The measure in which the Divine influence has hitherto been imparted, forms no criterion by which to limit our hopes as to the efficiency of the means when accompanied with the full effusion which we are taught to expect. We have felt but the drops which presage the returning showers. The Church has received the early, and, long as has been the interval, it shall receive the latter rain. The dreary centuries which have intervened since the first triumphs of the Gospel, during which the desert has been gaining upon the cultivated land, and the powers of darkness reconquering the territories once blessed with the true light, furnish no impeachment against the Divine. faithfulness. The delay has been occasioned by the unfaithfulness of the Church, whose rulers treacherously closed the channels of moral influence, and sealed up to the people the fount of living waters. It was the Church which occasioned the departure of the insulted Spirit of God; and now she is ready to say, Where is the promise of his coming? But the patience has been on God's part, not on ours. We are but just awakening to a sense of his absence from the world from which He has so long righteously withdrawn. We can hardly hope that the way is yet prepared for His return. It was surely fitting, and not less necessary, that all this instrumentality should be got ready, by which we may hope that he will at length effect his purposes of mercy to the world. It is only by the word of truth, that the world can be regenerated. How can we hope that the Christian world has as yet provided all the means and agencies which are to be employed when God shall a second time put forth his hand, and pour forth of his spirit? We must tell these Millenarian dreamers, that we too are looking forward, as well as they;-not to the time when we shall rule the world, but when God will revisit it with his saving mercies; a day which, though future, we can see and be glad. We cherish this confidence,' to borrow the eloquent language of no common mind, not on the strength of any pretension to be ' able to resolve prophetic emblems and numbers into precise ' dates and events of the present and approaching times. We ' rest it on a much more general mode of combining the very extraordinary indications of the period we live in, with the 'substantial import of the Divine predictions. There unquestionably gleams forth, through the plainer lines and through the mystical imagery of prophecy, the vision of a better age, in which the application of the truths of religion to men's minds will be irresistible. And what should more naturally be interpreted as one of the dawning signs of its approach, than 'a sudden wide movement to clear their intellects, and bring the heavenly light to shine close upon them; accompanied by a prodigious breaking up of the old system of the world,

'which hardly recognized in the inferior millions the very ex'istence of souls to need such an illumination? The labourers in the institutions for instructing the young descendants of 'those millions, may often regret to perceive, how little the pro'cess is as yet informed with the energy which is thus to pervade the world. But let them regard as one great undivided economy and train of operation, these initiatory efforts and all ' that is to follow, till that time" when all shall know the Lord"; ' and take by anticipation, as in fraternity with the happier future labourers, their just share of that ultimate triumph. 'Those active spirits, in the happier stages, will look back with 'this sentiment of kindred and complacency, to those who sus'tained the earlier toils of the good cause, and did not suffer their zeal to languish under the comparative smallness of their " success.'

Art. II.-Relation d'un Voyage dans la Marmarique, la Cyrenaique, et les Oasis d'Audjelah et de Maradeh; accompagnée de Cartes Geographiques et Topographiques, et de Planches. Par M. J. R. Pacho, Membre de la Commission Centrale de la Societé de Géographie. Parts I. II. and III. 4to. Paris, 1828.

IN

N the year 1824, the Society formed at Paris for the promotion of Geographical science, offered a prize of 3000 francs to the traveller who should give the best account of that part of ancient Libya, (now comprised in the modern district of Barca,) which was called by the ancients, from its capital, Cyrenaica. Before the end of the following year, M. Pacho claimed the prize for his researches in that country, and it was adjudged to him. The present work, of which only three livraisons have yet reached us, appears under the auspices of H. E. the Minister of the Interior', and dedicated to the King. Being published by subscription, we suppose the publication is intended for the Author's benefit; and that it is thus given to the literary world in instalments for the convenience of the subscribers. Otherwise, we cannot discover why the whole text might not have been produced at once. It is somewhat annoying to be obliged to make two bites of a cherry.

The chief interest of the work begins with the Second Part. The first is occupied with a description of the dreary_tract which intervenes between the Tripolitan frontier and the Egyptian valley, the Libyan nome, called also Marmarica, from the nation of Marmaride. In this part occur the noted ports of

Foster on Popular Ignorance, p. 291.

Apis and Parætonium (still called Al Baretoun), which are now miserable villages, their road-steads blocked up with sand. The few monuments of Marmarica possess none of the elegant and classic character of those of Cyrene; and the bare and rocky soil is dependent for its measure of fertility solely on the rains. The ancient cisterns, however, are numerous, and the canals of irrigation which intersect the plains, shew that this region once contained a numerous and fixed population. It is now visited only by the Bedouins.

Immediately after passing a lagoon formed by the Gulf of Bomba, the traveller begins to ascend the lower terraces of the Cyrenean plateau. A few thinly scattered olive-trees and some shrubs foreign to the Marmarica, are the first perceptible indications of a change in the soil. As you continue to ascend, the vegetation increases in vigour; and at length, after a four hours' march, on reaching the summit of the table-land, a new scene presents itself.

The earth, uniformly yellow or sandy in the more western cantons, is, in these parts, of an ochrish red. Rivulets gush forth on every side, nourishing a beautiful vegetation, which pierces the mossy rocks, clothes the hills, extends in rich downs, or develops itself in forests of dark juniper, green thuya, and pale olive-trees. This smiling and animated landscape, altogether new to the Nubians and Egyptians who accompanied me, produced upon them a vivid impression. I enjoyed their surprise. Their eyes had never rested on any thing different from the sterile crests of the burning hills which bound the valley of the Nile. They were acquainted with no water more limpid than that of the muddy river which annually saturates their grey and dusty lands. They had no idea of these humid rocks embrowned with moss; of these groves which adorn the declivity of the ravines; of these irregularities of surface, these diversities of tint, which nevertheless compose a harmonious whole. In a word, born in a country the habitable part of which is dull from its monotony, while its deserts present a frightful appearance, they had even no suspicion of these lovely vagaries (aimables caprices) of nature, which, under climates favoured by Heaven, render the solitudes a thousand times more attractive than the inhabited places.' pp. 83, 4.

This passage is a fair specimen of the sentimental style in which M. Pacho continually expatiates, and which, we take it for granted, is quite to the taste of French readers. An Englishman, however, is a more impatient animal, and he is ready to say on such occasions, Very good, but let 's to business. French travellers are sometimes more amusing and lively companions than English ones; they seldom lose their temper; and with them, all nature is couleur de rose. They deal in the touchant and the piquant, and sometimes will perfectly dazzle you with erudition.

VOL. I.-N.S.

D

But when you come coolly to cast up the sum of solid information which you have collected from their lively pages, it is sometimes mortifying to discover how vague, and scanty, and doubtful is the larger proportion of what they have furnished. We have experienced this on attempting to analyse the description given by M. Pacho of this interesting region. Captain Beechey and his brother had, indeed, nearly exhausted the subject, so far as the site of Cyrene itself is concerned; and we have only to regret that their interesting survey was cut short by a misplaced regard to economy on the part of their employers. The style of their volume, though sufficiently bulky, affords a singular contrast with that of the French Traveller. In both parties, there is manifest a little anxiety to make a quarto; and neither of the writers is a proficient in the art of compression. Mr. Beechey, however, always keeps to his subject; if minute, he is never prosy or affected; if a little disposed to speculate, he yet never sentimentalizes; and we cannot but feel assured of the fidelity of his report. M. Pacho, on the contrary, although, possibly, not less accurate, or well-informed, or diligent, does not inspire us with the same confidence in his correctness. We do not feel sure that his imagination has in no case imposed upon either his observation or his recollection, or that he has not sometimes been a little too studious of effect. We cannot but receive this impression, when we find him rhapsodizing, through four pages, over a Doric cornice and four marble 'capitals adorned with acanthus-leaves and grapes', which he imagines may have belonged to a temple of Venus, that once existed in some part of the district; concluding his erotic reverie with the following delicious piece of prurient bombast, which we will not injure by translation.

Ma pensée poursuïvait ce rêve delicieux, et l'illusion séductrice la secondait. Elle reproduisait devant moi des sentiers ombragés de myrtes fleuris et de thyons odorants. Les nymphes à la taille légère, au doux sourire, parcouraient en folâtrant ce verdoyant domaine; elles chantaient des hymnes à Venus; elles formaient des danses gracieuses; enfin elles pénétraient dans l'asyle du mystére. Que mon rêve me devint cher ! Mais le poursuivre plus long temps, ce serait entrer en des récits trop étrangers à mon grave sujet. Quittons même, il en est temps, des lieux si seducteurs. Vénus exercerait-elle encore au milieu de ces ruines une secréte influence?' p. 118.

The readers of Capt. Beechey's volume will recollect his ingenious attempt to identify certain subterranean gardens near Bengazi (the ancient Berenice) with the far-famed garden of the Hesperides. M. Pacho ridicules the idea of placing it on that naked, arid, sandy coast. 'Quant à moi', he says, au défaut d'un grand savoir, je me servirai de mes yeux et de mon bon

sens; et je chercherai à reconnaitre la vraie place du jardin des Hesperides de la Cyrenaique.'

<Furnished with this humble assistance, I shall be led to persist in my opinion; I shall turn away my attention from the arid Berenice, and climbing the promontory Phycus (Razat), reclining near the port of the Phenicians, I shall have the simplicity to see in this port the one at which the Argonauts disembarked, when, from Cape Malea, they were driven on Libya by the north wind. I shall measure with my eyes the lofty terraces of the promontory ;--survey the thick forests and groves with which it is covered, and take account of the species of trees and shrubs which I shall there meet with; and finding myself in a place surrounded on all sides with precipices, on all sides inaccessible, recognizing the same plants that are mentioned by Scylax,-I shall yield to my fondness for illusion, and fancy myself in the ancient garden of the Hesperides. I shall do more. I shall endeavour to explain allegories by allegories. The terrible dragon which guarded the mys terious garden, shall reveal his rocky back to my view; he shall surround it with his sinuous ruggednesses (sinueuses aspérités), and still forbid access to it, in the present day, to our Argonauts of Genoa or Provence ;--but in this, my imagination will be at small expense. Pliny will suggest to me literally my allusion, since he has already made it himself in reference to that other dragon of Lixos, which, near the Pillars of Hercules, like mine opposite the ancient Peloponnesus, still defies the fury of tempests, and awaits the interpretations of the learned. The promontory form of that other garden of the Hesperides, nearly similar to that of Phycus, the rocks with which it is bristled, or, if you prefer it, the arm of the sea which invests it like a girdle, have suggested to the Greeks, says that ancient Naturalist, the fiction that it was guarded by a dragon. Nevertheless, although it is sometimes useful that every one should follow his inclination, I shall stop short in this full tide of hypotheses, and wishing them a favourable reception with the severe critics, shall prosecute my excursions, ready to fall to dreaming again, should occasion present itself.' pp. 173, 4.

This happens to have been a point of the coast which the Messrs. Beechey did not explore. As M. Pacho hardly seems to be in earnest himself, we do not think it worth while gravely to argue the question with him, or to disturb his fantastic dream. We must say, however, that this is not the style of writing which becomes a member of the Central Commission of the Geographical Society.

M. Pacho visited, he tells us, the site of the ancient Barca. Mr. Beechey only refers to it in terms which leave it doubtful whether he speaks from personal inspection. The French Traveller mentions 'very deep wells, tombs, and remains of walls,'almost the very words used by Della Cella,-' of little interest ' in themselves, but acquiring a great importance as serving to identify the site of the ancient city of Barca.' If he really visited them, it is singular that his fertile imagination should