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reach, we must state it as our decided opinion, that no in crease of business has been proved, which might not have been almost entirely met by some additional efforts on the part of such Chancellors as, before the accession of Lord Eldon, kept down the arrears both of the Court and the House of Lords. Or if something beyond those efforts had been absolutely required, -a few days additional for Bankruptcy and Lunacy,-or a few appeals requiring the Lords to sit at extra seasons,-it might have been adviseable either to separate Bankruptcy and Lunacy altogether from the Great Seal, with which they have no necessary connexion, or to relieve the Chancellor from part of his duties in the House of Lords. But that any project could have arisen, under former Chancellors, of creating a new Judge in Equity, and separating the original judicial business of the Court almost entirely from the Great Seal, we venture respectfully, and without any invidious comparison, but still most distinctly, to question. We are anxious to disavow any the most remote design of testifying disrespect towards the very distinguished person whose judicial conduct unavoidably fills so large a space in any view that could be taken of the subject. Nothing, indeed, could be more preposterous than such a sentiment; and as to invidious comparisons, there can be no doubt of his supe riority as a lawyer, to all who have held the Seals since the time of Lord Hardwicke. If the greatest learning and subtlety in the science of his profession, with the most perfect purity as a Judge, were all that were required to form an accomplished Chief in a Court of Equity, we should never have heard either of the arrears in Chancery, the transference of business to the Rolls, or of the Vice-Chancellor of England.

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* We have been compelled, however unwillingly, to omit all discussion of the plans which have been proposed by Mr Taylor and Mr Leach, because there are no authentic accounts of them before the public; and it is not safe, on such subjects, to trust the common Parliamentary Reports. The country is certainly greatly indebted to those gentlemen for their exertions on this question. Mr Taylor originated the Inquiry in Parliament, and was Chairman of the Committee of the Commons. The general outline of the plan afterwards proposed by him, was to appoint a separate Judge for Bankruptcy. Mr Leach strenuously and ably opposed the new Bill; and suggested an arrangement, by which Bankruptcy should be transferred to the Master of the Rolls, and the Chief Baron relieve his Honor at the Cockpit.

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ART. VI. Travels in Various Countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa. By Edward Daniel Clarke, LL.D. Part the Second. Greece, Egypt, and the Holy Land. pp. 715. London. Cadell and Davies. 1812.

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THE HE effects of climate, and even of the seasons, upon the temper and character, have been much insisted upon by some ingenious writers. It has even been observed, we understand, that our Spring Number is uniformly far more indulgent than its predecessor; and that we are generally expected to throw aside our ill-humour with our great coats and pelisses. How far this is the case with ourselves, or with others, we do not pretend to determine; but we certainly think it very likely, that a man may be less liable to be put out of temper, while he is treading the pleasant shores of the Mediterranean, than while he is travelling through snow or mud in a Russian pine forest. That Dr Clarke was not in the best humour in the world, during his abode in Russia, has been strongly suspected by some of his readers. Even we, who applauded the frankness of his remarks, sometimes more honest than polite, and more sincere than gentle, have not been sorry to observe, that the testimonies of his irritability are not so frequent in this as in the preceding volume. And really, at first sight, it is not easy to see to what this change can be imputed, except to the influence of a milder climate. The Pachas and Agas of Turkey are surely as little enlightened as the Boors of Muscovy; and the Russian government, though somewhat short of perfection, is at least as good as that which flourishes at Constantinople. An Autocrat at St Petersburgh may now and then issue inconvenient edicts about the dress of his subjects; and give them the knout, or send them to Siberia, if they mistake his meaning about the cut of their coats, or the fashion of their wigs. But we doubt whether the prospect would be at all mended by considering the usual history of a Turkish despot,-who comes out of a cage to mount a throne, and generally maintains his place on it by the liberal use of the axe and the bow-string. Then the manners of the Turks and Arabs are scarcely more polished than those of the Finns and Russians; and the former seem to have just as little abhorrence for filth and vermin, as the latter. The Mussulman, it is true, makes frequent ablutions; but when he comes out of the bath, he puts on his dirty garments again, and lyes down to sleep on his greasy and pestiferous carpet, with an indifference which an Englishman cannot imagine, and a courage which nothing but a belief in predestination could supply. When we first observed the good humour of our author in

the present volume, we were inclined to attribute it to the pleas ing recollections, in which he might have indulged while travelling over Greece, Egypt, and Syria. But a moment's recollection convinced us, that these could only be a source of uneaThat heart must, indeed, be insensible, which feels no painful emotions amidst the decay of all that has been great and venerable;-amidst the ruin, moral, political, and physical, which the scenes visited by Dr Clarke every where exhibit Barbarism can only appear more disgusting by the contrast, when it occupies the seats which the Muses once possessed; and the admonitus locorum can impart no gladness to the soul, while the traveller treads upon classic ground, and while his fancy fills up the blank which desolation has spread around him. How, then, has it happened, that the frown, which lowered upon the brow of our author at Moscow, disappeared while he was wandering among the barbarians, bigots, and robbers, who are now the unworthy masters of the fairest regions of the earth, from the Danube to the shores of the Peloponnesus, and from the Bosporus to the Nile? Again we ask, if this favourable change could have been produced by the happy influence of brighter skies? Perhaps there are other causes to which it may be traced; and regarding Dr Clarke as one of the most enlightened travellers of the present times, we shall make a few observations on this apparent enigma.

There are both virtues and vices which belong to the extremes of refinement and barbarism. Man is nowhere so savage, that Nature has left him entirely without some right propensities ;without the perception of what is just-or the admiration of what is generous. The wild Arab, all lawless as he seems, possesses courage and fortitude; and exercises, with exactness, the duties which his rude notions of religion teach him to regard as sacred. He seldom abandons those whom he has promised to protect; nor hesitates to shed his blood in defence of him to whom he is united by the ties of friendship. A high sense of honour, which makes him impatient of injury, raises him above every act of meanness; and the rude lord of the desart, who lives in the midst of war and rapine, is a stranger to the ignobler vices, the frauds, the intrigues, the cabals, and the chicaneries, which too often dishonour civilized society. His faith is professed without hypocrisy-and his friendship is tendered without servility. Independence of sentiment, and loftiness of soul, may be traced in every feature of the proud barbarian while he acknowledges no other law than his honour, and no other superior than his God. We admire him, as we admire the lion, the sole rival who disputes with. him the empire of

the wilderness; because we believe him to be as generous as he is terrible, and willing to spare, though conscious of the power to destroy.

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It may not be so easy, however, to maintain the same feeling of indulgence, when we encounter barbarism without elevation of mind, and luxury without refinement of sentiment. In countries where the government is despotic, where wealth is most unequally distributed, and where civilization has made but little progress among the lower orders, we must expect to meet with the opposite vices of opposite conditions. What, indeed, can we look for, but corruption on one hand, and ferocity on the other, when the rich are courtiers and tyrants, and when the poor are barbarians and slaves? If Dr Clarke's account of the Russians be not overcharged, we confess, that we would rather travel in the Syrian desarts, than in the empire of the Czars; and would prefer the friendship of the quite barbarous Arab, to that of the half-tamed Muscovite. It may seem paradoxical, and yet we believe it to be true, that to an enlightened mind, simple and unsophisticated nature, however rude, is less offensive than a certain imperfect polish. We turn away with dislike and suspicion from barbarity ill concealed by cunning, and from fierceness scarcely checked by selfishness. We can find no charms in magnificence without taste, in profusion without liberality, and in splendour without comfort. The pomp which is every where contrasted with penury, and the politeness which is more than half mingled with brutality, shocks the philanthropist, and does not satisfy the man of refinement. A mercenary, il literate, and despotic nobility, and their enslaved and superstitious vassals, would have been less respected by the philosophers of Greece, and by the patriots of Rome, than the rude and independent hordes of the ancient Scythia; and we can easily. pardon an English traveller, who prefers the hospitable Cossacks, and the high-spirited Arabs, to the titled Tartars, and the ostentatious barbarians, who sell their peasants like their oxen, and who chatter the language, and ape the manners, of a people more refined, but not more profligate, than themselves.

It remains for other travellers to undeceive us, if we have been misled by Dr Clarke. Recent events have indeed proved, that the Russians are not deficient either in courage, in military discipline, or in devotion to the cause of their country. But, men may be brave without being amiable; and may love their native land though they be strangers to literature, to philosophy, to independence, and to liberty. He is still to be esteemed as a patriot, who repels the invaders of his country, even

though he fight under the banners of superstition and of tyranRy, whether it be to maintain the influence of the Inquisition in Spain, or to preserve to the Czars the right of punishing by the Knout in Russia.

In the account which Dr Clarke has given of Constantinople, little novelty will be found; and little indeed was to be expected. We cannot, however, agree with him in thinking, that the manners, customs, and even the garb of the Greeks, were adopted by their Turkish conquerors. It never was the custom, as far as we know, for the Greeks of the Lower Empire, to shut up their women in harems-to marry four wives at a time to practise the painful ceremony of circumcision-to abstain from drinking wine-or to shave their heads, and wear turbans. We are farther embarrassed by the following sentence ;neither do the diváns of Turkish apartments differ from those luxurious couches, on which the Greeks and Romans were wont to repose.' But the divân is that part of the chamber which is raised by a step above the rest of the floor, and which is commonly surmounted by a couch, or ottoman, that is placed along the wall of the apartment. The diván itself, however, is no more a couch, than the area of the quadrangle in Trinity College is a building.

Our traveller found means to enter twice within the walls of the Seraglio-and he says, that his second visit has enabled him to describe with minuteness scenes hitherto impervious to European eyes. We are aware, that ever since a noble diplomatist took occasion to despatch a messenger from Constantinople to Europe, the geography of Turkey has been rather unsettled; but we can assure Dr Clarke, that he is mistaken, if he suppose, that his have been the only European, or even the only English eyes, that have beheld the interior of the Seraglio. His account, however, of that mysterious abode of despotism and luxury, will be found, by most readers, to be curious and interesting; though we can afford to give but a very short abstract of it. The gardening is, for the most part, in the Dutch taste, and by no means in a style of magnificence; while the massive fragments of antique marbles, scattered all around-the dark and towering cypresses the gloomy walls-the huge iron gatesand narrow cloistered quadrangular palaces, like the older colleges in our universities-together with the stillness and apparent desolation of the whole scene, conspire to give it an air of sadness, and something of the character of a prison. In some of the apartments from which the women had recently removed, they found various little articles that strongly characterized their way of life;-the fragments of mirrors and chandeliers broken in

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