TO THE BISHOP OF LINCOLN. 



155 



my recommendations from the Patriarchs, together with Sir Sidney 

 Smith's good offices, will, I trust, enable me to investigate every 

 thing I think proper, and particularly the libraries of some of the 

 convents of Jerusalem, which, I am informed, contain very old manu- 

 scripts of the New Testament. I shall have an opportunity also of 

 seeing with my own eyes some of those countries which make the 

 greatest figure in the histories of the Crusades, a period which I be- 

 lieve I informed your Lordship I had some thoughts of endeavouring 

 to elucidate by means of the Oriental writers. 



I have the honor to be, &c. &c. 



J. D. Carlyle. 



LETTER II. 



My Lord, Jaffa, April 10. 1800. 



When I wrote to Your Lordship from Cyprus, I trusted before this 

 time to have been returned to Constantinople, hut so many things 

 have occurred to interrupt my journey, that it will be some weeks yet 

 before I can arrive there ; however, I do not by any means regret my 

 having made a little longer stay in this part of the world than I origi- 

 nally intended, as it has given me an opportunity of judging by my 

 own observation of the present situation of affairs here at this interest- 

 ing period, and of communicating them to your Lordship. I sailed 

 with Sir Sidney Smith soon after I wrote to your Lordship, with the 

 hopes of being admitted by means of the supposed convention to take 

 a transient view of Egypt, and to proceed from thence immediately 

 to Syria. A little after we arrived off Alexandria, we received the 

 intelligence that our government would not permit the treaty signed 

 between the Turks and French to be carried into effect, or at least 

 had given such orders as put a stop to it for the present. As they 

 had both acted upon this treaty, the latter having evacuated all their 

 frontier towns to the former, who had advanced to within seven miles 

 of Cairo; and as the Turks demanded possession of the palace at the 



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