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SHORES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN.

"The grand object of all travelling," says Dr. Johnson, "is to see the shores of the Mediterranean." On these shores were the four great empires of the world-the Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman. All our religion, almost all our law, all our arts, almost all "that sets us above savages have come to us from the shores of the Mediterranean." These remarks are true, but they were trite even at this earlier period of James Boswell, General Paoli, and Dr. Johnson. They seem to have been pilfered from the works of honest George Sandys, who wrote about the year 1612; and who, for anything I know, may have borrowed them from some other writer of an earlier period. What a list of memorable cities is furnished from these shores-Carthage, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Tyre,-Damascus, Antioch, Aleppo, Rhodes, Smyrna, Troy, Constantinople, Athens, and Corinth, Venice, Rome, Naples, Palerma, Syracuse, Florence, Pisa, and Leghorn-what scenes of monumental grandeur, memorials of race upon race;-the intellectual harmony of the Grecian temple, the colossal magnificence of the Roman amphitheatre, the solemn gloom of the Gothic cathedral, and the fairy elegance of the Arabian palace. What a variety of warriors fought and fell on these shores,-Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, Alexander, Hannibal, Scipio, Marius, Cæsar, Pompey, and the other heroes of Rome; Agamemnon, Achilles, Patroclus, Miltiades, Themistocles, and all the heroes of Greece. What poets, philosophers, historians have written on the shores of that sea! How many memorable battle-fields from Alexandretta to Trafalgar! Above all, what spots have been trode by men of genius and goodness, patriarchs and prophets, Here was the garden of Eden, the

apostles and martyrs! cradle of the human race.

Here was Bethlehem, the birth

place of Jesus, and Nazareth where he lived, and Calvary where he died, and the Holy Sepulchre from which he rose on the third day, and the mount of Olives from which he ascended into heaven! On these seas Barnabas, and John, and Peter, and Paul voyaged, regardless of the perils of water, and mindful only of their Master's work. As long then as the world lasts, travellers of every age and country will direct their course up the Mediterranean, with a zeal and veneration which no other sea can inspire.

With a very bright burning sun, and a balmy breeze from the west, the Ripon steamed along the shores of Spain, with its brown stern and rugged mountains, its broken glens, its beautiful bays, and its white harbours and towns all in the foreground, and its towering Sierra Nevada, or snowy range, rising behind, majestic and sublime as Mount Blanc itself. By and bye we ran over towards the coast of Morocco, the territory of the unfortunate Ab-del-Kader, a barren country bordering on the desert. For a time the beautiful mountains of Spain seemed still to be near, but at length these and Europe altogether sank fast and far into the blue distance; and it was noticed that the very waves were bluer and more beautiful than before. In the evening we all enjoyed our first Mediterranean sunset, unquestionably the finest sight any voyager ever beheld. The deck was crowded till midnight; and with passengers walking and talking, and music from the band, time passed like a holiday. The night was most beautiful, the air fresh and balmy, and every constellation in the sky shone brighter than another. The sea, luminous with phosphorus, unfolded bouncing waves of spangled light beneath the paddle wheels, and far behind the ship it formed eddying shoals of silver foam, as it fell from

the rudder like the tail of a comet. In the morning the high mountains of Karomer and the town of Bedis-de-Gomaira surrounded with forests, attracted the eye. All sea-sickness was now gone, every face was bronzed with brown health, and there were mirth and tramping the deck, smoking cigars, playing chess and quoits, writing letters and journals, tracts, treatises, and travels, taking latitudes and longitudes, consulting the charts, reading pamphlets and periodicals, and peeping oft through the captain's spy-glass, till we crossed the sea near Algiers or young France as it is now called. And surely the French are entitled to the name, since at present they have eighty thousand of their best troops roasting away their vigour between the burning soil and sun of Africa. Were England to send such forces to her colonies, what an immense standing army she would require to maintain, and how would honest Joseph Hume and Mr. Cobden howl out their lamentations at the fearful expenditure! But cost what it may, these men must be sent out of France, somewhat on the same policy that scum is skimmed off a boiling pot, for fear the fat run into the fire, and burn the whole house. But it is remarkable that so many fine soldiers of France should first have been frozen under the snow in Russia, and now fried on the burning sands of Africa. Thus the Lord seems still to be holding their restless infidelity in derision, and even now speaking to them in his wrath, and vexing them in his sore displeasure.

There is as striking a contrast between the shores of Europe and Africa, as there is between the inhabitants of these two quarters of the world. And the geographical outlines of both coasts indicate the national characters of the different people. The southern side of the Mediterranean

EUROPE AND AFRICA CONTRASTED.

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presents a dead and low tract, relieved a little by brown and barren hills of sand dreadful to look at. Here the inhabitants are removed but a few degrees in intelligence above their monkeys. Here civilization has made no progress, and Christianity has never taken root; or when carefully planted it has withered as quickly as Jonah's gourd. But on the northern shores of the Mediterranean there are a bold coast, much fertility, and every variety of the beautiful and sublime; all indicating that the powers and graces of the human intellect have ever flourished there, telling us of the pride of Spaniards, and showing that Christianity, however it may have been corrupted by popery, has ever kept its hold on the stern and stubborn minds of the people.

We passed, early in the morning, the city of Algiers, with its beautiful bay. This white-looking seat of African luxury and art, and the capital of the country, is built on the declivity of a mountain upon which the houses rise gradually like an amphitheatre, and terminate almost in a point at the summit, behind which towers the bold range of the Atlas mountains. Here begin our afterwards endless details of "swelling mosques," "glittering domes," and "tapering minarets," remarkable only because now seen for the first time in these the beginning of the lands of Mahomet. I noticed also plenty of forts, and batteries flanked with fortifications cut out of the solid rock, and saw that the town was protected by a wall said to be twelve feet thick and forty feet in height. But all these were formerly proved by Lord Exmouth, and latterly by the French, to be mere gingerbread, incapable of resisting European artillery. For days we sailed at the rate of thirteen or fourteen miles an hour along the African coast. It seemed highly picturesque, and not unlike Scotland in the

shape of the country, but in other respects altogether unlike anything else I had ever seen. Steep purple hills rising abruptly from the sea, and broken with dark ravines, are here brightened with emerald lawns, and there gloomed over by the dark foliage. Villas speck the wooded expanse along the borders of the bright blue sea with its line of sparkling foam, while the snowy summits of Mount Atlas are cut clearly out against the bright blue canopy above.

On Sunday the 28th of April, when we were going nearly due east, and when crossing the meridian line, passengers and crew were mustered almost to a man at noon by the ringing of the ship's bell for public worship, which I conducted in the Presbyterian form. Often at home, in the still morning of a Sabbath in summer, the solemn peal of my own church bell, announcing glad tidings of salvation, has sounded sweeter than any music I ever heard; and once when, on the battle-field of Dresden, I stood beside the monument of Moreau, and heard the Sabbath morning bells of that beautiful city warning the inhabitants of the coming devotions in the Protestant churches, I felt my heart both soothed and elevated. But never, either at home or abroad, did I feel my mind more interested, than when the crew were mustered on the deck, every man looking clean and healthy, and when the slow solemn peals of their church bell filled the air with soft vibrations, and swelled over the waves, and floated on the wind. The congregation, consisting for the time of near three hundred individuals, met in the saloon below, which was more than double the size of my own parish church. The red Union Jack of old England, which has so often braved the battle and the breeze, was laid over the head of the dining table; and to all our feelings it seemed quite ap