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We must conclude this rapid enumeration of the principal distinctive features of the French literature of our day, by calling attention to one of the most obvious and striking-its exuberant, and what Burke would call, its quadrumanous activity. For one writer of the last century we have a score now. The pen is the sword of the age, which every one considers himself entitled to wear and to wield - often, no doubt, feebly enough; often clumsily; often in a bad cause. Hear the half comic, half bitter, complaint of M. Montegut in his sketch De la Vie littéraire depuis la Fin du Dix-huitième Siècle.'

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Aujourdhui, me disait on récemment, tout le monde écrit: on se fait hommes de lettres comme à d'autres époques on se 'faisait moine: c'est une maladie du temps. Ceux qui sont 'pauvres et qui cherchent à se créer une influence; ceux 'sont riches et qui cherchent à conserver leur préponderance; les 'jeunes gens possédés de cet éternel désir de la gloire, et qui pour la conquérir, auraient jadis pris une épée ou commandé 'un navire; les aventuriers qui auraient autrefois passé les mers pour aller chercher l'imprévu ou la fortune; les condottieri toujours prêts à servir qui les paie, tous ceux-là se font hommes 'de lettres, écrivains, journalistes. Ainsi tous les désirs, toutes 'les ambitions intraitables du cœur humain se tournent pour trouver leur satisfaction du côté de la littérature: c'est la direction unique de tous les instincts bons ou mauvais des 'hommes de notre temps. Tous ces hommes n'écrivent pas 'parcequ'ils sont écrivains, mais parcequ'ils sont ambitieux, 'orgueilleux, ou cupides, ou bien encore affamés de renommée et de gloire. Cette carrière est, si nous pouvons nous exprimer ainsi, le deversoir unique de toutes les passions, de toutes les 'inquiétudes, de tous les désirs.'

Perhaps, of all the characteristics of the time, this tendency is not the least sad or sinister. A restlessness of spirit that knows not what it wants; an ignorance of self that knows not what it can do; a rebellion against wholesome restraints that shrinks alike from mental toil and mental discipline; a boyish vanity, that burns to gain the ear, and influence the feelings of the public without preparation and without capacity ;-these are ill auguries for the peace and progress of the nation. Whence help and rescue are to come, we confess we do not see. It is hopeful to know that there still exist many Frenchmen keenly alive to the dangers and defects of their intellectual position, and courageous enough to analyse and stigmatise them.

ART. V.1. Gulielmi Caorsin Rhodiorum Vicecancellarii obsidionis Rhodiæ urbis descriptio. Ulm, 1496.

2. Relation du Siège de Rhodes. Par MARY DUpuis.

3. History of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. By Chevalier TAAFFE. London: 1852.

IN speaking of Rhodes in its historical connexion with the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, we naturally point to three sieges equally memorable. The first is the four years' siege which terminated in the conquest of the island by the Order, under Fulk de Villaret; the second is the subject of this article; and the third is that which is perhaps the best known of all, as resulting in their capitulation and loss of the island. The first may be said to have reawakened the fame and importance of Rhodes; and the last to have created that of Malta. Though no such obvious historical sequence can be said to flow from the second, inasmuch as it left the fortunes of the island in the hands in which it found them, it is richer in brilliant and suggestive details than either of the other two, as reported by contemporary historians. It occurred, moreover, at an epoch when the success of the defence was even of more importance to Europe than the actual possession of the place can be said to have been to Asia half a century later. Mahomet the Second, conqueror of Trebizond and Byzantium, was a more dangerous neighbour than any of his successors on the Turkish

throne.

Whoever would entertain such conjecture of this small point of time as we can lend him, must be pleased to place himself under the guidance of two chroniclers who have led over the ground all subsequent historians of the Sovereign Military Order of St. John of Jerusalem, from Bosio and the ingenious Abbé Vertot to the Chevalier Taaffe, the last knightly encomiast of his illustrious brethren. They are by name one William Caoursin, vice-chancellor and public orator of the Order for the time being, and one Mederic or Mary Dupuis, a French soldier (as we take it) of Auvergne. We shall also have the assistance of an anonymous artist, whose original sketches (and very original they are) were copied by the medium of woodcuts, and printed with Caoursin's book at Ulm in 1496.

Caoursin was not a native of Rhodes, as it has been the fashion to consider him, but of French Flanders: - Gallus 'Belga Duacius' as he styles himself. Our readers may possibly agree that his assertion of his own nationality as a brave Belge is corroborated by the manner of his Comment

aries. They are written in the true vein of a a public orator; of a man who was always officially upon his legs, in days when orationes habita' were more exclusively the mark of the scholar, and more carefully conned and delivered than they are at present. The language is Latin, and such Latin as became the official mouthpiece and recorder of the great and Sovereign Order of St. John, the military bulwark of Christendom. There is a noble turgidity in the style; a tendency to run into sonorous and Euphuistic triplets of expression, in almost every sentence far outdoing in their grave and decorous volume Cæsar's thrasonical brag of ' I came, saw, and overcame.' Caoursin was a man to whom every subject naturally arranged itself under three heads. It would perhaps hardly be unfair to say that he viewed the world as composed of three principal ingredients, of which Magister Rhodi,' the Grand Master, was the first; Ordo perillustris,' the Order of St. John generally, was the second; and Guillelmus Caoursin, Rhodiorum ViceCancellarius,' the third. A touch of scholastic vanity was pardonable in the fifteenth century in a man whose historical commentary was not only written, but printed,-'quæ per orbem 'impressorum arte est divulgata.'

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Mary Dupuis is a very different sort of personage. Though Vertot quotes him as an eye-witness of the siege, relying on the expression, selon que je peu voir a l'ueil,' it is clear that he does not pretend to be one of the garrison, but only to have visited Rhodes shortly afterwards. The name of Pierre Dupui, a knight of the Priory of Auvergne, is found in the archives of the Order as one of the actual defenders of Rhodes in 1480. Mary may have been some relative of his, and may have claimed kindred with Raymond Dupuy, the first Grand Master of the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem. Modestly conscious of his own literary inferiority, as well as of his imperfect military science, he styles himself gros et rude de sens et de entendement,' but is ready, for the information of 'ceulx les quieulx 'en vouleront savoir des nouvelles,' to describe, as briefly and truly as possible, what he had seen with his own eyes no long time after the siege was raised, as well as what he had heard from many who were actually present and witnesses of all, both Knights of the Order and inhabitants of the town. Although his narrative is thus at second hand, it has every appearance of being as correct in details as Caoursin's; and they are both confirmed in the general outlines of the story by the despatch written by the Grand Master to the German Emperor within a month of the raising of the siege. This despatch is given at full length by the Chevalier Taaffe in his recent history: we are not aware that it was ever published before.

No one with a map in his hand or head can wonder that the Grand Turk should have been anxious to dislodge the Chevaliers of St. John from the island of Rhodes and its appurtenances. Tradition was in favour of the attempt. They had been driven back step by step from the Holy Land itself, from Cyprus, and along the coasts of Asia Minor. Convenience urged him on. They must have been in his eyes a pestilent set of warlike wasps, placed there on purpose to vex the Crescent and uplift the Cross: a hive of mischief-makers, who were always setting him and his neighbour, the Soldan of Egypt, by the ears, or at least perpetually intriguing for a temporary neutrality with the one, more successfully to harass the other. Posted at the corner of the gean and the Levant, they commanded both seas, to the great actual detriment of his navy, whether warlike or commercial. Policy, moreover, made it imperative on him to clear them out of the way. His most cherished idea was an assault upon the Cross in its stronghold: nothing less than the subjugation of Italy itself. To attempt this with the Knights of Rhodes in his rear would have been dangerous if not impossible. He resolved to attack them simultaneously, and failed; only succeeding for a short time in the establishment of his power at Otranto. The conquest of Rhodes was reserved for his descendant, Solyman the Second, some forty years later.

The Chevalier Taaffe, with the feeling of an exile 'che gema in duri stenti

E de' perduti beni si rammenti

gives a picturesque description of Rhodes as it was under the sway of the Order. We quote it at length, as a bird's-eye view which may illustrate and give life and colour to the plan which we subjoin, for the clearer comprehension by our readers of the course of the siege:

:

-Rhodes, that lovely island, -rich, salubrious, and diversified with beautiful upland and lawns, remarkable from its quantities of roses, whence probably the name. On the top of a plain in the north-east stands its capital, also called Rhodes, as round as if drawn by a compass, nor unlike the full moon, when partly in light and partly shade-the side of the port, where the water bathes the foot of the houses, being in shade, and the city, the part in light, glittering like gold. And in the still mirror of the port (which itself is also a round) is the best place possible to observe the lunar reflexion at that ecstatic moment. Note, however, it is only one side (the eastern) has the sea and that commodious port, and three the land. This in its varieties had rising ground and hillocks, some of them close to the ramparts; and as far as the eye could reach, even from the steeple of St. John's, the view was loaded with orchards, gardens, villas, and most splendid forest-trees, and waving corn, and vineyards, and pastures full of well-bred cattle and fine fleet horses.'

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Ground plan of Rhodes, with the posts of the languages of the Order.

Bird's-eye view after the old drawings of Rhodes

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