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one word in conversation which was not the fittest he could recall, and he impressed upon his son that he should never deliver the commonest order to a servant, but in the best language he could find, and with the best utterance.' For many years he wrote down every brilliant passage he met with in his reading, and either translated it into French, or, if it was in a foreign language, into English. A certain eloquence became at last, he says, habitual to him, and it would have given him. more trouble to express himself inelegantly than ever he had taken to avoid the defect. Lord Bolingbroke, who could talk all day just as perfectly as he wrote, told him that he owed the power to the same cause-an early and constant attention to his style. After Pope had undertaken to translate the Iliad he was terrified at the difficulty of the task, had his rest broken by dreams of long journeys, through unknown ways, and wished that somebody would hang him. The harassing occupation became so easy by practice, that he often dispatched forty or fifty lines in a morning before leaving his bed, and could at last compose more readily in verse than in prose. In short the instances are endless. The truth is not less clearly manifested in the inferiority of the greatest intellects, in the matters which they have neglected, to the average run of mankind. The want of power which Sir Isaac Newton exhibited on the ordinary topics which most engage the attention of the world, has often been noticed, and persons ignorant of mathematics and science can hardly credit, when they read his letters, that he was the prodigy of genius which his admirers pretend. Yet certain it is that he overtopped every mortal, ancient or modern, and the little talent which he displayed in lesser things is only an evidence that the sublimest understanding cannot dispense with the practice which makes perfect. Absorbed by his lofty and abstruse speculations, he was abstracted from the pursuits which engaged his fellow-men, and when he turned to new departments of knowledge his mind had become fixed by the exclusive addiction to his peculiar studies, and had lost its pliancy.

It is a comprehensive observation of Bacon upon this subject, which can never be too carefully treasured up, that we think according to our inclinations, speak according to the opinions we have been taught, and act according as we have been accustomed. Thus it is common for a man upon the same point to think one thing, say another, and do a third. The native disposition, and the infused precepts are overborne by his habits, and after theorising like a sage he may not improbably act like a knave or a fool. There is no more pre-eminent merit both in the text of Bacon, and the Notes of his commentator, than that their

reflections

reflections carry with them a practical sense and a force of conviction which is a powerful antidote to this usual error. They not only teach wisdom, but they instil the desire to be wise. There cannot be a stronger inducement to study them. In the few topics upon which we have treated, we are conscious that we have neither done justice to the great variety of the truths which Archbishop Whately has put forth, nor to his mode of enforcing them. The cogency of his arguments, as well as the larger part of the valuable lessons he inculcates, must be sought in his book. Nor will the benefit stop with the direct information which he delivers. He is one of those thoughtful writers who set others thinking, and it is impossible to accompany him to the end without desiring to push on further in that grand track of truth in which he is so original and distinguished a pioneer.

ART. II.-1. Icosium: Notice sur les Antiquités Romaines d'Alger.
Par M. Berbrugger, Membre Ct. de l'Institut. Alger, 1845.
2. Inscriptions Romaines de l'Algérie.
Par M. Léon Renier.

2 Parts. Paris, 1855.

3. Joannis Leonis Africani de totius Africa descriptione Libri IX. Tiguri, 1509.

4. Travels and Observations relating to several parts of Barbary and the Levant. By Thomas Shaw, D.D., F.R.S., &c. Third Edition. 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1808.

5. A Narrative of the Expedition to Algiers in the Year 1816, under the Command of the Right Hon. Admiral Lord Viscount Exmouth. By Mr. A. Salamé, Interpreter in His Britannic Majesty's Service. London, 1819.

6. White Slavery in Algiers. By Charles Sumner. London, 1853.

7. Letters from the South. By Thomas Campbell, Esq., Author of The Pleasures of Hope.' 2 vols. London, 1837. 8. Algier und Paris im Jahre 1830 Neue Auflage. 2 vols. Leipsig, 1846.

9. The French in Algiers.

Von Ludwig Rellstab.

Translated from the German and French by Lady Duff Gordon. (Murray's Home and Colonial Library.) London, 1846.

10. Etudes Africaines. Par M. Poujoulat. 2 vols. Paris,

1847.

11. Narrative of a Campaign against the Kabailes of Algeria, with the Mission of M. Suchet to the Emir Abd-el-Kader for an Exchange of Prisoners. By Dawson Borrer, F.R.G.S. London, 1848.

12. Exploration

12. Exploration Scientifique de l'Algérie pendant les Années 1840, 1841, 1842, publiée par l'Ordre du Gouvernement et avec le concours d'une Commission Académique. Paris, Imprimerie Royale (Impériale). 16 vols. 1844-1853.

13. Maurs et Coutumes de l'Algérie Tell-Kabylie-Sahara. Par le Général Daumas. Paris, 1853.

14. Souvenirs de la Vie Militaire en Afrique. Par le Comte P. de Castellane. Paris, 1854.

15. Itinéraire Historique et Descriptif de l'Algérie. Par J. Barbier. Paris, 1855.

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16. Adventures of Jules Gérard, the Lion-Killer.' Translated from the French. London, 1856.

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the Mediterranean there are certain meeting-places of the beholds them, and leave an impression on his memory which is never effaced. By the East we do not mean precisely the geographical east, but we use the word conventionally for those regions which wear the characteristics of Mohamedanism or Greek Christianity; as by the West we denote those civilised countries of modern Europe where the costume, the architecture, and all the outward expressions of human life, though differing among themselves, are yet uniform when contrasted with the countries of the Koran or with Oriental Christendom. Thus while that which we call the West must be extended to the very eastern shore of the Baltic, and along the Danube to Belgrade, our East reaches continuously through the whole of Northern Africa to the Straits of Gibraltar.

Of these meeting - places few are more remarkable than Gibraltar itself. The measured tread of its red-coated sentinels, its shops for beer and porter, the coaling' of the English steam-vessels, the gathering of young officers for the Calpe Hunt,' make up one side of the picture; its African fruits and wares, the crouching slipshod Jew from Mogador, the turbaned Moor on the esplanade, where cannon-balls are piled among tufts of green palmetto, form the other side; while the Andalusian smuggler, and the muleteer with sombrero and cigarito, are intermediate links, which might be connected almost indifferently with the East or the West. Malta is another place where oriental characteristics are brought into startling juxtaposition with their opposites; Greek sailors, with red caps and blue petticoat-trowsers, are about the landing-places; the language spoken at the Nix Mangiare stairs is a corrupt Arabic; the roofs of the houses are flat; but the streets are thronged with a varied European population, our own countrymen being pre

dominant.

dominant. A third is Venice, as any one that never left home can perceive, who is told of the music of an Austrian military band filling that square of which the Byzantine arches and bright mosaics of St. Mark's are the distinguishing features, or who imagines the far less harmonious combination of a bustling railway-station and an island-convent of Armenian monks. We might add a few more places to our list, such as Athens and Corfu, and of course Constantinople. But of all scenes where the East and West are brought face to face, none is so startling as Algiers. It would be saying far too little to describe Algiers as a French Malta or a French Gibraltar, and this not merely because it is larger and more populous than the city of the Rock,' or because its beautiful green suburbs are entirely wanting to Valetta: no contrast at either of those places, is so great as that between the most lively of the European nations and the unbending, savage Mohamedanism which is still predominant through more than half of Northern Africa and if to the Moor and the Frenchman, whose contrasted figures give the characteristic expression to the picture, we add all the other varieties of man who may be seen every day in the streets and vicinity of Algiers-Kabyles, Arabs, here and there perhaps a Turk, with Jews, negroes, boatmen from Malta, labourers from Minorca, adventurers from Italy and Germany-we have a scene before us the curious composition of which has hardly received the attention it deserves.

If anything else were required to excite our interest in Algiers, we find it in the picturesque connexion which associates this colony with the most remarkable events of recent history, and with the stirring incidents of the lately concluded war. The dress of the Zouaves indicates the scenes in the midst of which they were originally organised. Long before the battle of the Alma, narratives were published describing the extraordinary activity and endurance of these fearless and serviceable troops. In the accounts of Marshal Bugeaud's Campaign in Kabylia, we may read of the gay vivandière, 'seated on her horse, with her laughing face overshadowed by a little hat adorned with feathers, and jesting light-heartedly with those around her,' while a storm of bullets is causing the twigs of the olive-trees to fly in every direction. All the French generals, who were conspicuous in Paris in 1848, or during the coup d'état, received their training in Algerian campaigns: Bedeau, who was wounded in the terrible conflict of June, two days before the death of the Archbishop of Paris; Cavaignac, who gave six months' comparative

*Mr. Borrer's Campaign in Kabylia.

quiet to Europe; Oudinot, who besieged Mazzini and Garibaldi and took Rome with no little difficulty; Lamoricière and Changarnier, who were called early from their beds on the 2nd of December, 1851, and compelled to share the exile of their African companions in war. And the same may be said of others, whose names are now household words in every English village; Baraguay d'Hilliers, Saint-Arnaud, Canrobert, Bosquet, and Pélissier.

Let us take a glance at the outward appearance of Algiers and Algeria, before we proceed to give a rapid sketch of the earlier and later history of this part of the African coast, and speculate on the probable destinies of this French settlement on a Mohamedan shore. When the poet Campbell, the first of our countrymen who described the place after the French occupation, was roused from his morning sleep in Algiers, the sound which disturbed him was the muezzin's monotonous cry from a neighbouring minaret; when we were there in 1848, the sound which made sleep in the morning impossible was the irritating rattle of the regimental drums. And the Mussulman is still retreating before the Frenchman. Algiers is becoming more and more like a town in Provence or Languedoc.

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When approached from the north, or when seen from the deck of an Alexandrian steamer, Algiers the Warlike, the Pirate's Daughter,' appears like a triangular town of chalk on the slope of a green range of hills, with the high and distant ridges of Atlas rising darkly behind. On a nearer view, the flat roofs, with a few low minarets, a few cupolas, and here and there a palm-tree, would give the impression of a thorough Mohamedan city, were it not that the activity of Europe is clearly revealed in the various shipping in the port, the steamers, the elaborately constructed mole, the lighthouse, the large French barracks, and at least one tall narrow structure which is not a minaret, and reminds us of Manchester rather than of Morocco. Immediately on landing, all the elements of the contrast to which we have alluded strike in rapid succession on the eye, and multiply as we pass through the streets. The general plan and distribution of the city is easily described. The main thoroughfares must in all ages have followed the narrow space of level ground which lies between the hill and the harbour; and that which was formerly the Roman forum, then the Arabian and subsequently the Turkish bazaar, is probably coincident with the fine square, which was the Place Royale, and (after being for a short time Place Nationale) is now Place Impériale. The level region of the city is almost as French in its architecture as the Boulevard des Italiens; while the other or ascending region is as Moorish as Fez or Morocco. Yet

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