stood in the deserts of Arabia, as in the parlors of European civilization. His wife, however, dies; and leaving the Wahhabees, Anastasius descends to the coast; after having had the good luck to acquire a considerable fortune, by the plunder of a rich merchant in a caravan, which he had attacked with another tribe of Arabs, to whom he had joined himself for the occasion. He arrives at Acre, and relates us the history of Djezzar Pasha, the butcher, which the reader will find in the fifteenth chapter of the second volume. Returned to Constantinople, he forms the plan of converting his effects (into the mode of acquiring which, as the reader will judge from the specimen just given, it is not safe too curiously to pry) into bills of credit, and going with his child, whom he expected to find at Smyrna, to pass the remainder of his days at Trieste.

He finds in Smyrna no trace of his child, and but an indistinct one of its having been carried to Egypt by the wife of a foreign consul. Thither he pursues it, and after many fruitless efforts, discovers it in the following manner.

Nor was I long without descrying at a distance a child approaching, whose dress belonged not to the country. A female held it by the hand; but from her my very first glance recoiled as from a total stranger-one who bore not the least resemblance to the nurse of my Alexis.

"It cannot be he!" sighed I to myself; and yet, so playfully did the little fellow trip along, so erect was his gait, and so noble his mien; with so lively and inquisitive a manner did he stop to survey each new object in his way, that I envied his too happy parents, and could immediately have given up all paternal claims elsewhere, for a good title in the treasure before me. "Ah!" thought I," had this angel been my own!" But as he drew nearer as by degrees I discerned more of his countenance and his features-as I became enabled more distinctly to trace the outline of his serene and radiant front, of his dimpled downy cheek, and of his wavy coral lip-as, above all, he himself, with a look at once arch and innocent, fixed upon me his full bright eyethat eye which so eloquently spoke the heaven of his heart-O God! O God! all Euphrosyné at once burst upon my senses; entire convinction in an instant filled my mind. I felt it must be, it was, my own Alexis, my own babe, I beheld!' vol. ii. p. 247.

The guardians of the child, who had adopted it as their own, resolved on not resigning it to Anastasius, whom they

regarded either as an impostor, or if the true father, as a profligate person, to whom the child ought not to be intrusted, throw such obstacles in the way of his recovering it, that it is only by setting fire to their house (a process wholly unknown in our law in similar cases) and availing himself of the moment of their flight, to wrest the child from the arms of the person who carried it, that he is able to get possession of it. Having thus with difficulty recoved his child he escapes with it, amidst the greatest dangers from pursuers, and succeeds in reaching a boat and a ship bound for Europe. He spends the voyage in familiarizing the child to its strange new father, and succeeds in gaining its confidence and love. He arrives at Malta, in the lazaretto of which he makes the first discouraging specimen of European hospitality. Following our hero to the Italian coast, we are carried with him into the fashionable circles of Naples; but the pictures now seem to lose the brilliant colouring of the East. We are tired with traits of manners with which we are familiar. After a hasty visit to Rome, our Grecian hero embarks with his hoy at Ancona for Trieste. The leakiness of their vessel compels them to quit it on the Dalmatian coast for a Ragusan, and the suspicion of the plague resting on that subjects them to a quarantine on arriving at Trieste. It was his intention here to have settled down in tranquillity, devoting himself to the education of his child; when an unexpected calamity, the only one which could now befal him, broke in upon this dawn of happiness.

The blue sky seemed to smile upon my cheerful thoughts and the green wave to murmur approbation of my plan. Almighty God! What was there in it so heinous, to deserve that an inexorable fate should cast it to the winds.

In the midst of my dream of happiness, my eye fell upon the darling object in which centered all its sweets. Insensibly my child's prattle had diminished, and had at last subsided into an unusual silence. I thought he looked pale; his eyes seemed heavy, and his lips felt parched. The rose, that every morning still so fresh, so erect on its stalk, at mid-day hung its heavy head, discoloured, wan, and fading; but so frequently had the billows, during the fury of the storm, drenched my boy's little crib, that I could not wonder he should have felt their effects in a severe cold. I put him to bed, and tried to hush him to sleep. Soon, however, his face grew flushed, and his pulse became fever

ish. I failed alike in my endeavours to procure him repose and to afford him amusement; but though play things were repulsed, and tales no longer attended to, still he could not bear me an instant out of his sight; nor would he take any thing except at my hands. Even when as too soon it did-his reason began to wander, his filial affection retained its pristine hold of his heart. It had grown into an adoration of his equally doting father; and the mere consciousness of my presence seemed to relieve his uneasiness.' vol. ii. pp. 286, 287.

The distress of this unhappy moment is wrought into agony by a protracted calm, which delays the ship's progress. At length they arrive at Trieste, but the suspicious health of the vessel throws new delays in the way of procuring medical aid for the suffering child of Anastasius. No part of the work is better written than this. The following is the description of the scene on the quay, and the subsequent burial of his child, whom he had recovered but to lose forever.

'Lest Alexis might feel ill at ease in my lap, I laid him down upon my cloak, and kneeled by his side to watch the growing change in his features. The present now was all to me the future I knew I no longer should reck. Feeling my breath close to his cheek, he half opened his eye, looked as if after a long absence again suddenly recognizing his father, and-putting out his little mouth-seemed to crave one last token of love. The temptation was too powerful: I gently pressed my lip upon that of my babe, and gathered from it the proffered kiss. Life's last faint spark was going forth, and I caught it on the threshold. Scarce had I drawn back my face, when all respiration ceased. His eye-strings broke, his features fell, and his limbs stiffened for ever. All was over: Alexis was no more-Euphrosyné avenged-and Anastasius the wretch he had long deserved to be!

I shed no tears; I moaned not; I made myself not a spectacle for the gaping multitude: but, ordered to the lazaretto, I threw my cloak over what had been my heart's best treasure, and, with the sacred burthen in my arms, silently proceeded to where I was shown my temporary prison.

• After frequent relapses, I prepared to perform to my child's sad remains the last duties of a man, a Christian, and a father. In the gloomy precincts of the lazaretto I saw the narrow cell dug which henceforth was to hold all I cared for on earth. Then, kissing for the last time those faded eyes which never more were to beam upon me, and those livid lips which no longer felt the pressure of mine, I suffered the dreary winding-sheet of death to

shroud from my further view my angel's altered features; and carried him weeping to his last home; but when the moment came-after the priest had concluded his office to lower into the foul jaws of the grave, and to resign to corruption that lovely body that last relic of my short lived felicity, I scarce felt courage for the dismal task: I clung to what I was going to lose, until fresh violence became necessary; and when over the idol of my boastful heart I again beheld the ground made like all other ground: "Now come," cried I," when it list, my own final hour! I shall hail it as the healer of sorrows-as the friend who springs forward to receive suffering man, when all other friends depart."" vol. ii. pp. 290-296.

The desertion of Anastasius is completed by a rencontre with his ancient friend Spiridion, who slowly recognizes and coldly receives him, and whom in his turn Anastasius, by departing from Trieste, now leaves forever. On his journey through Carinthia he is struck with the secluded appearance of a cottage on the way, and takes up his abode there. He here forms an acquaintance with a young couple in his neighbourhood, who had known better fortunes; and the husband, Conrad, commits these memoirs to writing, on the dictation of Anastasius. They are soon brought to an end by that of their subject, who dies in the arms of Conrad.

The third morning after this speech, Conrad, coming in at an early hour, found not his patient, as usual, on his pillow. Anastasius had made shift to creep out of bed, and was kneeling before a chair on which rested his face. At first he seemed in a swoon but, discerning the approach of his friend, he held out his trembling hand to him, and, trying to raise his head, faintly cried out," Heaven takes pity at last. Thanks, O thanks for all your goodness!" and immediately relapsed. After a second interval of apparent absence, a second fit of momentary con. sciousness followed, when Conrad, stooping, heard the poor sufferer utter, but in a voice almost extinct : "O my Alexis, I come!" and immediately saw his head fall forward again. Conrad now tried to lift him into bed, in order that he might be more at ease. There was no occasion : Anastasius was no more.' vol. ii. pp. 313, 314.

Such is a very meagre sketch of the narrative of this book, scarcely full enough, we fear, to excite an interest in the person of the hero, or justify the length to which our article has But we should rather that our account should fail of New Series, No: 2.

run.

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exciting this interest, than that exciting, it should not gratify it for after all, we are afraid to recommend the book itself to indiscriminate perusal. Some parts are dull and some offensive; and the whole of it requires more geographical knowledge to be read understandingly, than can be supposed to be in the possession of general readers. For notwithstanding what we have said of the elevated character of the novel writing of the present day, we presume no one ever reads a novel with a map. Without a very good map, Anastasius will be unintelligible.

We ought, before quitting the work, to praise the freedom from ostentation, with which this great mass of information is brought together. A few notes, scarce any of them more than two or three lines long, contain the materiel, from which an accomplished book-maker might easily have spun an octavo. We are unable to extend this commendation to the orthography made use of in writing the proper names, a matter of no small moment in a work containing so many. If the principle followed, as one would sometimes think, be to spell them in such a manner as best to convey their oriental pronunciation to an English eye, we are wholly unable to conceive why, by turns, the peculiar orthography of almost every modern nation of Europe is admitted; why we should have Sotiri, Tshawooshes, Kehaya, Reis, Capoose, Yaoor, &c. none of which express the Greek or Turkish pronuncia-. tion to an English reader.

ART. XV.-Speeches of the Governors of Massachusetts, from 1765 to 1775, and the Answers of the House of Representatives to the same; with their resolutions and addresses for that period. And other public papers relating to the dispute between. this country and Great Britain, which led to the Independence of the United States. Boston, Russell & Gardner, 8vo, pp. 424. 1818.

THERE are few works calculated to let the reader so fully, and at the same time so agreeably, into the real character of the controversy, which led to our revolutionary war, as the work before us; and no one which ever gave us so high an opinion of the men by whom that dispute was managed. It is not enough for us to know what battles were fought in the