the towns and principal villages, had described and commented on the settled population, and had spoken of the chief, Ibn Rasheed, and his government. From Niebuhr and Burckhardt he would have obtained a great amount of information regarding the towns and more considerable villages of Djebel Shomer, Kaseem, Aredh, and other districts of Central Arabia. Which, then, of the two accounts are we to accept? We have already stated our reasons for thinking ourselves bound, in justice to Mr. Palgrave, to assume that he could not, when he set out on his journey, have been acquainted with the works above referred to, or with those which were published on the European continent, subsequent to the conquest of the kingdom of Nejd (in 1818) by the Egyptians; but if Mr. Palgrave, when at Djebel Shomer, was already acquainted with the authors whom he names and characterizes, and whose works he could hardly have found at Djowf or Ha'yel, our assumption must be erroneous; and the inference would be such as it is unpleasant to contemplate. On the other hand, if we still adhere to our first opinion, and hold that he had not been acquainted with those works, then his elaborate account of the reflections that occupied him during his audience of Telal would be resolved into an elaborate fiction; and we could not tell how much more might be of the same character.

Our author's account of his life in Ha'yel is always well written, and much of it is curious. Let us take, for example, the following account of a walk along the streets with a mechanic of Kaseem, to visit his brother, who lay ill of fever:

'Mixed with the city crowd, swordsmen and gaily-dressed negroes, for the negro is always a dandy when he can afford it, belonging mostly to the palace, are now going about their affairs, and claim a certain amount of deference from the vulgar cits, though we see nothing here of the Agha and Basha style of the overbearing and despotic Turk. Nor do these government men ever dream of taking aught without purchase, or of compelling those they can lay hold of to gratuitous labour, Ottoman fashion; such proceedings, also, being repugnant to that independent high-mindedness which stamps the genuine Arab caste. The well-dressed chieftain and noble jostles on amid the plebeian crowd on terms of astounding familiarity, and elbows or is elbowed by the artisan and the porter; while the court officers themselves meet with that degree of respect alone which indicates deference rather than inferiority in those who pay it. A gay and busy scene; the morning air in the streets yet retains just sufficient coolness to render tolerable the bright rays of the sun, and everywhere is that atmosphere of peace, security, and thriving known to the visitors of inner Arabia, and almost or wholly unknown to the Syrian or Anatolian traveller. Should you listen to the hum of discourse around, you will never hear a curse, an imprecation, or a quarrel, but much business, repartee, and laughter.

Doheym and I slowly pick out our way through the crowd amid many greetings on either hand, till we reach the open space of the palace court where the Sook falls into it; and thence we pass through the high gateway, and enter the main artery of the town.-Vol. i. p. 163. This is an interesting picture of independence, self-respect, and general wellbeing, the value of which is greater or less as we rely with more or less confidence on its perfect fidelity. A slight difference in the colouring-the change of a few wordswould convert it into a very ordinary picture of what may be seen daily in the narrow streets and bazaars of many an Asiatic town. It is precisely one of those cases in which unreserved confidence in the absolute fidelity of the narrator, in his freedom from undue rhetorical ambition, or tendency to embellish, is indispensable to a just appreciation of the social condition which the description is intended to illustrate; and so it is, to a greater or smaller extent, with every narrative or anecdote intended to illustrate the manners, life, and social condition of people whom we have not seen, and between whom and us there is, for the occasion, no other interpreter than the individual narrator. No one thinks, no one, we suppose, ever thought, of questioning the fidelity of a narrative, an incident, or an anecdote told by Niebuhr or Burckhardt, by Wellsted or by Wallin. No one suspects them of embellishing; every one instinctively perceives, or thinks he perceives, that their main aim and object is not effect or display, but to convey as accurate an idea as they can of what they have to describe. No visions of the cocked hat or the cane intrude themselves upon us while we read what they relate. In fiction describing the life and manners of other countries, or of our own in bygone times, the pictures may be faithful though the scenes are imaginary, or, in dealing with real characters, the portraits may be likenesses although they are ideal; and so we may derive from fiction not only a more vivid impression, but a more just appreciation, of the society and the persons whom it describes. But as the story is avowedly fictitious, we are left free to form each his own opinion as to how far the artist has succeeded or failed in producing a truthful picture. When, however, we take up a narrative of real life and adventure, we are not free to regard merely the skill displayed in the execution; and if we are unable to accept, as positive and unvarnished truth, all that the writer chooses to tell us-especially all that is within his own knowledge-we cannot help feeling dissatisfied, both with the book and the author.

Sir Harford Jones Brydges, in his Brief History of the Wahauby, previously referred to, quotes an account of an audience of Abd-ul-Azeez, the Wahaby sovereign, which, from the age

VOL. XLIV.-NO. LXXXVII.

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assigned to him, must relate to some time about 1796. Sir Harford speaks of it in terms of high approbation, and says:— I can only heartily wish it may convey to the reader as lively an idea. of the Court of Dereyha as it did to me:'—

'No sooner had my person and Mansoor's presents been made fit to offer themselves before Abd-ool-Aziz, than I requested an audience in all due form. This was immediately granted. It took place in the open air, at the gates of what I must needs call, more from the dignity of its tenant than its own, a palace; and the Schaich received me squatted on a rush mat. Notwithstanding his advanced age of seventyfive, he still displayed good features, and a handsome, though somewhat harsh and forbidding countenance, and through all the affected meanness of his dress shone a lofty and commanding air. I felt a sensation of awkwardness at the richness of my own apparel so much exceeding that of the high personage whose favour I came to seek. On this subject, however, I might have spared myself any uneasiness. The Schaich seemed to contemplate my glitter-if noticed by him at all-with perfect indifference; and when I presented to him the gifts of Mansoor, he cast upon them the careless survey of a man who considers such things as beneath his attention. The letter certainly puzzled him. He seemed to feel as if it ought not, and he saved himself by his supercilious glance the embarrassment of owning that he knew not what to make of it. When, at the conclusion of my harangue, I repeated to him the sentence, and showed him the signet imparted to me by his emissary at Bagdad, his brow unfurled, and his features relaxed into a more affable expression. Still he remained, after I had done, a few moments musing and silent. At last, "Stranger," said he, in a slow and deliberate manner, "wonder not, if an old warrior, accustomed to treachery and deceit, should not feel immediate confidence in Mansoor's protestations. If the light of truth has really penetrated his heart, the Lord be thanked, especially by himself, who must be the greatest gainer, since the choicest blessings of heaven, both here and hereafter, never fail to reward sincere conversion; but I know the faith of the Turks, and I distrust the very Arab whose breath mingles with theirs. Mansoor's artful conduct may have deceived, and it is only on trial that I shall think myself secure of his sincerity. The decisive hour," added he, starting from his seat, "is perhaps not far off, when all who appear not for us shall be treated as if they had been against us. The spears already are pointing, and at a distance which no other eye can reach I already see the war dust rising."

I have been principally induced to give the above quotation, because, during my long residence at Bagdad, I was assured by more than one person, that whenever Abd-ool-Aziz spoke of the Turks, it was customary for him to work himself almost to frenzy, and that he then made use of nearly the last words mentioned above.'

This quotation, of the merits of which few men could have been so well qualified to judge as Sir Harford, is avowedly fictitious it is from the pages of a well-known work of fiction.

The narrator is no other than Mr. Hope's worthless hero, Anastasius; but we accept it as an admirable ideal picture, in excellent keeping with what we know of the truth. Were it otherwise, we should have no right to complain. We are not called upon to believe that it is absolutely true, though we may have good reason to believe that it is very like the truth. But with regard to what Mr. Palgrave tells us,-his audience of Telal, for example,--we are expected to put undoubting reliance in him, and to accept what he says as absolutely trustworthy in all its parts. In a narrative professing to be genuine and true, there can be no admissible compromise with fiction. If it is not the former, it becomes the latter, whether the author intends it or not. We have no desire or intention to attribute to Mr. Palgrave any deliberate purpose to misrepresent what he describes. On the contrary, we assume honesty of purpose. But we think that he has yielded too much to the temptations with which the very exuberance of his powers assailed him, and that he has been far too negligent, and too careless of what nearly concerned his own credit.

From Djebel Shomer the travellers proceeded to Bereydah in Kaseem, the most productive and populous of the highland districts. The principal town is Aneyzeh,-Mr. Palgrave calls it Oneyzah, which is stated by the French writers to have contained, at the time of the Egyptian conquest, about 30,000 inhabitants, and to have carried on a very considerable trade. Burckhardt also mentions that there were many wealthy merchants in that town. Mr. Palgrave, however, was unable to visit Aneyzeh, because when he was at Bereydah, from which it is not far distant, it was besieged, or rather imperfectly blockaded, by the troops of Feysul, the Wahaby sovereign, whose authority had not been re-established there since the expulsion of the Egyptians. Before the travellers left Arabia, they learned that after a protracted and gallant resistance, Aneyzeh had fallen, and had suffered all the barbarities usually perpetrated on such occasions by the Wahabys,-barbarities which, in the case of a town taken by assault, were not unknown in Europe a few centuries ago.

Bereydah is, next to Aneyzeh, the most important town of Kaseem. Mr. Palgrave estimates its population at about 20,000; it is also the seat of a considerable trade, foreign and domestic, but of its nature or extent our traveller gives no intelligible idea. The Wahabys had, not many years before, regained possession of the place, and, if Mr. Palgrave's detailed account of the manner in which it was effected be correct, by a series of the foulest and most cold-blooded acts of treachery and cruelty; but as he seems to have obtained his information from the

bitterest enemies of the Wahabys, and to have imbibed all their hatred of those Mohammedan reformers, in addition to his own original aversion, his statements must be received with caution.

At Bereydah the travellers unexpectedly encountered a Persian Haj caravan, returning from Medinah towards Meshed Ali, which had been deserted by its Wahaby conductor, and was detained to be fleeced by the Wahaby governor. This affords Mr. Palgrave an occasion, of which he never fails to avail himself, to speak of the Persian nation in terms of contempt and aversion. The bitterness of his language is such as to suggest the idea of personal resentment, and to make it almost amusing. We cannot help suspecting that he must, somehow or other, have encountered personal mortification at the hands of a Persian. The encounter with the Persian caravan, however, turned out to be a very fortunate event. He had been endeavouring to obtain at Bereydah guides and camels to convey him to Riad, but in vain; for no one fancied a journey in that direction. This is Nejed,' said an elderly man of whom they had demanded information; he who enters does not come out again!' At length, in the Persian pilgrim camp, they stumbled upon the man who, probably of all the men in Arabia, was the fittest for their purpose-Aboo Eysa in Arabia, but known by another name in his native city of Aleppo; a political refugee; an unsuccessful commercial adventurer; a Mohammedan of the loosest texture; a Wahaby at Riad; a latitudinarian elsewhere; a man of tact and ability, of a kindly disposition and an easy temper; a general favourite, and a privileged character; who knew everybody, and was acceptable to all. He proved to be a faithful friend and guide; so useful and valuable, indeed, that their acquaintance with him in a great measure determined the future course of the travellers.

At Bereydah also the party with which they were to travel was augmented and dignified by the addition of Mohammed Allee-esh-Shirazee, the Persian representative at Meshed 'Alee, and now intrusted with the headship of the national pilgrimage.' This person was proceeding to Riad to announce to Feysul the misconduct of the conductor, who had deserted, and of Mohanna, the governor of Bereydah, who had fleeced the Persian Haj caravan. The Naib,' for such was his official designation, was evidently a Persian of the 'Hajji Baba' class, whom Mr. Palgrave seems to have mistaken for a Persian gentleman.

From Bereydah there were two routes leading to Riad; the one through Woshim, by the way of Shakra, was the more direct, but in the present state of the country, with the war at Aneyzeh in progress, they preferred the more circuitous and the