By the by, I had nearly omitted some Stanzas-(I am almost sick of Stanzas) that Bruce sent me. They must be crammed in here, though somewhat out of place or Bruce will be as valorous with me, as he of Bannockburn: :

STANZAS.

I love thee with a thrilling fear,

For, gazing on a pensive cheek,
I see decay too busy there,

Or tremble at the hectic streak.

Thy holy thoughts and looks reveal
That touching and unearthly charm,
Where early death has set its seal
Almost too gently for alarm.

When gazing on eve's parting smile,
We scarcely mark the ebb of day,
Nor heed that night steals on the while,
Till fades the latest tint away.

Or, wandering where the forest weaves
Her fairy bowers, by Autumn drest,
We half forget that autumn leaves
Fall, when their hues are loveliest.

Thine eyes are fixed upon me oft

So fondly, that I scarce can bear
Their sad expression, calmly soft,

As that which pitying angels wear.

Oh look not, lest my tears should start
So mournfully-so tenderly,
As if the thought were in thy heart,
What I must bear bereft of thee!

As if thou didst anticipate

My lonely lot divorced from thine,

And sadly didst forebode thy fate-

Not for thy own dear sake—but mine!

And now, my dear Public, I must make a rapid adieu. May you be as happy as a warm Spring and a quiet Session of Parliament can make you ;-may you laugh with unabated glee at Mr. Mathews; and crowd with fresh ardour of connoiseurship, to the exhibitions which are preparing to delight you, by the R. A's-and the B. A's-May the next Scotch novel put you again in humour with your old favourite. May King Leigh, who is arrived from Italy, inspire new life into your land of Cockayne.-May your fools all be good-humoured on the first of April, and your chimney sweeps all magnificent on the first of May.

London, March 30th. 1824.

Your's ever affectionately,

PATERSON AYMER.

P. S. Talking of Mr. Mathews, just now, tempts me to say a word, my dear P. of what we think about his new At Home'. A judicious friend writes me thus:-" As I partly anticipated, I have, in good truth, nothing to say about him; and, therefore, I think it best to say nothing. It is all very well to go and laugh at, but there is nothing to write about—unless one were to concoct a regular "theatrical criticism"-full of common-places about England and America, &c. &c.-which will be sure to be in every magazine and periodical, and which is not worth putting into any. I laughed a good deal; but not so much as at his former pieces-for the merit, or rather the pleasure, of such things is the familiarity of the illusions and imitations; and, never having been across the Atlantic, I cannot either enter so keenly into the spirit of his jokes, or judge how far they are coloured. But it is very amusing nevertheless. There is no inconsiderable quantity of Joe Millars, with here and there a happy hit interspersed. I brought the following away with me, which is new, as far as I recollect-though, perhaps, I may be like old Bray (one of the characters) in thinking so. A person speaking to a very deaf man, and getting angry at his not catching his meaning, says, "Why it is as plain as A. B. C."-" Ay, Sir, but I am D.E.F.""

257

RECOLLECTIONS OF BARBARY.

THERE is a sort of impressive gloom, bordering upon horror, which is spread over almost every thing connected with Africa. Its trackless sands, its mysterious rivers and doubtful mountains, the ebony race which inhabits the principal part of its continent, the ferocious animals that range in its vast solitudes, its climate, even its vegetable productions, all have a character of wildness, which becomes easily linked in our minds with the ideas of ferocity and destructiveness. To ́an inhabitant of the shores of the Mediterranean sea, Africa is chiefly known as the land of slavery, where thousands and thousands of Christian captives have pined, and toiled, and died in fetters. To an Italian, a Sicilian, a Provençal, or a Spaniard, the sound of the name of Barbary carries therefore with it an impression almost of terror. This was more particularly the case before the last peace, when Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli were filled with Christian slaves from almost all the countries in Europe, and when the seafaring people of most of the Italian states ran daily the risk of being taken -there to swell the number.

With these impressions, imbibed from infancy, the writer of the following sketches happened to visit Barbary during the late war. He left Italy, then under the military sway of Napoleon, and sailed in a Ragusian vessel, with French colours, bound for Tunis. Two other young men, who were leaving their country in order to avoid the oppressive conscription, were on board. The vessel being under the French flag had nothing to fear from the Barbary privateers, but it ran great risks of being taken by English cruisers; and the loss of ship and cargo, and captivity in one of the forts of Malta, although not so bad as slavery in Algiers, were still serious threats to a poor captain and his crew. The Ragusian vessel was met between Sardinia and Barbary by an English frigate the poor captain cursing the moment in which Ragusa became a French province, thought himself lost; however he steered for the uninhabited island of Galita, with the intention of running on shore if the frigate pursued him. The latter made some demonstrations to that effect, but, as the Ragusian sailed very swiftly, and soon got to the leeward of the high land of Galita, the frigate, who was apparently escorting a convoy to the westward, took no further notice of our merchant vessel.

VOL. II. PART II.

S

We sailed close under the cliffs of Galita, a cluster of rocks opposite the coast of Tabarca, and stood in for the land. The frigate pursued her course to the westward, and our captain, having thus escaped this danger, thought it more prudent not to proceed to the bay of Tunis, his original destination, as he knew that privateers under English colours, fitted out at Malta and Mahon (a sort of enemies more to be dreaded by a vessel like his than a man-of-war) hovered about Cape Carthage. We therefore kept close in shore, and availing ourselves of the night breeze, passed Cape Serra, and coasted the land between that and Cape Bianco. Next day we cast anchor in the roads of Biserta.

The vicinity of the land afforded me an opportunity of examining it attentively. It is a gloomy savage shore; nature has marked it with a forbidding character-dark naked rocks, without any appearance of inhabitants or cultivation. Where the coast is low, the scene changes to vast tracts of white sand, reflecting the burning rays of an African sun. That luminary seems here to have lost its beneficent qualities: it does not warm and illuminate as in Europe,-it scorches and blinds; it is no longer a friend, a protector, but a tyrant that mercilessly darts its fires upon the parched soil. The inhabitants of northern countries can form no idea of the dismal sensation produced by the continual sunshine of southern latitudes, where, during six or seven months of the year, every successive day brings about the same dazzling glare, the same brazen sky, the same suffocating heat, lasting fourteen or sixteen hours without interruption,-without a single cloud to rest your eyes upon, to screen you for a few hours from the deluge of light and of fire which is perpetually pouring upon you, and in which every object is enveloped,-without a single drop of rain to refresh the parched earth and the burning atmosphere. Natives of more temperate climes would not believe that a continual sunshine and clear heaven can become at last as gloomy and depressive as the clouds and fogs of northern latitudes; such however is the case. Man is not able to relish perpetual splendour, and this is true in a physical as well as in a moral sense; it staggers, it consumes, it enervates him. How delightful, after six or seven months drought, is the sight of the first autumnal clouds, those welcome visitors appearing just above the horizon, piling up slowly their fanciful forms, first fleecy and transparent, then attaining a darker hue, and at last shadowing the whole visual hemisphere of the heavens, and concealing that terrible pitiless sun from the view! And then the first drops of rain! how refreshing! one feels instinctively impelled to go out, in

order that the whole body may participate of the reviving moisture. I have seen persons stretching themselves on the ground, and lying on their backs with their mouths open, in order to catch the falling drops. To the north of the tropic, in Barbary and Malta for instance, this practice is not attended with danger to the health, as in the West Indies. The night dew, however, is unwholesome in both regions.

Biserta (anciently called Hippozarytus or Diarrhytus) is a small town of the kingdom or regency of Tunis, built at the mouth of a lake which communicates with the sea. This estuary forms a sort of harbour for small vessels; those of larger dimensions remain in the roads, where there is good anchorage. The town, seen from the sea, appears like a heap of lowly ruins of a whitish colour, from the midst of which arise the minarets of a few mosques. Its aspect resembles the idea we form of a city half destroyed by a bombardment. This appearance, which is common to other towns on the same coast, is occasioned by the houses being low, flatroofed, and of a chalky whiteness, built irregularly, without any taste or ornaments, with few windows on the outside, and those few looking more like loop-holes, grated with wooden lattices, the first sign of that unnatural jealousy, which is one of the demons of the land. Three or four houses on the quay, having a better appearance than the rest, are inhabited by the Vice-Consuls of European nations. These, with a wretched looking castle at the mouth of the harbour, where the Governor resides, and a battery which commands the roads, were the only marks of any thing resembling European civilization.

One circumstance, however, struck me at first as a pleasing singularity of this country. We sailed into the gulf, cast anchor where we pleased, furled our sails, put out our boat and went on shore, landed quietly, entered the town, and mixed with the inhabitants, and, wonderful to me! no one asked us any questions; no examination of passports, no police, no visitation from gend'armes or custom-house officers, no prefecture or mairie to dance attendance at, in short, no annoyance of any sort. His Highness the Bey of Tunis did not seem afraid of revolutions or conspiracies; at all events, he took no ostensible measures to prevent such calamities. There was no appearance of conscription, of surveillance, of state prisons; no drums beating, no soldiers, at least none that we could distinguish by their exterior from the rest of the people. To me, who had just arrived from polished Europe, from the civilized regions of Italy, then a portion of the French empire, where so many kind precautions were taken for the