ART. VII.-1. Narrative of a Journey from Constantinople to England. By the Rev. R. Walsh, LL.D., M.R.I.A. 12mo. London. 1828. 2. Travels in Turkey, Egypt, Nubia, and Palestine, in 1824, 1825, 1826, and 1827. By R. R. Madden, Esq., M.R.C.S. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1829. 3. Travels to and from Constantinople, in the Years 1827 and 1828 or Personal Narrative of a Journey from Vienna, through Hungary, Transylvania, Wallachia, Bulgaria, and Roumelia, to Constantinople; and from that City to the Capital of Austria, by the Dardanelles, Tenedos, the Plains of Troy, Smyrna, Napoli di Romania, Athens, Egina, Poros, Cyprus, Syria, Alexandria, Malta, Sicily, Italy, Istria, Carniolia, and Styria. By Captain Charles Colville Frankland, R.N. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1829. 4. Révolutions de Constantinople en 1807 et 1808, précédées d'Observations générales sur l'Etat actuel de l'Empire Ottoman. Par A. de Juchereau de Saint-Denys. Paris. 1819. IN N the state of tottering decay, towards which the Ottoman Empire has for some time past been progressing, and which, in the opinion of all men, is likely to terminate in a total dissolution, it is not surprising that a number of volumes treating on Turkish affairs should issue from the press; and among all that have fallen under our observation, we know not that we could pitch upon any one that contains a more clear, comprehensive, and, at the same time, concise description of the countries and people on which it treats, than the little unpretending duodecimo volume of Doctor Walsh. It is so perspicuously written that, even without the accompanying map, there would be no difficulty in following the author's footsteps; as little in comprehending his graphic descriptions; and we find no hesitation in acknowledging the justness of his observations, and in expressing our conviction of the correctness of his facts. A book like this is at all times valuable, and more particularly so at the present eventful period. His residence at Constantinople for several years as chaplain to the British embassy, and a journey from thence to England, afforded Dr. Walsh more favourable opportunities for collecting information with regard to the Turkish provinces, as well as some of the most important events which ever occurred in their capital, than fell to the lot of the other travellers, whose title-pages we have transcribed. These were merely casual visitors; with the exception, indeed, of the last on the list, who was resident in Constantinople at a most interesting period. We We do not feel that we could, with truth, pay a similar compliment to Mr. Madden's book. In it we at once perceive that the writer is ambitious to say smart things on trite occasions, and to convert every little incident into a perilous adventure; and these so frequently occur, that the reader, who expects a sober book of travels, will be apt to imagine that he has stumbled on a romance, full of most disastrous chances, Of moving accidents by flood and field, Of hair-breadth 'scapes, &c. 6 For all this, indeed, he prepares us in his preface: It has been my fate,' says he, to have been taken for a spy in Syria-to have endangered my life in Candia, for refusing to administer poison to have been shot at in Canea twice, and once on the Nile, by Turkish soldiers-to have been accused of changing the fragments of a broken statue into gold at Thebes-to have been charged with sorcery in Nubia, for showing an old woman her own frightful image in a pocket mirror-and to have been a captive with Greek pirates, for wearing a long beard, when taken in a vessel bearing Turkish property.' If this gentleman descends into a Tomb of the Kings, the candle is sure to go out, and he is in danger of being lost in the subterranean chambers; if he ventures into a pyramid, the Arabs roll stones against the mouth of the passage, and he is in danger of being suffocated: these are the sort of hair-breadth 'scapes which other travellers, some of them women and children even, have run the same risk of encountering, without danger or molestation. This gentleman has besides the bad taste, to say nothing more, to sneer at Herodotus; because his description of the pyramids of Egypt, made four hundred years before Christ, does not correspond with their appearance eighteen hundred years after Christ. He also charges Bruce with habitually sacrificing veracity to vanity. On this particular point we would just hint to Mr. Madden, that vanity is not at all events the chief characteristic of Bruce's work; moreover, that vanity makes her appearance under a variety of shapes; and that the full-length portrait of the author in his Syrian costume,' stuck in front of the title-page of his own book, in the act of feeling the pulse of something like a lady's hand, is, perhaps, as strong an instance of it, as any that could be pointed out in the Abyssinian. On the present occasion, however, the painter has happily supplied a corrective well calculated to chasten personal conceit. The volumes of Captain Colville Frankland are just such as we should have been led to expect from the pen of a naval officer; containing, in the form to which seamen are most accustomed, namely, namely, that of a journal, plain matters of fact, told in plain language. It is nothing more, he tells us himself, than a simple relation of what he himself saw, heard, and felt.' His account of the defences of Constantinople, and particularly of the forts and castles of the Dardanelles, with the number and nature of their enormous pieces of ordnance, would have been interesting, if the Russians had not, by crossing the Balkan, rendered them useless for defence on the land side. The work of Colonel A. de Juchereau de Saint-Denys contains a detailed account of the revolutions that took place in Constantinople, and of many of the horrors of which he was an eye-witness, in the years 1807 and 1808, when the most amiable, as far as a Turk can be amiable, and the best-intentioned of Turkish sultans, Selim, was deposed, and both he and his successors lost their lives. In this work will also be found some sensible observations on the state of Turkey, and its probable future destiny. We have no intention of occupying the reader's time by a detailed description of the once splendid capital of the eastern empire, which has so often been described by travellers of all nations, and by none, perhaps, in more glowing colours and eloquent language, than by a modern Greek, as quoted by Gibbon. But, observes the historian, a sigh and a confession escape from the orator, that his wretched country was the shadow and sepulchre of its former self; that the works of ancient sculpture had been defaced by Christian zeal or barbaric violence; that the fairest structures were demolished; and the marbles of Paros or Numidia burnt for lime, or applied to the meanest uses. Of many a statue the place was marked by an empty pedestal; of many a column the size was determined by a broken capital; the tombs of the emperors were scattered on the ground; the stroke of time was accelerated by storms and earthquakes; and the vacant space was adorned, by vulgar tradition, with fabulous monuments of gold and silver.' He admits, however, that this fairest daughter of imperial Rome could not vie with the venerable beauties of the mother; that she could not say, matre pulchra filia pulchrior;' but he expatiates, says Gibbon, with zeal and truth on the eternal advantages of nature, and the more transitory glories of art and dominion which adorned, or had adorned, the city of Constantine.' Alas! the eternal advantages of nature' are now nearly all that remain. The turreted walls, with the towers, palaces, churches, statues, aqueducts, cisterns, columns, fountains, baths, and hippodromes, have long been mouldering into decay, and many of them have altogether perished. But the superlative beauty of the situation of Constantinople can never perish, which, to use the words of Aaron Hill, bespeaks it built upon the the loftiest columns of universal monarchy.' This imperial city stands, or is supposed to stand, like its mother Rome, on seven hills, which slope down in gentle descents to the western shore of the Bosphorus. This celebrated strait, which divides Europe from Asia, and whose waters flow in a smooth current, like a noble river, in a course of some twenty miles, and in a channel from one to three in width, connects the Euxine with the sea of Marmora, the Hellespont, and the archipelago of the Mediterranean. Two sides of the triangle on which the city is built are embraced by an arm of the Bosphorus, named the Golden Horn, and by the waters of Marmora. The third, or land side, stretching between the two waters, is enclosed by a wall, which has long been in ruins. The Golden Horn forms a noble and capacious harbour, possessing every possible convenience for building, securing, and equipping the most numerous fleets of ships of the largest class. The city itself, whether viewed from the land side or from the water, presents a most impressive and beautiful prospect *; but, all lovely as it appears from without, the moment that the traveller finds himself within the old and crumbling walls with their dilapidated turrets, every idea of splendour or magnificence at once vanishes in gloom and melancholy. He finds nothing that can deserve the name of a street; the mosques with their domes and their minarets, which appeared so brilliant from a distance, are now seen to rise out of narrow, crooked, filthy lanes, almost impassable for stench and dirt, occasioned by dead dogs and other animals, putrid vegetables, and stinking offals of every description; and he may think himself fortunate if his eyes are not offended by the naked or mutilated carcase of some victim Turk or unfortunate Frank, which had not yet found its way The following exquisite sonnet 'To Constantinople,' on approaching the city about sunrise from the sea of Marmora, occurs in a very interesting little volume, published two or three years ago, under the name of 'Thoughts and Recollections, by One of the last Century:' 'A glorious form thy shining city wore, 2G 2 into into the Bosphorus. These dark alleys are silent as the tombs as soon as night sets in, except, perhaps, when a fire happens, which is not unfrequently the case, burning down some hundred wooden houses or hovels, speedily to arise from their ashes precisely in their pristine shape. By day the countenances of the solitary passengers betray perpetual caution, amounting almost to fear, and their averted eyes bespeak their anxiety to avoid each other. There certainly is not an ancient capital in all Europe that, at this day, possesses fewer objects to claim the attention of the traveller or the antiquary. The church, or mosque, of Saint Sophia, those of Solyman and Selim, the Atmeidan, (the ancient Hippodrome,) a fractured Egyptian obelisk, a brazen pillar, the seraglio, with its numerous fantastic buildings, and its garden studded with the sombre and formal cypress, the aqueduct of the Emperor Valens, and the five hundred gilded and painted fountains it supplies, are the principal objects that attract the eye above ground. The remains of the ancient cisterns beneath, to which this and some other aqueducts once conveyed water for supplying the city, are still curious in their ruins; but most of these are no longer used as cisterns. One of them, as described by Dr. Walsh, is a vast subterranean edifice, having an arched roof, supported by six hundred and seventy-two marble columns. It is now filled with earth and rubbish, except where some silk-twisters ply their trade in almost utter darkness; but Andreossi calculated it would once have held water enough to supply the whole city for sixty days. Another presents the appearance of a subterranean lake, which extends under several streets. Its roof is supported by three hundred and thirty-six magnificent marble pillars; and it is the only one of a vast number constructed by the Greek emperors which still exists as a cistern; but even of this the Turks take no care, and indeed scarcely know any thing about it; although, in the event of a siege, if the water, which is brought from a distance by aqueducts, should be cut off, their capital could not hold out for a week. The Ottomans have done nothing either to embellish or to keep in repair this imperial metropolis during the four hundred years they have held it. No stronger proof is wanting of their utter negligence, than the fact that the breach in the wall where the Turk entered, and in the ruins of which the last of the Paleologi was buried, remains a breach to this day. This great city, of twelve or fourteen miles in circumference, densely studded with habitations, together with its suburbs of Pera, Galata, and Tophana, and a whole line of houses extending along the shore of the Bosphorus to Buyjukdere, near the |
