that the Mahometan population is still to be found in the greatest masses. But if Broussa, Smyrna, Koniah, and Kutaya be excepted, the four great cities where the Turkish population predominates, the rest is in the power of the Turkomans, a savage and wandering race, which covers the sides of Mount Taurus, there shelters itself against the tyranny of the pachas, and descends to conduct its troops into the plains, or to ravage those plains if they should be opposed. You will be able to form an idea, gentlemen, of the degree of force of the national bond which attaches these countries and these cities to the capital, when you know that, in the last war, two officers sent from fifty leagues off to Smyrna by Ibrahim Pacha, caused this city of one hundred thousand souls to recognise his authority, and that all the people of Caramania would not supply one soldier to march against him.

"Syria, this garden of the world, is still the finest and the most fertile country of the east. The wandering Arabs-the agricultural Arabs-the Druses--the Maronites-and the Mussulmen-and the Syrian Greeks, divided amongst themselves, compose its population. The Turks are scarcely the twentieth portion. The towns and cities on the coast-Alexandretta, Latakia, Tripoli, Beyruth, Jaffa, and Gaza contain a great number of Christians.

"Nearly the whole of Lebanon is in the power of the Maronites, an Arab and a Catholic nation of two millions of men, which has conquered, by its courage and its virtues, a bona fide independence, which possesses land and property, which cultivates it, which loves commerce and civilization, and which, I believe, will form the germ of a race of men who will dominate in that portion of the world. It recognises the authority of the Grand Emir of the Druses, the Emir Beschir, a politic and warlike old man, whom both the Turks and Egyptians have equally feared; who can, by an order, at once raise 40,000 fighting men; who causes Aleppo, Damascus, Jerusalem, and their coasts, turn by turn, to tremble; and who then returns to his palace of Ptédin or Dahel-el-Kamar, seated in the very heart of his dominions-an inaccessible fortress of a hundred leagues of circumference! He only obeys the Turks, as the all-powerful vassals of the middle ages obeyed their Suzerain. Damascus rises, vast and isolated, in the midst of a desert. Its population is Turkish, but it contains within its walls 30,000 Armenians, Christians, and many Jews. The remainder of the territory is rather a prey

to, than possessed by, the Arab tribes, independent families in the midst of the great Mussulman family, who pass over, according to their rapacity or caprice, from one dominion to another.

"Jerusalem rises on the confines of Syria, between Arabia Petrea and the deserts of Egypt-a city which is neutral, poor, helpless, accustomed to all yokes, the common centre of all religious beliefs, and the Holy City not only of the Christian, but even of the Mussulmen, who have placed the Mosque of Osman on the foundations of the Temple of Solomon. Then comes Egypt. There is being performed at this moment one of the most marvellous scenes of these fugitive dramas of the East. You know the revolt of Mehemet Ali, and the glory of his son Ibrahim, both great men, the father for his political knowledge, the son for his sword. I was present at his triumphs. I saw him overthrow the walls of Jaffa, which Napoleon himself was unable to shake-traversing as a conqueror Damascus and Aleppotwice disperse, by dint of his audacity, the two last armies of the Sultan. I saw him take the Grand Vizier, and only stop within a few marches from Constantinople before the letter of an European ambassador! He would have entered, gentlemen, without obstacle-he would even have triumphed in the capital of the empire-he would have founded a new dynasty, though reprobated by the laws and manners of the people; all the East was silent before him, as it was before Alexander the Great-but a word from the West stopped him he drew back-he left his work of power and of glory incomplete.

"This trait alone, gentlemen, shows you the empire of civilisation over barbarism. Barbarism, when even triumphant, has the consciousness of its weakness. This will show you what Europe can do, if she has the intelligence to comprehend and the sentiment to feel the importance of her mission. Ibrahim does not civilize -he conquers-he gains victories-he submits to his genius, and before his audacity, the trembling population, who are wholly indifferent as to the name of their oppressor. He only occupies soldiershe only administrates for his army; all the rest, in Egypt and in Syria, is in the same situation as before he rose into importance. He is a meteor which burns bright

ly, but which passes away. He ravages, but he does not found; and at his death he will leave nothing behind him but the parting noise and glittering glare of a meteor. These conquests of his, will explain to you those of Alexander the Great. those countries where there is neither nationality, property, nor country, the con

In

be humane, and that humanity and justice require that the state should protect those who are wholly unable to protect themselves. If he pleads for the growers of home sugar, it is because he thinks it unjust to have encouraged French agriculturists to cultivate the beet-root for that purpose, and then to leave them without protection. If he pleads against military tribunals being applied to civil of fenders, even though the latter should conspire in concert with soldiers, it is because he thinks it unjust that a man should not be tried by his equals, and his equals, his fellows, are not military judges, but a jury of civilians. If he pleads for an amnesty, for its extensive application, and for its freedom from all restraints, it is because he thinks it just, that after a great political revolution, in which all deserve blame, at least that portion of the people should be pardoned for their errors who are the least instructed, and the most under the influence of their passions. We might continue our examples to a much greater length-but these are sufficient to establish the accuracy of our observation.

The same principles of justness, and love of justice, which is in him the source or foundation of his actions, is also the cause of his moderation of language, purity of diction, and of that proportion which exists between that which he means to say or to write; that which he ought to say and to write, and that which he does say and write. So the thoughts of his poetry are symmetrical. There is nothing bombastic in his mind—and, therefore, his writings, whilst eloquent, sometimes impassioned, and often didactic, are always just. Even his descriptions of nature and even the creations of his fancy-are all so just, whilst they are so brilliant, that it is the romance of real life which he makes you interested in, and feel about, and you are never ashamed of your emotions. We certainly think this great praise-but it is deserved on the part of De Lamartine, and why then should we hesitate to accord it?

But we must close. The life of De Lamartine is a double one. He is a poet and a politician-a Christian moralist and an enlightened statesman. His mind is large-his activity great his exertions indefatigable. His labours

are political, philosophical, and literary. His existence is, however, calm and dignified. It is spent at Paris, or at Saint Point, the old family residence of his father. During winter he is at the Tribune. He takes a deep and lively interest in all the passing events, examines them, and prepares to act as one should do, who believes himself capable of operating on the minds and convictions of large masses of beings. His poetry is then forgotten-and his prose alone remains. At Paris, he never writes poetry: it is at Saint Point that he gives himself up to the muse and the lyre. In Paris, he receives his friends at his residence at the Rue de l'Université twice aweek, and there he listens to all the plans which are brought before him for the amelioration of the condition of our poor humanity.

When the month of June arrives, the Chambers break up-the political life of De Lamartine is at an end— and another existence commences. He quits the capital for Macon- reaches his old chateau of Saint Point, with its old elms, its Arab coursers, its devoted farmers, its repose, and its sanctity, sacred as it is to him for its holy inspirations and its souvenirs of the dead; and there, some miles from Macon, he passes his days, till summoned by his parliamentary duties to a Parisian life. At the chateau of Saint Point, in a small study, facing a chapel, behind which repose, in the cemetry, the ashes of his mother and his children, De Lamartine writes his beautiful poems. It will one day be the object of a literary and political, social and moral pilgrimage. May that day be far distant!

De Lamartine is yet in the prime of life-possessing true patriotism, and true genius, being at once a Christian Conservative, and a magnificent poet; having a heart large as the world he loves, and a judgment matured by experience, and regulated by observation and reading-with a fancy and imagination unsurpassed by any living beingand all brought under subjection to religious influences and religious objects

he may render great service to his country, to his age, and to the world. That he will do so, we cannot doubt, and with him we have but one regret— that he is not a Protestant.

FROM the day when the Emperor Paul uttered his insane threat of marching an army of Cossacks from Orenburg to India, the designs entertained by Russia on our castern possessions, and the dangers to be apprehended in that quarter in the event of a war, have furnished a fertile topic of gloomy ratiocination to that class of alarmists, the constant tendency of whose speeches and writings has been to exalt the power and resources of the Muscovite empire as contrasted with our own; and, while loudly proclaiming the unbounded ambition and encroaching policy of that power, to deprecate any attempt at an opposition, which could only draw down on our heads the irresistible vengeance of the northern colossus. Sir Robert Wilson in 1817, and Colonel De Lacy Evans in 1829, stood pre-eminent above the rest for the confidence with which they predicted an expedition of the Russians against India, and the ruinous consequences which must inevitably result to our Oriental rule; while the opposite side of the question was sustained by the Quarterly Review, which contended in ably argued articles, that (even if the limited finances and cautious policy of Russia were not sufficient guarantees against her embarking in so Quixotic an expedition), the march of 2000 miles from Orenburg to Delhi, the impossibility of transporting guns and stores across the deserts of Turkistan, the want of provisions and water, and the unceasing hostility of the Turkoman tribes, would be a sufficient security that the invading army, if it ever reached our Indian frontier at all, could arrive there in no other condition than that of a diminished and exhausted remnant, destitute of supplies or artillery, and ready to fall an instant and easy prey to the numerous and effective Anglo-Indian forces which would encounter it. The total failure of the missions of Mouravief to Khiva in 1819, and of Negri to Bokhara in 1820, by means of which the Cabinet of Petersburg attempted to open more intimate and friendly relations with these Tartar or Turkoman sovereignties, showed that the opposition to be expected in that quarter, at least, had

not been overrated; while the equally rooted hostility and superior power of Persia appeared to interpose a still more effectual barrier to the route by the west of the Caspian: the friendly relations of Russia with Great Britain, and the improbability of her severing them for the doubtful chance of a remote and precarious conquest, were severally set forth and insisted on: and the result of all these arguments was, that most of our domestic politicians, after verifying the geographical positions laid down in the Quarterly, by a glance at the map of Asia, remained in a comfortable conviction that there was little fear of East India stock being frightened from its propriety, during the lives of the present generation, by the apparition of the Russian eagle on the Indus.

But these reasonings, however well founded they may have been fifteen years ago, have, in the present day, ceased to be applicable; for, by an unfortunate perversity, while the warnings of the alarmist writers above alluded to, and the solid facts which they adduced in support of them, fell almost unheeded on the public ear, the inconsistent policy of forbearance and concession to Russia, which was advocated as the only means of diverting the storm, has been scrupulously acted upon by each successive Ministry, and has been rewarded by a series of insults and indignities, increasing in due proportion to the tameness with which they were acquiesced in. When the Russian Emperor, in 1828, on finding that the obstinate valour of the Ottomans was not so easily overborne as he had expected, instituted a naval blockade of the Dardanelles (after having solemnly waived the rights of a belligerent in the Mediterranean, and received all due applause for his magnanimity), the indifference with which our Government viewed the detention of British vessels, and the maltreatment of British seamen, gave Russia an assurance of impunity of which she was not slow to avail herself; and the secret encouragement given to the Pasha of Egypt, the consequent treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi, the capture of the Vixen, and the late authoritative attempt to place a veto on the con

clusion of the commercial treaty between England and the Porte, demonstrated in rapid succession to Europe the moderation of Russia, and the weakness or long-suffering of our foreign policy. In distant Persia, after her military power had been broken by the war which was terminated by the peace of Turkmanschai in 1828, the game of intervention was played even more openly; and no means were left untried to undermine and destroy the influence which a long alliance and constant diplomatic intercourse had procured for England at the Court of Teheran. During the life of Futteh Ali Shah, however, the Russian counsels never openly gained the ascendency. The wily old Kajar appreciated the sincerity of Russian treaties and promises too well to be cajoled by them; and his often quoted answer to a proposition for improving the internal communications of his dominions, shows his clear insight into the motives which dictated it:" The horses of the Irânis can go where the horses of their ancestors went; but if we make wide roads, the wheels of the Infidels will be speedily seen traversing them." But, with the death of the old sovereign, and the accession of his inexperienced grandson, a change came over the spirit of Persian politics, and the flimsy veil which had covered the designs of Russia was instantly thrown aside. Scarcely four years have elapsed since this young monarch, assailed on all sides by the pretensions and revolts of his innumerable uncles and cousins, was placed in secure possession of the throne by the vigorous exertion of British arms and influence under Sir Henry Bethune;* and he has repaid these services, which might have secured the gratitude of even an Asiatic despot, by insulting the British Minister, admitting Russian emissaries into his divan, and Russian troops into his capital, and lending himself as a willing tool to Russian intrigues which, under the pretext of assisting Persia in the recovery of her ancient possessions in Korassan, have for their real and scarcely veiled object the opening of a road through the Affghan and Seik tribes to the British frontier in India. In

furtherance of these views, Herat has been besieged by the forces of Persia, with the aid of Russian troops and artillery, under the direction of a Russian general; and, had it fallen, would, of course, have been re-fortified and occupied, nominally for the Shah, by a Russian garrison, as an advanced stronghold and place d'armes from which, whenever the favourable opportunity should present itself, a Russo-Persian army might have advanced to the Indus, by the route which has been followed by every invader of India on the Asiatic side, from Alexander to Nadir Shah. In the intoxication of anticipated triumph, even the common forms of diplomatic courtesy towards England were violated: and Mr Macniel found it necessary to break off all communication with the Persian court, and to quit the camp before Herat; while Mahommed Shah publicly declared that the capture of Herat would be only preliminary to a career of conquest which should rival the past achievements of Nadir, and carry the Persian arms once more in triumph to Delhi. In Europe, the language held by Russia and her agents was equally explicit ; the Augsburgh Gazette, after plainly avowing that the aim of the Russian operations in Persia, was "the opening a road to the most vulnerable of the English possessions," gave the following lucid commentary on that text: "England does not conceal from herself her weakness in the East Indies; she knows that on the day when the natives, better informed concerning their own interests, shall unite together in resistance, British dominion in Southern Asia will end. On the other hand, Russia also knows her task; she is aware, that to her is reserved to take the initiative in the regeneration of Asia; and it is this which explains the jealousy at present existing between the two powers." Surely this candid acknowledgment must be sufficient to convince the most determined believer in the infallibility of the Quarterly, that whatever might have been the case some years back, our Indian empire requires at the present day some more effectual bulwark than