faithful attachment to WOMAN. Even this attraction is wanting to the character of Anastasius; and if it were not for the parental affection which springs up at the close of his career, we should be at a loss to discover a single quality to bring him within the range of the very comprehensive verse which we have quoted.

The plan of the work may perhaps have been suggested by the travels of Anacharsis, which set before the reader very happily the state of ancient Greece at its most interesting period; but the Abbé Barthelemi makes his traveller, like the showman of a spectacle, the mere instrument of exhibiting his pictures, while the narrator himself is kept altogether in the back ground. The hero of Mr. Hope, on the contrary, is a prominent figure on the canvass, and the model may therefore be rather supposed to have been taken from Le Sage or from Smollett. Altogether, it is a work of ability; but the inequalities in matter and manner are so remarkable, that, until the name of Mr. Hope was prefixed, we had been led to conclude that it was not the production of a single mind, but a compilation from a variety of sources; and indeed, to support this idea, it must be confessed that there are many parts which seem to have more than the semblance of a translation. Still, whatever be the history of its origin, it is an extraordinary performance; displaying not only an intimate acquaintance with every thing peculiar to the east, but a knowledge of mankind in general. The writer looks at nature with the eye of a painter and a poet; and his scenes, particularly his sea-pieces, are as perfect as any verbal descriptions can be. The effect of such descriptions, however, must always be faint and indistinct; for light and shade, hill and dale, wood and water, are subjects better suited to the pencil than the pen;-but it is otherwise with his living scenes. The phrenzy of passion, the bloody business of war, the pining misery of captivity, the hopes and fears of love, the agonies of remorse, and the lust of vengeance, are placed before our eyes with a terrible reality, surpassing what the pencil of the painter could hope to achieve. Though there is throughout the book 'a learned spirit in human dealings,' and a deep insight into character, yet it is the bold and the bad, the savage and the sanguinary traits of our nature which Anastasius seems to take most pleasure in pourtraying; and this is often done in that bitter and deriding tone of ridicule and sarcasm, in which the selfish and unprincipled libertine delights to indulge, who, conscious of no virtuous sentiment in his own breast, enjoys a malignant satisfaction in endeavouring to demonstrate that no such quality exists in any other bosom, and that all mankind may be summarily divided into two classes-knaves and fools.

Anastasius is the youngest child of the drogueman (i. e. inter

preter)

preter) of the French consul at Chio. As is too often the case . with youngest children, he is spoiled by his parents, and allowed to grow up from an infant to a lubberly boy in idleness and vice. His parents, not knowing what else to do with him, design him for the church; but Anastasius, who has a dislike to reading in the abstract, instead of pursuing the necessary studies, employs himself in organising a band of juvenile marauders, and passes his time in heading their schemes of depredation. Though thus early disposed and trained, as he expresses it, to the business of tithing, he refuses to enter the church, and threatens to turn Turk, rather than comply with his father's wishes. He now professes a fondness for trade, and an application is accordingly made to a Smyrna merchant to receive him. In the mean time, he contrives to get admittance into the house of the French consul; and here begins the series of his adventures. The consul has an only daughter, the blue-eyed Helena. Deprived of the care of a mother, this lovely girl is allowed unrestrained freedom within her father's house, a privilege of which she avails herself in the freedom of unsuspecting innocence. Anastasius undertakes to teach her to play upon the lyre, an instrument which she fancies in preference to the harpsichord,-that huge cumbrous fixture to which the performer, she thought, looked like a mere appendage.

'Parents,' says Anastasius, who do not particularly wish your daughters to fall in love with their teachers, be cautious of admitting under your roof any music master, except such as are positive antidotes to that passion. Where harmony alone is to rule the sense, can souls remain unattuned to each other? The boy's hand in guiding the taper fingers of his pupil, will sometimes make them stray from her chords to his heart, and mistake for the pulsations of the one the vibrations of the other. The very lips of the fair one, accustomed to re-echo the sounds of her teacher's voice, will by degrees respond to his feelings; and he who has so many means of disclosing his passion, and of insinuating a reciprocal warmth, without any imputation of forwardness or violation of respect, will be more anxious to interpret the sounds he utters than to disavow their sense.

For my part, I almost immediately felt my heart on fire, and soon Helena too caught the consuming flame. Nothing could tear us away from each other. The duets, begun in the heat of the day within doors, were repeated in the cool of the evening on the stone seat before the house. Sighs interrupted the songs; and when the advancing night forced Helena to retire, her blue eyes looked like drooping violets steeped in dew.'

The sequel may easily be imagined. The poor confiding Helena looks to a marriage with her lover; but Anastasius, who finds that the French consul has nothing to leave his daughter but his

con

consular pride, tries, in the true cold-blooded spirit of calcula tion, to impress her mind with his utter inability to support her as his wife. Exasperated at such discreet suggestions, Helena treats him with haughtiness and contempt, which Anastasius's feelings can ill brook; and as his home is now intolerable to him, through the altered disposition of his parents, who, from permitting every species of latitude, had commenced the opposite system of restraining him even in reasonable freedom, he resolves in the first phrenzy of his resentment to abandon his home for ever. In this amiable resolution, and under the influence of intoxication, he hears the evening song of the sailors on board a Venetian brig in the harbour. He hails it as the summons for executing his design, and rushing out of the house rows to the vessel, which he reaches just as the sails are unfurling. The captain receives him as a simple cabin boy, and in this capacity Anastasius leaves his native city.

The moon was just rising in all her splendour, and a bar of silvery light shot along the spangled waves. The gradually increasing breeze carried us rapidly out of the straits of Chio. The different objects on the shore-mountains, valleys, villages, and steeples-seemed in swift succession first advancing to meet us, then halting an instant alongside our vessel, as if to greet us on our passage, and lastly, again gliding off with equal speed, till launched into the open main, we saw the whole line of coast gradually dissolve in distant darkness.

Various and opposite were the feelings which, as I stood contemplating the luminous track we left in the rippling wave, agitated my bosom: but, whatever direction I tried to give my thoughts, they always reverted to Helena. In vain I sought to banish from my guilt-struck fancy her upbraiding image. As if in mockery of my endeavours, it seemed to assume a tangible shape. I persuaded myself that I actually saw the pale form of my mistress, half rising from the boisterous billows, follow, with piteous moans, the fleeting vessel, and call back her Anastasius to her outstretched arms. I wished I could have stayed the mighty mass, could have converted the swiftly moving keel, which hurried away my person and my fate, into a solid motionless rock, in order to enable the dear phantom to join me, or, at least, in order to have a few instants more to reflect on my conduct, and to retract my errors ere the opportunity should pass by for ever. In vain! I felt as

if an uncontrollable force kept impelling me on,-and at last, "it is useless," I exclaimed, "to contend! I must yield to my destiny: I must perform the things set down for me-be they good or be they evil."

We have entered into this minute detail of the beginning of Anastasius's career, that his character may be fully understood; for the sequel answers to the commencement; and he continues Qualis ab incepto to the last scene. We must now pass more rapidly over his wanderings. The captain of the brig be

trays

trays his crew into the hands of Maynote pirates, and the betrayers and the betrayed soon after are captured by the fleet of the powerful Hassan, capitan-pasha, alias commander in chief of the Turkish navy. Mavroyeni, a Greek, the drogueman of Hassan, takes a fancy to Anastasius, and the miserable tarred jacket of the cabin boy is exchanged for the smart habiliments of the favourite page of the capitan-pasha's prime minister.

The advice which he receives from an old domestic for the regulation of his conduct in the service of his new master, displays, in a striking manner, the peculiar talent, shrewdness, and observation, in which this singular book abounds.

'Know first, that all masters, even the least lovable, like to be loved. All wish to be served from affection rather than duty. It flatters their pride, and it gratifies their selfishness. They expect from this personal motive a greater devotion to their interest, and a more unlimited obedience to their commands. A master looks upon mere fidelity in his servant as his due;-as a thing scarce worth his thanks: but attachment he considers as a compliment to his merit, and, if at all generous, he will reward it with liberality. Mavroyeni is more open than any body to this species of flattery. Spare it not therefore. If he speak kindly to you, let your face brighten up. If he talk to you of his own affairs, listen with the greatest eagerness. A single yawn and you are undone! Yet let not curiosity appear your motive, but the delight only of being honoured with his confidence.-His vanity knows no bounds. Give it scope therefore. He wishes to persuade the world that he completely rules the pasha. Tell him not flatly he does; but assume it as a fact of general notoriety. Be neither too candid in your remarks, nor too fulsome in your flattery. Too palpable deviations from fact might appear a satire upon your master's understanding.'-vol. i. p. 45.

Anastasius soon becomes tired of the business of a page; and pants for the honour of wearing a sword. His wishes are gratified, and his first feats in battle are described with a force of expression that makes us feel all the horrors of the scene. While his valour recommends him to the capitan-pasha, he rises higher in the favour of his patron and master; and after a series of adventures sets sail for Constantinople.

'A most favourable wind continued to swell our sails. Our mighty keel shot rapidly through the waves of the Propontis, foaming before our prow. Every instant the vessel seemed to advance with accelerated speed; as if-become animated--it felt the near approach to its place of rest; and at last Constantinople rose, in all its grandeur, before us.

With eyes riveted on the opening splendours, I watched, as they rose out of the bosom of the surrounding waters, the pointed minarets, the swelling cupolas, and the innumerable habitations, either stretching along the jagged shore, and reflecting their image in the mirror of the deep, or creeping up the crested mountain, and tracing their outline on

the

the expanse of the sky. At first agglomerated in a single confused mass, the lesser parts of this immense whole seemed, as we advanced, by degrees to unfold, to disengage themselves from each other, and to grow into various groups, divided by wide chasms and deep indentures, until at last, the clusters thus far still distantly connected, became transformed, as if by magic, into three distinct cities, each individually of prodigious extent, and each divided from the other two by a wide arm of the sea, whose silver tide encompassed their base, and made its vast circuit rest half on Europe, and half on Asia. Entranced by the magnificent spectacle, I felt as if all the faculties of my soul were insufficient fully to embrace its glories: I hardly retained power to breathe; and almost apprehended that, in doing so, I might dispel the gorgeous vision, and find its whole vast fabric only a delusive dream.' -vol. i. p. 68.

Constantinople is well described in all its details. The scene of the Bostandjee Bashee, the Turkish censor, putting to flight the trainbearers and attendants of his mistress, a scene to which Anastasius owes his disgrace and dismissal, is divertingly pourtrayed, and we should be tempted to give it; but our extracts are multiplying upon us, and we forget that we are not yet in the middle of the first volume.

The revolution of the wheel of fortune which removes Anastasius from the service of the drogueman to plunge him into the lowest depth of misery, affords Mr. Hope an opportunity of introducing us to the prisons and the hospitals. Anastasius's first attempt to better his condition after his fall is as the assistant of an itinerant apothecary, and the course of their practice conducts them at last, owing to the enmity of the regular practitioners of the killing college,' to a dungeon in the Bagnio-or great prison of the city.

'Here, as in the infernal regions, are mingled natives of every country-Turks, Greeks, Armenians, Jews and Gipsies.-Here the proud and the humble, the opulent and the necessitous, are reduced to the direst of equalities-the equality of fortune. But I err: for should some hapless victim-perhaps guilty of no other crime but that of having excited the sultan's cupidity-still wear on his first entrance the livery of better days, his more decent appearance will only expose him to harsher treatment. Loaded with the heaviest fetters, linked to the most loathsome of malefactors, he is compelled to purchase every alleviation of his burthen, every mitigation of his pain, at the most exorbitant price; until the total exhaustion of his slender store has acquired him the privilege of being at least on a level with the lowest of his fellow sufferers, and being spared additional torments, no longer lucrative to their inflictors.'-vol. i, p. 112,

The horrors of the prison are increased by the breaking out of the plague, which is described in the same vivid style, at once picturesque and poetical, which distinguishes many parts of the

work,