work presents great facilities for the acquisition of most valuable knowledge. Political economy, however, let it be remembered, is a science made up not so much of facts as of reasonings; and the benefit to be derived from it consists less in the possession of particular truths or positive results, than in the formation of certain habits of reflection and consecutive thinking on a very intricate class of phenomena. The mere perusal of the book, therefore, will be of little avail. It must not only be read, but pondered again and again. It is not the words, but the principles, with all their connections and consequences, that must be impressed on the mind of the student. He will meet with difficulties; let him nevertheless pass on. As he becomes familiar with the more advanced principles of the science, new light will gradually diffuse itself around the maxims and reasonings which are placed first in its arrangements. We would say to him, as the great oracle of the law says to his readers, “And albeit the reader shall not at any one day (do what he can reach to the meaning of our author, yet let him no way discourage himself, but proceed; for on some other day, in some other place, that doubt will be cleared.” *

We cannot, however, promise with the same assurance, that in this science doubt will give way before assiduous study. The science itself is still imperfect, and must ever be so, till human affairs shall have gone through every variety of change, and experience shall no longer have new lessons to disclose to man. The course of events in the last eight years has revealed some circumstances with respect to the causes of national prosperity and distress which were not before suspected, and has suggested speculations which have produced important corrections of received principles. The necessary imperfection of the science, however, should inspire us not with aversion to it, but with caution and patience in the study of its doctrines; and should impress upon us, that the doubts and obscurities, with which that study is embarrassed, are to be charged, not to the account of the writer who expounds what is known or supposed to be known, but to the defects which belong to this most important branch of knowledge in its present state.

* Lord Coke's Preface to his First Institute.

Leor bod si riu ded: Josani ucgasein to ɛɛsazugi 3 lt 'ls diív „auzest VSdi ‚ART. VIII.—TRAVELS IN PALESTINE.abral sines Travels in Palestine, through the Countries of Bashan and Gilead, East of the River Jordan: including a Visit to the cities of Geraza and Gamala, in the Decapolis. By J. S. Buckingham, Member of the Asiatic Society, Calcutta; and of the Literary Societies of Madras and Bombay. 4to. London, 1821.

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VARIOUS circumstances have concurred to impart a high degree of interest and importance to the geography of Palestine. As the cradle of our religion, and the scene of all that is venerable in holy writ-as the theatre of the most heroic exploits during the Jewish, the Roman, and the Saracenic wars-as a field, moistened with the best blood of our ancestors, in the wild and romantic age of the crusades; and even now, at the present hour, as a fair and lovely portion of the earth, still favoured with the dews of heaven, and blessed with the most benignant sky; it is impossible to regard it with indifference, or to refuse an attentive ear to those who detail the impressions which these objects have excited in them. On all these accounts, the learning and the researches of enterprising travellers have, from the eighth century to the present time, been directed to the elucidation of the moral and physical condition of the Holy Land.

"The itineraries of catholic devotees," Mr. Buckingham justly remarks, have furnished the inost ample details regarding the sanctu aries and holy places; and the names of Phocas, Quaresmius, and Adrichomius, are associated with these early labours. The extended journeys of protestant scholars have enlarged our acquaintance with objects of more general enquiry, and the names of Maundrell, Shaw, and Pococke, stand pre-eminent among these. The profound researches of both English and French critics, have laid open all the stores of learning in illustration of the ancient geography of Judea, and the works of Reland and D'Anville, are monuments of erudition and sagacity that would do honour to any country, while the labours of very recent travellers would seem to close the circle of our enquiries, by the pictures which they have given of the general state of mauners and the present aspect of the country, retaining still the freshness of their original colouring..

"Yet among all those who have made the Holy Land the scene of their researches, there has not been one who did not conceive that he was able to correct and add to the labours of his predecessors, and, indeed, who did not really notice something of interest which had been disregarded before. It is thus that Dr. Clarke expresses his doubts and disbelief at every step, and attempts to refute, with indig nation, authorities which travellers of every age had hitherto been accustomed to venerate. And it is thus, too, that Chateaubriand cont

fesses, with all the frankness of disappointment, that after he had read some hundreds of volumes on the country he came to visit, they had given him no accurate conceptions of what he subsequently beheld for himself." (Pref. p. v, vi.)

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Dissatisfied with the imperfect results of the labours of preceding travellers, and persuaded that he can add something new to our local acquaintance with the country of Judea and its interesting relations, Mr. Buckingham offers to the acceptance of the public, the elegant volume of which we are now to give some account to our readers. The circumstances on which he founds his claims to attention are detailed in a copious preface; from which we learn, that the desire of visiting distant regions, was, from infancy, the prominent wish of his heart. At the age of nine years, this rising spirit of adventure found its gratification in the profession assigned him. At that early age he was sent to sea; and in less than a year afterwards was taken prisoner by the Spaniards, and marched from Corunna through the finest parts of Spain and Portugal. The privations and hardships he endured served only to strengthen this infant passion, which was still further confirmed by a series of subsequent voyages to America, the Bahama Islands, and the West Indies. The Mediterranean next became the scene of his wanderings; and, animated with the hope of beholding the most celebrated countries of antiquity, he now applied himself with more than common ardour to the reading of every book within his reach, that was likely to extend his knowledge of the interesting countries by which he was on all sides surrounded.** Unfavourable as the incessant duties and the hardy life of a sailor are to such studies, every moment that he could spare "from the vigilant watch, which squalls, and storms, and pirates, and more open enemies, constantly demanded," and from all the complicated claims which commerce and navigation forced on his attention, was given to study. Sicily, Malta, the continent of Greece, the islands of the Archipelago, thes coasts of Asia Minor, and the gulph of Smyrna, gave him las foretaste of what was yet reserved for him to enjoy. Alexandria next received him into her port; and having seen the Pharos, the Catacombs, Cleopatra's Obelisk (now on its voyage to this country), and Pompey's Pillar; he ascended the Nile, with the Odyssey and Télémaque in either hand,' and penetrated into Nubia, whence he returned rich in the spoils of enterprise, consisting of measured plans and pretty ample details of all the monuments of antiquity which he had found in the temples of Daboat, of Taefa, and Galabshee, the quarries and inscriptions of Gartaasy, the stupendous cavern, with its alley of sphinxes, and colossal statues at Garfeecy, and thes

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highly finished sculptures of the beautiful temple of Dukkey. Of all these monuments of Nubian antiquity, which he was induced to consider as belonging to a higher class of art than even those of Egypt, he was robbed on his return, in attempt ing to cross the desert. At length he reached Cairo; and during his second residence there, he applied himself with renewed zeal to the study of the Arabic language; after making a progress in which, he assumed the dress of an Egyptian Fellah; crossed the desert of Suez to examine its port; returned by a more northern route to explore the traces of the ancient canal, which had connected the Nile with the Arabian Gulph; visited Bubastis, Tanis, and other celebrated ruins, with the lake of Menzaleh. in the Lower Egypt; crossed from Damietta along the edge of the Delta to Rosetta; and at length returned to Alexandria. Having resumed his study of the Arabic language for some time, he again quitted that city for Cairo; whence he set out, disguised as a Mamlouk, and, associating with the soldiery, accompanied a caravan of five thousand camels and about fifty thousand pilgrims, for Mecca. The vessel, in which he embarked at Suez, was upset in a squall, and nearly foundered: and our enterprising traveller narrowly escaped with the loss of all that he possessed except his papers. At Jedda, whither he was carried ashore, too ill to prosecute his journey to Mecca, he was hospitably received on board a ship under English colours, which had arrived there from India. Through the kind and friendly attentions of her commander, Capt. Boog, his health recovered rapidly: with him he sailed to Bombay; and after residing in India for several months, he again returned to Egypt by the same channel. He landed at Mokha, whence he made his passage up the Red Sea in native vessels, touching at every port and creek in his way from Babel-Mandel to Suez. His second stay in Egypt was very short: for, the mercantile community of India' being desirous of having some more explicit assurances of protection than they had yet received from the native government of Egypt; a treaty of commerce was concluded between Mohammed Ali Pasha, for himself; the British Consul, for the British subjects in Egypt; and Mr. Buckingham on behalf of his Indian friends. Of this treaty, our traveller was requested to become the bearer: and as the Red Sea was then shut by the prevalence of southerly winds, he took the route by Syria and Mesopotamia.

At this period, the travels, announced in the present volume, commenced and the preceding abstract of his introductory. narrative, as well as every page of his elegant and interesting volume, will shew that he undertook them, possessed of that ardour in the pursuit of inquiry, that fortitude of mind, physical

strength, competent knowledge of their native languages, and above all, that intimate acquaintance with the national habits and religion of the people with whom he was about to associate, and that capacity of adapting himself to foreign manners, which are so essential to those who wish to explore a country lying unhappily under the dominion of the Turks.

Mr. Buckingham embarked at Alexandria, on the 25th of December, 1815, on board a shuktoor, a three-masted vessel peculiar, to the navigation of the Syrian coast, about thirty feet in length, by fifteen in its extreme breadth, and about forty tons burthen The captain and his crew, altogether ten in number, were Syrian Arabs, professing the Greek religion, unskilful in the manage ment of their vessel, and utterly ignorant of navigation. After a tedious and perilous voyage of thirteen days, the circumstances of which it is not necessary to detail, the vessel entered in safety the harbour of Soor, the ancient Tyre, whence he determined to prosecute his journey by land. Of the present state of this proud mart of antiquity, whose resources of wealth and power are enumerated with so much eloquence by the prophet when proclaiming its destined fall-whose merchants were princes-whose traffickers were the honourable of the earth-(Isaiah xxiii. 8.)-we have the following interesting particulars :

"The town of Soor is situated at the extremity of a sandy penin sula, extending out to the north-west for about a mile from the line of the main coast. The breadth of the isthmus is about one-third of its length; and at its outer point, the land on which the town itself stands becomes wider, stretching itself nearly in right angles to the narrow neck which joins it to the main, and extending to the northeast and south-west for about a third of a mile in each direction. The whole space which the town occupies may be, therefore, about a mile in length, and half a mile in breadth, measuring from the sea to its inland gate.

"It has all the appearance of having been once an island, and at some distant period was, perhaps, of greater extent in length than at present, as from its north-east end extends a range of fragments of former buildings, beaten down and now broken over by the waves of the seat Its south-western extreme is of natural rock, as well as allo its edge facing outward to the sea; and the soil of its central parts, where it is visible by being free of buildings, is of a sandy nature. Lis "While this small island preserved its original character, in being? detached from the continent by a strait of nearly half a mile in breadth, no situation could be more favourable for maritime conse quence; and with so excellent a port as this strait must have afforded to the small trading vessels of ancient days, a city built on it might, in time, have attained the high degree of splendour and opulence attri buted to Tyrus, of which it is thought to be the site." ** (P. 33, 34.)

On approaching the modern Soor, whether from the sea, from the hills, from the north, or from the south, its appearance has nothing of