1829.] C 157 3 



TUKKEY, CONSTANTINOPLE, EGYPT, NUBIA, AND PALESTINE.* 



That love of vagabondizing which — say what we will, — is certainly 

 one of the charactertistics of our race, has never displayed itself more 

 strongly than at the present period. The " piping times of peace" in 

 which it is our fortune (good or ill ?) to live, have so overstocked all 

 trades and callings, that there is just now extant a most formidable 

 number of gentlemen who have nothing profitable in the world to do. 

 Soldiers, and sailors, and lawyers, and parsons, and painters, abound in 

 swanns, thick enough to eat one another up ; and although it were 

 " a consummation devoutly to be wished," that they v»'ould resort to 

 some such harmless expedient, for thinning the land, they know the 

 unwholesomeness of the ^diet too well. to adopt it. One of the conse- 

 quences of this redundancy is, that some of the ingenious persons who 

 are under the immediate influence of its operation, some of these 

 " cankers of a calm world," tired of the insipid nothingness of their 

 lives at home, take to traveUing abroad ; and then it follows, as a matter 

 of certainty, if not of necessity, that a large proportion of such wanderers 

 determine, in their benevolence, to make the public tlfe better and the 

 wiser for their experience. Note books are pieced out ; journals are 

 " written up" — (not unfrequently after the events they chronicled have 

 faded from the writer's memory, and his imagination is called upon to 

 supply the defects of his recollection) ; letters are recovered from the 

 kind friends to whom they were originally addressed; the traveller's 

 impromptus are polished d loisi?- ; sketches which, in their primitive 

 ugliness, would look hideous, even in that asylum for incurables — a 

 young lady's albimi — are " put into the hands" of clever engravers, and 

 come out fit to be seen ; and the result is, two goodly octavos, with irre- 

 sistible embellishments, on which all tlie refinements of clear type, good 

 printing, and fine paper, are bestowed with that prodigal spirit of luxury 

 which marks the present age. 



Although a great proportion of the modern works Avhich make their 

 appearance under the imposing title of Travels, would be fairly enough 

 included in the class we have just mentioned, they are all to a certain 

 extent amusing. The natural curiosity which home-keeping folks have 

 to learn something of what is going on beyond the bounds of their own 

 regions, makes them receive with avidity whatever travellers hke to tell 

 them ; and they do not inquire into the accuracy of the relations too 

 scrupulously. The notorious privilege which the votaries of the wan- 

 dering profession have long enjoyed in telHng their own stories in their 

 own way — the difficulty of disproving some their most marvellous 

 accounts — the ungraciousness and ill breeding of seeming to doubt the 

 stories of gentlemen who have been all the way to Jericho to find some- 

 thing rare, all combine to exempt them from criticism. It is true, there 

 have been travellers, and there may be such again, who have found scope 

 for very exalted talents in recounting their adventures ; who have dis- 

 played profound learning, close and accurate powers of observation, and 

 nice discrimination of character — whose descriptions have been eloquent 

 and picturesque, and their observations highly original and striking. In 

 the hands of such travellers there is no more captivating, nor hardly 



* Travel)) to and from Constantinople, by (Japtain Charles Colville Franklaud, R. N. 

 —Travels in Turkey, Egypt, Nubia, and Palestine, by R. Madden, Esq. 



