lution of the Council of Viziers, the Asiatic as well as the European Sipahis were permitted to assemble in the capital.

'Three months long the tumour of rebellion was growing to a head; it broke in the month of Regeb, of which the Asiatic proverb says, " In Regeb strange things are common and current." Three days in succession the Sipahis assembled at the Hippodrome, and demanded the heads of the Grand Vizier Hafiz, the Mufti Jahja, the Defterdar Mustafa Pasha, Hassan Chalif, named Aga of the Janizaries, the confidential favourite, Musats chelebi, and other favourites, in all seventeen heads, which they declared must be delivered to the executioner. The shops were shut, the city and the seraglio in the greatest consternation. On the second day they advanced to the gate of the palace, and were persuaded to retire on the promise that the next day they should receive redress. On the third day, with the dawn of morning, the outer court of the seraglio was filled with rebels. The vizier Beiram Pasha sent word to the Grand Vizier, who was already on his way to the divan, to conceal himself till the mob had dispersed. Hafiz answered the messenger with a smile :-" This day I have seen my fate in a dream; I fear not to die;" and pursued his way. As he entered the seraglio the multitude divided into two rows. He supposed it was to make room for him to pass, and to salute him; but it was the appointed signal for lapidation; a shower of stones struck him from his horse; his followers took him in their arms, and hurried him for safety through the hospital into the inner part of the seraglio: the Sipahis fell on the two followers, killed one, wounded the other. He had lost his turban of state and his caftan; he took a turban of state and a caftan from the Bostandibaschi, and entered the sultan's presence to surrender the seals. The sultan, in consternation and sorrow, only said, Go, make your escape." He immediately took a boat to Scutari. In the mean time, the insurgents had forced their way into the second court of the seraglio, to the hall of divan, and demanded the sultan's presence in the divan. The guards of the seraglio armed themselves, expecting a renewal of the scenes at Sultan Osman's dethronement. The sultan appeared, and held a divan standing."What would ye have, my servants?" he addressed the mutineers. Their answers were loud and insolent; they demanded the seventeen heads. "You must surrender them, that we may tear them in pieces, or it will be still worse." They pressed upon the sultan, and were almost laying their hands upon him. "You are incapable of listening to my words-why have ye called me hither?" said the sultan, and retreated, surrounded by most of his pages, who placed him in the midst of them, back into the inner court. The rebels came after him like a raging flood; fortunately the pages barred the gate; but the tumult and the outcry became so much the greater; "The seventeen heads, or abdicate the throne."

66

'Redschib Pasha, the secret mover of the whole insurrection, represented to the sultan that it was necessary to appease the tumult by yielding to their demands; that it was an established custom that the

commanders

commanders should be surrendered to the troops; that the slave, when unchained, must take what he will,-better the head of the grand vizier, than that of the sultan. Murad, driven to extremities, sent the Bostandibaschi to Scutari, to command the return of Hafiz. He went to meet him on his arrival. The gate of Bliss (that of the inner court) opened again; the sultan ascended a second time the elevated throne; he gave a sign, and four of the insurgents, two Sipahis and two Janizaries, stood before him. He appealed to them not to destroy the honour of the caliphate; his address made no impression -they insisted on the seventeen heads. Hafiz Pasha, who in the mean time under the gate of Bliss had made the legal ablution preparatory to death, when he saw that the sultan's address had no effect, came forward and said, "My Padischah! be a thousand slaves, like Hafiz, sacrificed for thee! I only entreat thee, put me not to death, but surrender me to them, that I may die as a martyr, and that my innocent blood may be upon their heads. Let my body be buried at Scutari." He then kissed the earth, and spake thus, "In the name of God, the all-merciful, the all-mild; there is no power and no might but with God the most high, the most great! we are God's, and we return back to God." He strode like a hero into the court. The sultan sobbed, the pages wept, the viziers stood with tears in their eyes, the Sipahis alone approached him as he advanced. To sell his life like a martyr, with a well-aimed blow he struck the first to the ground, upon which the rest sprang upon him with their daggers, and gave him seventeen mortal wounds; a Janizary knelt on his breast and struck off his head. The pages of the seraglio spread a green silk covering over the body. The sultan said, "So be it; but in God's time ye will meet with vengeance, ye violent men, who have neither fear of God, nor respect for the Prophet."'

The hour of vengeance did arrive; and the scene in which the sultan, arrived at manhood, took advantage of the dissensions between the Janizaries and the Sipahis, and employed the arms of the former against their more obnoxious brethren, is another vigorous and graphic passage (vol. v., p. 143), strongly impressed with the local and eastern character, which our author's familiarity with the capital, the palace, and the people of Constantinople, enables him to preserve with so much success. But with all the vigour of Murad IV., his daily decapitations arrested but for a time the growth of the hydra heads of rebellion. Murad was perhaps the most sanguinary despot that ever sat upon the Ottoman throne. Not only did he endeavour to quench in blood the spirit of domestic insurrection, but no such dark necessity palliated his massacre of 30,000 Persians in cold blood,-that act which calls to the recollection of our historian Queen Elizabeth's execution of the Seminary priests, taken on the veracious authority of Dr. Lingard, and all the wholesale murders perpetrated by great conquerors from Alexander to Napoleon-not omitting, to preserve his charac

teristic

teristic impartiality, the 40,000 Protestants massacred by 'the fanatical Catholics in Ireland.' In his own dominions the barbarities of Murad produced no permanent effect during the succeeding reigns of Ibrahim and Mahomet IV. The sacred privilege of insurrection was still exercised in Constantinople; it had become, as it were, an established usage, and was acted on by other classes as well as by the unruly soldiery. Once the chief artizans of rebellion were the smiths; on another occasion it spread to the peaceful Ulemas, of whose proceedings there is a most curious account (vol. iv., p. 589); in the reign of Mohammed IV. it gained even the eunuchs of the seraglio, and led to the murder of the Walide, the sultana-mother, in her youth the far-famed Greek Kosem, whose gentleness, ability, and virtue had exercised great influence on the government of the empire during four successive reigns.

This great period of Ottoman anarchy ended only with the appointment of the celebrated Mohammed Koprili to the grandvizierate. Koprili in his former governments had acquired the character of uprightness and humanity; during his grand-vizierate of five years, the public peace was maintained, but at the cost of 36,000 heads. Yet such had been the state of anarchy, that, according to our author's impartial judgment, this enormous sacrifice was rather a saving than a waste of human life.

The administration of Koprili was not merely the epoch of the cessation, or, when we survey the subsequent history, the temporary suspension of insurrection and of the misrule of an ungovernable soldiery, but likewise of the military fortunes of the Turks. The improvements in European discipline began to render the Christian armies more formidable, while the waning enthusiasm of conquest among the Mahometans assumed a defensive position, -forced to contend for the gradually receding frontier of their power, rather than to advance upon the territory of the enemy. The talents of Montecuculi appeared at the turning of the tide ; and though once again the crescent appeared in disastrous and threatening lustre under the walls of Vienna-though that capital was only rescued by the ill-requited valour and activity of Sobieski -yet from the battle of St. Gothard began the visible decline of the Ottoman greatness. This less animating period, when the Porte began to be the scene of European political intrigue-when Turkey, admitted into the fraternity of European nations, had abandoned its lofty vein of dictation, the style and bearing of the heaven-appointed autocrat of the earth, who permitted kings and kaisers to approach and do homage at his footstool-when the lord of the seven regions who, in his former imperial language, would not stoop to treaties with the tributary nations, though he condescended

condescended at times to grant them privileges and concessions→ was now reduced to negotiate and send ambassadors like the humblest of his rivals-this decline and fall of the Ottoman power is carried on by our author in his two latter volumes with the same diligence and ability. The last volume comes down to the Peace of Canardschi in 1774.

In the older, we fear we must add, the better days of English literature, a work written in a language so little known to the generality of English readers, and which adds so largely to our knowledge of a nation which has acted so important a part in the history of man, and even in the affairs of modern Europe, would have been rendered accessible to the British public by a translation. But in these days, when literary enterprise is paralyzed by cheap competition, and the quiet pursuit of letters seems to be death-struck by the overbearing noise and turbulence of political strife, what writer, competent to the task, (and it would require a man of no ordinary knowledge and acquirements,) will consecrate his time and his talents to such ill-requited labour? what bookseller will venture to risk an adequate remuneration for such a task? How few of the more valuable works of the most learned literature in Europe have been domesticated amongst us. Niebuhr indeed has had the good fortune to kindle the enthusiasm of two very able Cambridge scholars; and the great works of Boeckh on the Public Economy of Athens, and of Otfried Müller on the Dorians, have found translators in every way qualified to do them justice. One or two theological works have likewise forced their way into our market;* and, greatly to his credit, an enterprising bookseller at Oxford has commenced a very respectable translation of Heeren's valuable Researches. From the same quarter we have been surprised with a translation of Adelung's Sketch of Sanscrit Literature,' not only enriched with many useful additions, but remodelled—and, from a meagre and imperfect catalogue, rendered a much fuller and even an amusing compilation. But how much remains behind! how ignorant in general are even men of letters in England of the great standard works of Germany! On the other hand, every English book of the least value, we might almost say even though utterly valueless, finds its way to Germany. We are astonished at finding

6

* Even of these translations, more than one, particularly of the theological works, we must confess, remind us of the perplexed Mr. Dangle in the Critic Methinks, Sir, the interpreter is the hardest to be understood of the two.' We find it difficult to decide whether we are reading German or English. Even the translators of Niebuhr-one of whom, in the preface to a former version from the German, showed himself master of a remarkably free and powerful vein of English style-do not stand clear of this charge; though in their behalf it may be very fairly pleaded, that Niebuhr's style and manner of writing are so completely identified with the character of his mind, that his admirers may have felt it a duty, at the sacrifice of ease and perspicuity, to give a close and faithful representation of their original.

these

these insatiable scholars quoting some insignificant pamphlet, which has been stifled as soon as born in our heavy atmosphere. -Every work of a higher order, whether of imagination or research, is seized with the utmost avidity, and appears in a German dress at the next Leipsic fair. In this interchange, it is true, besides the few more solid and durable commodities to which we have alluded, we also receive, like certain other islanders, many beads and baubles-some pretty enough in their wayOndines, and Sintrams, and Peter Schlemils-and some specimens of that very clever novelist, Tieck ;-but as for importing to any extent such substantial products as the work before us, those of Raumur, Wilken, and countless others in every branch of eastern, classical, antiquarian, or historical lore, our literary merchants tremble at such desperate ventures; and limiting of course their imports to the demand, leave us in a state of seclusion from that part of the learned commonwealth of Europe which is advancing with unrivalled vigour and ability in almost every path of letters.

ART. II.-Narrative of a Residence at the Court of London. By Richard Rush, Esq., Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary from the United States of America, from 1817 to 1825. London. Svo. 1833.

IN

N these latter days, when every path of literature is so beaten, this work has at least one prima facie attraction-it is a novelty. We recollect no instance in modern times in which a minister accredited from one power to another has published a professed account even of his domestic and personal intercourse, much less of his political negociations; and even those of older date, Sully, Bassompierre, &c., who have left memoirs of this kind, never dreamed of their being printed till, by the lapse of time, all personal feelings and interests should be extinguished. We thought the memoirs of that coxcomb who entitles himself Prince Puckler Muskau, were in exceeding bad taste, and violated that implied confidence under which social intercourse exists among gentlemen,

*

*Mr. Rush, having occasion to mention the embassies of Sully and Bassompierre in England, seems to have fallen into an error, which can hardly be one of the press, and which is a strange one-if he had ever read the works he quotes. Sully,' he says, 'brought to England a retinue of two hundred gentlemen. Bassompierre, still earlier, speaks of an equipage of four hundred persons returning with him to France.'-p. 66. Sully's embassy to England was in 1603, and Bassompierre's in 1624; and Bassompierre may be said to have flourished in the generation after Sully; so that Mr. Rush's expression, still earlier,' involves an historical anachronism. Nor does it appear that the four hundred persons mentioned by Bassompierre were all of his own retinue; on the contrary, seventy at least were priests whom the government had ordered out of England; and it seems that many other French catholics took the opportunity of accompanying the ambassador, the relations between the two nations appearing somewhat hostile.

and