We must refer to Mr. Davies's pages for a better and fuller description than we shall have time to give of many topics of interest: such as the rides and drives and picturesque scenery in the environs of Algiers: the objects worthy of a visit within the town itself; the curious medley with which he jostled in the omnibuses-(it would never do to be a day in Algiers without rattling about in these lively little affairs); the excellence of the coffee at the Cafés Maures (he might have added, the generally detestable nature of the French compound); to all of which he does full justice. He writes like a man who had his eyes about him, and who was always under efficient guidance, so that he has missed few things which are any way worth chronicling. But our own space is drawing to a narrow span; we have only room for one or two remarks more. One shall be on the subject of the Moorish baths.

We had heard and read so much in books of Eastern travel of the luxury and benefits of the baths at Constantinople and elsewhere, and we were so credibly assured of the exact similarity of the method in use among the Moors to that in the East, that though we groped our way along rather a doubtful street, it was with some confidence in the coming enjoyment. This was a little damped on being conducted up a most treacherous step-ladder into an unmistakable cockloft-a place like what at home our gardeners would stow apples or onions in over an outhouse. Here we were shown two mattresses, and told that they were ours, and that we might deposit our clothes upon them. There were other mattresses on the other side of the loft, seemingly occupied by large bundles of clothes, which, however, from an occasional movement, we detected to be men. Here we stripped, sundry wraps being handed to us by a smart little boy with his eyes averted, and finally a pair of wooden slippers, in which we again pattered down the ladder at considerable risk to our necks. Thence we turned into a dark domed apartment paved with flags, sloppy under foot, and steaming with the concentrated force of twenty laundries. Blinded, stupified, and unable to breathe, we resigned ourselves to our fate, and with returning consciousness found ourselves seated alongside a portly Moor-a well-known judge-upon a hot plate, such as one sees in school kitchens to keep kettles boiling; only, luckily for our skin, this one was made of stone, not iron. Thence we were invited into a still darker side cell, a number of which surrounded the main washhouse, and were here handed over to the tender mercies of a sturdy nigger. The performer began by ascertaining the suppleness of all our joints, turning and twisting our limbs till we rather feared a dislocation, but in such hands one is helpless, and remonstrance is vain, for your tormentor cannot understand a word you say. He next proceeded to souse us with soft soap from head to foot, to the peril of one's eyesight, for the smart was considerable, and then to use upon our poor unstrung carcase what Mr. Davies well calls "a swab." It appeared to be made of serge, or some such pitiless material, and this was applied for the space of about ten minutes with all the vigour a powerful man was capable of. This over, there was no comfort of warm dry towels for us; we were simply swathed in the garments we had worn before, and again laid upon the hot plate to dry. Then a second time tottering up the step-ladder, we were invited to repose upon the mattress, and a cup of very indifferent coffee, as a make-peace, was brought. But rest, repose, was impossible;

we were heated, and our brain throbbed. We remained just long enough to cool, for prudence' sake, and then hastily dressed and escaped from this den of the Inquisition. We could have borne all but the semi-suffocation, which oppressed us for hours afterwards, and filled our dreams at night. We should recommend no one but a very strong man to undergo the process in Moorish language called "bathing," and only under an overpowering sense of duty. At any rate, let him enter upon it as he would any other struggle in life, and not with any anticipation of enjoyment. Delicious odours, soothing vapours, graceful attendants, luxurious couches, must give way before a practical reality of which the principal features are darkness, scrubbing, steaming, and a dreadful smell of yellow soap.

An additional incentive now exists to visit Algeria, in the greater facility with which the stranger can travel from one end of the colony to the other. Till the summer of 1857, in order to reach the province of Constantine from Algiers, it was necessary to encounter the inconvenience of a two days' voyage to Philippeville. Nothing could well exceed the discomfort of this. The steamer was generally not a trader, but a man-of-war conveying government stores. You were not recognised as anything but a second-class passenger, admitted on board by favour of the post-office: the number of berths, i. e. shelves to sleep upon, was limited. You scrambled for precedence for your ticket at the Poste Restante the morning the vessel sailed, the alternative of not obtaining one being that you must sleep on the hatchway or on deck. The three or four first-class cabins which the ship contained were reserved for officers in the army, or those fortunate travellers who had a letter of introduction to the captain. In fine weather you could manage tolerably; but one rough, wet night we shall never forget, crammed into a compartment with eight others, one Englishman, five Frenchmen with not strong stomachs, and a Jew with a very weak one, the crowd of dripping wretches who could get no other shelter filling up the hatchway-stairs, by which came our only supply of fresh air, and threatening to stifle us outright. Now we imagine there will be no longer any necessity for this voyage by sea. That great country beyond the Djurdjura eastward inhabited by the Kabyles, which one used to regard as a terra incognita, has been brought into subjection to the French, and opened from end to end for traffic. With their usual industry, the conquerors have, we hear, built forts in the heart of the country, and penetrated it with roads, so that travelling there is probably by this time as much an institution as it was in any of the elder parts of the colony.

The extraordinary people who have thus, after many years of resistance, submitted in an almost bloodless campaign to the French yoke, deserve a passing mention. Their origin is so ancient as to be lost in fabulous obscurity. They boast themselves to be the remnant of the true Autochthons, but whether of a Numidian or a still earlier stock is uncertain. Protected by their mountains, the wave of conquest which has so often rolled over their country has never merged their nationality. Their religion, which is Mahomedan, is the only badge which any of their temporary masters have fastened upon them. In their language, customs, and institutions, they bear no relation to their neighbours the Arabs, the latter having an almost feudal organisation, the former being a vast democracy. Warlike and prompt to resent an insult as they have

always been, they are most industriously devoted to the arts of peace; and the amount of civilisation to be found amongst them, and the excellence to which they have carried many forms of manufacture is said to be astonishing for a people so isolated. Mr. Davies says: says: "During the late war their gunpowder was found to be so fine and strong, that the French pronounced it to be English; but it was afterwards proved to be of Kabyle fabrication. Soft and luxurious carpets fit for a palace; cloths of wool, if not equal to our tweeds, yet far better than some of the shoddy productions of Yorkshire, emanate from their looms. They also fabricate their own arms, implements, and leather, the last of excellent and durable quality." One other great proof of their advanced civilisation is to be found in their skill as coiners. Spurious money was at one time common in the colony, and was satisfactorily proved to have issued from a Kabylian mint.

We shall hope, therefore, that the next "Visit to Algiers" with which the public is favoured may include a tour through the country of the Kabyles. There is no petty detail connected with such a people which would not be intensely interesting.

Mingle-Mangle by Monkshood.

RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWALS:

IX. VOITURE.

Of all the deceased members of the French Academy commemorated by Pellisson in his account "Des Académiciens en particulier," the most celebrated, probably, is Vincent Voiture. Him Boileau once glorified as, despite his foibles,

-cet auteur si charmant,
Et pour mille beaux traits vanté si justement.*

For him La Fontaine, in his youth, had, we are told, an almost exclusive admiration, and to him the allusion refers in the old poet's Epistle to Huet,

Je pris certain auteur autrefois pour mon maître;

while in a prose letter to Saint-Evremond we find La Fontaine placing Voiture between Rabelais and Marot as his sometime masters, who had taught him what he might be, and made him what he was.† SaintEvremond himself, though allowing that Voiture ought to have suppressed a great many of his Letters, is enthusiastic (for him) on the merit of the Letter-writer at his best, of whose works he declares that "there is something in them so ingenious, so polite, so fine, and so agreeable, that it

*Boileau, Satire XII.

† La Fontaine Epître (à l'Evêque de Soissons), Lettres (à Saint-Evremond, 1687).

takes away
all the relish of the Attic salt and the Roman urbanity, and
eclipses outright the wit of the Italians and the gallantry of Spain."*
It was "with the works of Voiture," as a choice present, that Pope
directed the "Epistle to Miss Blount," beginning,

In these gay thoughts the loves and graces shine,
And all the writer lives in every line;
His easy art may happy nature seem,
Trifles themselves are elegant in him.
Sure to charm all was his peculiar fate,

Who without flattery pleased the fair and great;
Still with esteem no less conversed than read;
With wit well-natured, and with books well-bred:
His heart, his mistress and his friend did share,
His time, the Muse, the witty and the fair.
Thus wisely careless, innocently gay,
Cheerful he played the trifle, Life, away;
Till fate scarce felt his gentle breath supprest,
As smiling infants sport themselves to rest.
Ev'n rival wits did Voiture's death deplore,
And the gay mourn'd who never mourn'd before;
The truest hearts for Voiture heaved with sighs,
Voiture was wept by all the brightest eyes:
The Smiles and Loves had died in Voiture's death,
But that for ever in his lines they breathe.†

Thus Alexander Pope. Credite posteri. In the next generation a very different estimate was set on Voiture, by Samuel Johnson, sturdy Englishman to the core-an estimate to which many will subscribe who don't read Voiture, and some who can't read him-a subscription-list much fuller than Pope could ever secure to his testimonial,

Sure to charm all was his peculiar fate.

Rough old Samuel thus appraises Voiture and hoc genus omne of epistolary French fribbles: "A slight perusal of the innumerable letters by which the wits of France have signalised their names, will prove that other nations need not be discouraged from the like attempts by the consciousness of inability; for surely it is not very difficult to aggravate trifling misfortunes, to magnify familiar incidents, repeat adulatory professions, accumulate servile hyperboles, and produce all that can be found in the despicable remains of Voiture and Scarron."

But Voiture must be admitted to have had, both in verse and prose, as Mr. Hallam affirms, a considerable influence over the taste of France. "He wrote to please women, and women are grateful when they are pleased." French poetry under Ronsard, and even Malherbe, had lost the vivacity inspired by Clément Marot. Voiture once again made playfulness the fashion, and

Led the way
From grave to gay,
And from severe to lively.

He was without the naïveté and genial naturalness of the old Marot type, but he was sprightly enough to make "apparent ease and grace" an ac*Saint-Evremond: Au Maréchal de Créqui. The Rambler, No. CLII.

† Pope: Miscellanies.

ceptable innovation. "In reality, the style of Voiture is artificial and elaborate, but, like his imitator Prior among us, he has the skill to disguise this from the reader."* But it is rather by his letters than his verses that Voiture made a name, or at least keeps one. They begin about 1727, when he was eight-and-twenty, and are addressed to the hostess and habitués, for the most part, of the Hôtel Rambouillet. Of these Letters, once the rage among fine ladies, and the envy of fine gentlemen, Mr. Hallam's report is, that, although much too laboured and affected, they are evidently the original type of the French epistolary school, including those in England who have formed themselves upon it. "Pope very frequently imitated Voiture; Walpole not so much in his general correspondence, but he knew how to fall into it. The object was to say what meant little, with the utmost novelty in the mode, and with the most ingenious compliment to the person addressed; so that he should admire himself, and admire the writer. They are of course very tiresome after a short time; yet their ingenuity is not without merit.

"Balzac is more solemn and dignified, and it must be owned that he has more meaning. Voiture seems to have fancied that good sense spoils a man of wit. But he has not so much wit as esprit; and his letters serve to exemplify the meaning of that word. Pope, in addressing ladies, was nearly the ape of Voiture. It was unfortunately thought necessary, in such a correspondence, either to affect despairing love, which was to express itself with all possible gaiety, or where love was too presumptuous, as with the Rambouillets, to pour out a torrent of nonsensical flattery, which was to be rendered tolerable by far-fetched turns of thought. Voiture has the honour of having rendered this style fashionable." But if the bad taste of others had not perverted his own, Voiture, the same intelligent critic maintains, would have been a good writer his letters, especially those written from Spain, being sometimes truly witty, and always vivacious. Voltaire, who speaks contemptuously of Voiture, might have been glad to have been the author of some of his jeux-d'esprit; that, for example, addressed to the Prince of Condé in the character of a pike, founded on a game where the prince had played that fish. We should remember, also, that Voiture held his place in good society upon the tacit condition that he should always strive to be witty.‡ What hard work that is, who but has tried it can tell? However true it may be that nemo mortalium omnibus horis sapit, hardly less true will be the sentence if for sapit we read desipit, meaning that desipere in loco which is reckoned so dulce, but which like other verbs is subject to the fluctuations of moods and tenses. Voiture's only right of admission to "good society" was his prowess as a wit; witty he must be to keep his footing, witty whether he will or no, whether he can or no what business has he there at all, unless to emit scintillations, and strike off conceits, and invent hyperboles, all to please the fair?

He was born at Amiens, the degenerate son of a free-living winemerchant. Degenerate his father at least considered him, if not a changeling-to which latter opinion the old toper seriously inclined, for the lad was a water-drinker, and a puny-looking thing, qu'il n'aimoit point; whereas a younger brother could toss off his glass bravely, and * Hallam's Lit. of Europe, III. 5. † Ibid, Pt. III. ch. vii. + Ibid. § 20.