the nation security for the future and a real voice in its affairs. There is not a man amongst the most devoted adherents of the Empire who does not view this state of things with undisguised apprehension; and there is probably not a man who would counsel and abet the Emperor in an attempt to repeat the blow, which he dealt so successfully in 1851 to an effete Assembly and a terrified community. There is, as it appears to us, but one course to be pursued with any prospect of security to the Imperial dynasty and of tranquillity to France; and that course is to accept the progress of liberal opinions. It would not be very difficult, even with the existing institutions of the Empire, to transform the present absolutism of the sovereign into a system of government which might afford a moderate and reasonable satisfaction to the country. The Imperial Government, though extremely arbitrary, and irresponsible to any organised body in the state, has never failed to acknowledge its democratic origin, and to exercise its power with some regard to the prevailing sentiments of the people. It will be well for its own sake if it follow the same course now. It is not by resistance or repression that the Empire can regain the ground it is losing. The language even of its harshest judges and keenest enemies deserves its serious attention; and if France is again to be saved from another of those periodical convulsions which may even now be approaching, like a storm on the furthest limit of the horizon, it will be by timely concessions to the reviving energy of the nation. At such a moment, the voice of M. de Tocqueville, in his ardent love of freedom, will not be unheard or without influence, and we shall be curious to learn what answer will be made to this posthumous appeal of a great thinker and a great patriot.

ART. VII.-Narrative of a Year's Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia (1862-63). By WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE, late of the Eighth Regiment Bombay Native Infantry. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1865.

MAN

ANY of our readers will doubtless be familiar with Lady Duff Gordon's Letters from Egypt,' already reviewed in this Journal, and will remember the peculiar earnestness with which that accomplished traveller speaks of the tendency of Englishmen and Europeans in general to treat Orientals and other inferior races (as we deem them) with contemptuous hostility whenever brought into contact with them. Lady Duff Gordon appears to think this kind of arrogance to be much on the increase among us. And possibly she is in the right; but this may arise from superficial causes only:

It is curious (she says) that all the old books of travel that I have read mention the natives of strange countries in a far more natural tone, and with far more attempt to discriminate character, than modern ones, e.g. Carsten Niebuhr's Travels here and in Arabia, Cook's Voyages, and many others. Have we grown so very civilised since a hundred years, that outlandish people seem to us like puppets, and not like real human beings?'

The truth is, we take it, that civilised man rarely learns to treat others as his equals except under the influence of necessary caution; and it is only by treating them as equals, that he can learn what they are really like. In the old days, when Bruce toiled through a thousand dangers to the source of his Blue Nile, and Niebuhr dwelt for years under the Arab roofs and tents, and Hearne and Mackenzie accompanied the Indian hunters in their painful marches to the shores of the Frozen Sea, European wanderers were as yet insulated strangers among multitudes who cared but little for them and their prerogatives, and held, as it were, their lives in their hands. They were compelled for self-preservation to cultivate their companions' good graces, to learn their usages, and defer to their prejudices. Now the steamer brings the young Londoner or Parisian, with all the bloom of his carefully nourished outrecuidance fresh upon him, within a few days' journey of the dwelling of the barbarous people whom he means to visit; he has at his disposal that host of corrupt guides and lackeys which follows the European everywhere in his encroachments, and constitutes in truth one of the worst features of the modern system of travelling; by these he is carefully educated in the notion, to which his own disposition

too much inclines him, that insolence and swagger, or at best the constant maintenance of an air of superiority, are the true method of insuring obedience. And from the exercise of these pleasant methods of persuasion he has, in truth, not much to fear; for those among whom he journeys have learnt to put up with this kind of treatment, as amply compensated by the chink of the stranger's napoleons; or if a rebellious spirit rises within them, they stand in dread of displeasing their own chiefs and governors, who on their part live in salutary awe of the Consuls whose flags wave over their cities. And in this way the visitor goes and returns, a little disabused, perhaps, as to the amount of pleasure to be derived from thus enacting the foreign potentate in the deserts; but, in other respects, with just enough knowledge of the countries which he has visited to enable him to impart to his friends, or readers, his impressions of contempt for the society whose outside he has barely seen.

There is so little to learn from this order of travellers, and they are so numerous, that, for our own part, we rarely attempt to read a new volume of this class of literature, unless in cases where the author has travelled for a purpose, such as the elucidation of points of scientific or antiquarian knowledge. But we make a most willing exception to our rule in the case of those very few who go forth in the resolution to throw aside, for awhile, the self-conceit as well as the habits of civilised life, and to become sojourners in the wild parts of the earth, in the spirit of those old writers whom Lady Duff Gordon mentions, and of their prototype Ulysses, seeing the 'cities, and learning the minds, of many men.'

To this latter category, and to the rarest division of it, those who carry to their work a mind stored with great variety of knowledge and accomplishments, the author of these volumes belongs. It is only necessary for us to refer in passing to the singular effect produced in English society last autumn, by his sudden appearance among us after an almost unbroken absence from this country of many years, and the piquant revelations which he then communicated to the Geographical Society respecting the interior of Arabia, and in particular the secluded metropolis of the Wahabees, concerning whom so much of romantic interest had been vaguely asserted, and so little was really known. For a short time, he disappeared again from among us; and then came the intelligence that he had changed the design of a life, and had adopted again the habits of the native country from which he had been so long estranged. And he now imparts the fruits of his wanderings

in the shape of these two volumes, giving us at once, through a single effort of descriptive genius, a more intimate knowledge of the interior of secluded Arabia than we possess of many other Mahometan countries, easily accessible to all, and annually visited by clouds of commonplace tourists.

It is due to a writer to respect whatever reserve he thinks it necessary to make use of in his communications to the public; and Mr. Palgrave practises this reserve even to a provoking extent. But the peculiar circumstances of his past life are now so generally known, that it would be mere affectation not to mention at the outset so much of them as is necessary to serve as a clue both to his real motives for visiting these regions, and to the prepossessions with which he visited them, and of which his pages afford such abundant evidence. Mr. Palgrave, the son of the most eminent of modern English antiquaries, and himself distinguished in early life as one of the best rising Oxford scholars of his day, relinquished, we believe, of his own accord the career of ordinary successes which seemed open to him; served for some time in the Indian army; and having left that profession also, passed a considerable section of his life in connexion,' as he phrases it, with the order of Jesuits in Syria. He thus became, after the manner of his acute and resolute brethren, closely familiar with the inner life both of the Christians of that region, and also of their Mahometan neighbours, so far as these could be safely approached by one proceeding from the enemy's headquarters. Thoroughly accomplished in the Arabic language and literature, he was despatched from Syria to Arabia in 1862, on a 'mission.' As to the nature of that 'mission,' he is discreetly, or rather loyally, silent; we can ourselves only accept the popular report, that it was connected with the half-political and half-proselytising designs long entertained, though not very consistently or resolutely followed out, by the French Government in Syria. To complete this scanty personal preface, we may add that since his last return to England, Mr. Palgrave has been sent by our Foreign Office on an errand of a very different character, on which he is now engaged; that of obtaining access to our unfortunate countrymen detained by King Theodore in Abyssinia, and negotiating their release.

That he was employed on a secret mission, our author indicates in his preface, when he informs us that the necessary funds were furnished by the liberality of the Emperor of the French; and more fully in the account of his visit to Telal, the able and enlightened prince, as he describes him, of Djebel Shomer, in the heart of Northern Arabia. But the absence of

any more explicit clue to his intentions and proceedings has necessarily left much of his narrative in a somewhat hazy condition. It is impossible not to see throughout that we are only admitted to half-confidence; and an author who thus treats the public, though it may be from the most honourable motives, cannot complain if the public in return extend only the same kind of half-confidence to himself. Many of Mr. Palgrave's tales of adventures among the people who dwell beyond the Syrian desert, have been received with much the same kind of caution which the world exhibited towards Bruce's narratives of his mighty deeds of war and policy among the Abyssinians. For our own part, we will only say that every comparison we have made with other authorities has satisfied us only the more of the general accuracy of Mr. Palgrave's pictures of Arabian life and politics, after every allowance made for the influence of a fiery imagination and strong prepossessions; and that such slight corroboration as could be obtained of the more personal portion of his narrative has tended the same way. But he must not complain, as we said before, if, where so much is left unexplained, the vague doubts engendered by a half-told story will still beset his readers. For instance, in vol. ii. c. xvii. he and his comrade-travelling as mere wandering Syrian doctors, as far as their companions knew, or the reader is allowed to know are the victims of a most romantic shipwreck in the Persian Gulf, lose all their trifling effects, including their presents for native chiefs, and find their way to the marine palace of Thoweynee, sovereign of Oman, penniless, and much in the same bodily plight as that in which Ulysses announced himself to the daughter of King Alcinous. Once arrived, however, they are lodged and taken care of in the palace; they are next provided by the hospitality of a merchant with lodging, board, and raiment;' in a few days our author is walking the streets of Muscat with a decent upper garment of 'red cotton, Oman fashion, a large white girdle, a turban, 'shoes, and the Nebaa walking-stick, indispensable for respec'tability,' lives in gentlemanly style for some weeks in this metropolis, and finally obtains free passage and board to the port of Abushehr, with an utter stranger, a sea-captain of Koweyt,' who refused to take any payment in requital. How the offer of it could have been made by travellers just cast ashore half-naked, does not appear. Of course, all these adventures, as pleasantly improbable on the surface as those of Sinbad in the same region, are easily understood on the supposition of the mission,' and of the familiarity with accredited agents which it must have given; but the studious omission of