Lucca, 

 she can only affirm it was built about 

 1070. Phsedon, the brother of Osiris, 

 colonized Turin, 1529 B.C. To Pisa, 

 according to Mrs. Colonel Ehvood's in- 

 terpretation, tradition assigns an Arca- 

 dian origin ; and tells us it was founded 

 by the inhabitants of its namesake in 

 Elis" which was not in Arcadia. In 

 her quotations she sometimes adds 

 even the latitudes. Mount Cenis is 

 11,977 feet in height; and Pompey the 

 Great once attempted a passage, &c. 

 Her "learning," too, is of the same qua- 

 lity. Lycopolis is so named from the 

 jackalls which were worshipped there. 

 Man, she styles somewhere, an ephemera. 

 In one place she records the remarkable 

 inscription, " Senatus populusque Ro- 

 mani ;" and quotes a couple of lines on 



Virgil's tomb, which will neither con- 

 strue nor scan. Among the Indian 

 deities she finds Cupid figuring under 

 the name of Dipuc, and confirms the 

 identity by observing, that, " in fact, 

 Dipuc is an anagram of Cupid." Her 

 Indian researches, as might be suppos- 

 ed, are quite overwhelming Colebrook, 

 Jones, and Wilkins, make her quite an 

 oracle. 



Passing all this gallimafre the narra- 

 tive is by no means of an unamusing 

 character. She describes what she saw- 

 gracefully enough ; we expected more 

 of the details of personal inconvenience. 

 Starting from Eastbourne, the lady pro- 

 ceeded through Paris, Geneva, Turin, 

 Genoa, Florence, Home, Naples, Mes- 

 sina, Malta, where the party were de- 

 tained three months, Alexandria, and 

 up the Nile to Cairo and Kenne the 

 point of the river from which she crossed 

 the desert to Cosseir. Up to this stage 

 of her journey, which occupies the bet- 

 ter part of a volume, it would be diffi- 

 cult to find any quotable matter. At 

 Naples she found, she says, plenty of 

 Venusses she particularizes Venus 

 Callipyga, and Venus Genetrix, and 

 between them, she adds, we do not know 

 why, '"Adonis very properly has taken 

 his station." 



At Malta, the apparatus and process 

 of making maccaroni struck her as worth 

 recording. It is so extremely simple, 

 she wonders it is not constantly made 

 in England in private families instead of 

 being imported. It is so infinitely bet- 

 ter when eaten fresh, &c. The paste, 

 it seems, composed of simple flour and 

 water, when of a proper consistency, 

 is pressed by a screw, (by a u screw" 

 somehow,) through a plate full of holes, 

 each of which has a peg in the centre 

 to make it hollow ; the whole is set in 

 motion by a wheel turned by the hand, 

 and the maccaroni is laid in the sun 

 to harden. All this manipulation doubt- 

 less would be easy enough for us, but 

 where is the sun to come from ? In 

 Egypt, mounted on a donkey, she 

 passed a string of loaded camels 

 " they stretched out their ugly necks 

 one way, and they stretched them out 

 the other, and they looked half deter- 

 mined to eat me up, as they stalked, 

 stalked, stalked on close to me, so close 

 that I could have touched them C. 

 called out, do not be afraid," &c. " On 

 a sandy islet of the Nile, half-a-dozen 

 storks may be seen in a composed atti- 

 tude, standing upon one leg, contem- 

 plating themselves in the river, then 

 stalk, stalk, stalking on till alarmed," &c. 

 We do not recal anything more observ- 

 able, except, perhaps, that she found the 

 Turks every where " perfect gentlemen" 

 preux chevaliers who might read our 

 Bond-street dandies a lesson not to stare 



