1830.] 



Domestic and Foreign. 



587 



authority by the one rigid criterion of the 

 general good. Bolivar will not, at any time* 

 stand the severity of this test. He finds him, 

 from first to last, any thing but a patriot ; a 

 man, in short, who has nothing at heart but 

 his power. He detects him to be weak iiv 

 intellect, feeble in character, poor in expe- 

 dient, impotent in council, a coward in the 

 field, the slave of his passions, and at once 

 luxurious and cruel. Facts, we confess, arc 

 ngainst Bolivar. He has obviously always 

 been more ready to retain his single' power 

 than to share it with the representatives of 

 the nation. Occasions have always been 

 readily found for dictatorships, and dismis- 

 sals of congress ; and, on the other hand, pro- 

 per times for reassembling the one have 

 rarely occurred, and of resigning, bona fide, 

 the other, never. For years in this country, 

 it was scarcely safe, with a cartain party, to 

 hint at Bolivar's want of sincerity ; now, we 

 believe, suspicions are all but certainties, and 

 at home they are by this time entirely so. 



"Nevertheless, with Ducoudray,he is too nnl- 

 formly wrong, he has no redeeming qualities; 

 and if we adopt his statements and senti- 

 ments, the wonderment would be, how Boli- 

 var has contrived to retain not merely his po T 

 litical supremacy, but his personal authority 

 and influence. His opulence, on which so 

 much stress has been laid, will scarcely ac- 

 count for it; and, for considerable periods he 

 has been without troops, and more than once 

 in exile ; but always, the moment he re-ap- 

 peared, invested with a sort of absolute au- 

 thority. Ducoudray, however, will give him 

 no "quarter. " A\\ that can be said, with 

 truth and impartiality" these are his own 

 words " of General Bolivar's patriotism 

 is, that it began with his being at the head 

 of the army and the government ; or to speak 

 more plauily, Gen. Bolivar began from 1813 

 to be a zealous and ardent patriot, because 

 from the sixth of January, that year, until 

 the present day (July, 1828), he has not 

 ceased to have either the three powers, legis- 

 lative, executive, and judiciary, united in 

 himself, or to have, together with the execu- 

 tive power, the direction of all civil and mili- 

 tary operations." " He has thrown off his 

 flimsy mask, and declared that bayonets are 

 the best, and only rulers of nations." Since 

 this was written, Bolivar, it appears, has re- 

 signed again fudge ! 



Narrative of a Tour through some parts 

 of the Turkish Empire, by John Fuller., Esq. 

 i830.> We have seldom looked through a 

 more agreeable or intelligent volume of tra- 

 vels. The tour is an extensive one, and in 

 many hands would have made three or four 

 handsome quartos. But the author tells his 

 story in a quiet and gentlemanly manner, and 

 shows no disposition to make mountains of 

 mole-hills. He knows the scenes he visited, 

 for the most part, have been described by 

 number-, avid he confines himself to simple 



statements of sights and occurrences, without 

 dilating or speculating. Starting from Naples, 

 he coasted the eastern shore from Bari down 

 to Otranto, by no means a common line of 

 march, and found the Romaic spoken pretty 

 generally by the lower classes, not, however, 

 Greeks by direct descent from the old oc- 

 cupants of Grecia Magna, but Albanian emi- 

 grants. Mr. Fuller proceeds from Corfu to 

 Patras, to Corinth, Athens, Smyrna, Con- 

 stantinople, to Alexandria, Cairo, and up the 

 Nile to the second cataracts; in Syria, to 

 Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, the Lake of Tibe- 

 rias, Damascus, Balbec and Palmyra ; and 

 finally through Cyprus, Rhodes, Delos, and 

 Athens, to Zante. The whole tour was ac- 

 complished in about a twelvemonth, without 

 hurry, with infinite satisfaction, with the 

 indulgence of a liberal curiosity, few extraor- 

 dinary adventures, and no real perils. 



Pierce, whose name is so well known for 

 his long residence in Abyssinia, accompanied 

 Mr. Fuller up the Nile. We quote his ac- 

 count of the man. 



He was a man of superior intellectual powers, of 

 great observation, and able to communicate his 

 thoughts in an original and vigorous style. Some of 

 the letters which he wrote from Abyssinia to the 

 East India Company's resident at Mocha, were pub- 

 lished iu the Asiatic Journal, at Calcutta; and he 

 kept up al-so a regular correspondence with Mr. Salt, 

 and had a large collection of manuscripts full of 

 valuable information on his adopted country. These, 

 at the persuasion of his friends, he intended to pub- 

 lish ou his return to England, accompanied by a 

 memoir of his eventful life ; and when I left Cairo 

 he was busily engaged in preparing them for that 

 purpose. What became of them after his death I 

 have never heard; but it is not likely that they will 

 now ever see the light, and his name and history 

 will remain in unmerited obscuiity. He was alto- 

 gether an extraordinary character. Great warmth 

 of temper, and an unbounded spirit of enterprise, 

 were the sources of all his errors. His good qualities 

 were courage, activity, intelligence, and zeal in the 

 service of his employers. These I had full opportu- 

 nity of observing during more than eight months 

 that he was my constant, and frequently my only 

 companion; and I am happy to pay this tribute to 

 the memory of a humble but much valued friend. 



Mr. Fuller's account of Ipsambul is very 

 striking ; we have space only for the externals 

 of the temple. 



To those who are at all acquainted with Egyptian 

 antiquities, or who have attended to the brilliant 

 discoveries made of late years in that country and 

 in Nubia; the temples of Ipsambul, the last and 

 most magnificent objects of a voyage up the Nile, 

 must be familiar in description, though no descrip- 

 tion can convey an adequate idea of their grandeur. 

 Above Ibrim the shores of the river were tame and 

 level, till at length we arrived in sight of a high range 

 of sandy cliffs, which appeared to be placed directly 

 across our course, and to intercept our further pro- 

 gress. On reaching them, however, the river took 

 a sudden bend, and a most striking scene opened 

 upon us. Immediately above us, on the right, was 

 an excavated temple, with .six gigantic figures of 

 Isis supporting the roof; and in front, the great 

 temple presented itself with its four colossal statues, 



4 F 2 



