with their equals, perhaps with their superiors; and they become petulant and unbearable by a perpetual assumption of an authority which is no longer acknowledged. This is rendered more saliently absurd, where an estate is in the question. According to the law of primogeniture, the landholder contracts an obligation to die and make room for his successor, at or about the time when his son comes of age. The longer protraction of life is on mere sufferance, an usurpation. Tempus abire tibi. This the parent is apt to feel: and he is generally very awkward in his false position. Sometimes, especially on his son's marriage, he makes a Lear-like distribution of his estate, reserving to himself only an annuity out of the land, which is seldom an happy arrangement. More frequently, the sense of being in the way only produces an horrible jealousy of the successor. The son's allowance appears so like a quit-rent, that it is paid with a bad grace, or it is made insufficient for maintaining the young man in his proper rank. Hence eternal bickerings and unworthy contestations, plainly indicative of the unwholesomeness of the law from which they flow; and proving how far legislation upon false principles can corrupt and degrade human nature. Of these quarrels the graceless make a jest, but they are the sources of much bitterness and misery to kind and benevolent natures. Whether the dislike of abdication, which besets the aged, shows itself in an hateful morosity and tyranny over the younger and more joyous part of the community, or is manifested in a foolish endeavour to protract the season of enjoyment, when the organs are no longer fitted to receive it, it is still the same impulse; and the variety, vast as it is, is wholly an affair of temperament. In old maids it sometimes shows itself in calumny, prudery, and plain clothes, sometimes in coquetry, grimace, and pink ribbons; sometimes in a desperate effort to retain the men, sometimes in as desperate a refuge in the love of heaven; but in both cases it is the same desire of dominion, the same painful and afflictive sense of power escaping from the reluctant hand; it is the convulsion of debility, the struggle which precedes dissolution. To conquer this infirmity requires a strong mind, and a life spent in the exertion of self-control. More frequently an exemption from the faults of age is the result of an happy temperament, of that cheerfulness which accommodates itself to all the accidents of life, and which is ever graceful, because it is always natural and unaffected. In this respect the French are greatly our superiors. The exuberance of their animal spirits softens down, in advanced life, into a cheerfulness that is exquisitely amiable, and their habitual good breeding never leaves them. Most travelled Englishmen have enjoyed the acquaintance of Denon, to whose apartments they were not more attracted by the rarity of his collection, than by the cheerful gaiety of his manners, the solidity and variety of his information, and the frankness with which he communicated it. Denon was a perfect model of what an old man should be in society. Gay and good-humoured with men, delicate in his attentions to females, considerate to all, he adapted his conversation with care to the intellects and pursuits of those whom he addressed. In displaying his treasures to the various classes of persons who pressed around him, he contrived always to find something which he could place in a light congenial to the character of each; and the same adaptation marked his general intercourse with society. There was not a single grain of sourness or austerity in his whole composition; no regret for the past, no weak and childish apprehension of the future disturbed the serenity of a mind which was at peace with all the world. Neat in his person, without foppery, exempt from all disgusting habits, he had no claims to make on the indulgence of his auditor: and though distinguished throughout all Europe for his talents, his acquirements, and the space he had occupied in the literary world, he had no Johnsonian arrogance to excuse, no assumption of authority to tolerate. Simple, playful, and unpretending, he was universally sought for in all societies, and he was the life and the soul of the small but educated and refined circle, of which he was himself the centre. His body partook of this elasticity of mind. He was marvellously exempted from disease, and the temperance of his life left him, at its close, more alert than many men are in the vigour of their existence; so that, though he died full of years, his death might rather be considered as an accident, than as the accomplishment of his natural destiny. On the Continent, this is a character by no means uncommon. La Croix the mathematician, Delfico of Naples, La Fayette, De Tracy, Bonstetten and Dumont of Geneva, the Archbishop of Tarentum, are each, in their several ways, delightful and amiable companions, over whom time has passed without diminishing their social good qualities. If it were admissible to cite individuals from among the undistinguished walks of life, the list might be extended to an inconvenient length; but every one who has lived abroad will find in his memory abundant materials for verifying the assertion. Why are amiable old men less frequent among ourselves? Is it that society in general is less well understood with us than it is abroad; and that all ranks and ages on the Continent afford better companions than with us? or is it that there is something in the temperament and habits of the people that conducts them to a mellow and richer maturity? M. THE RETURN OF FRANCIS THE FIRST. DART forth like light, my Arab steed, From torturing doubt, from bondage freed, Farewell, my children! had my heart I go-your blest return shall be My guiding hope, my tenderest care, Soon, soon shall France my children see Forward, my steed! as on we fly, What crowding thoughts rush through my brain But oh, exulting memory! I am-I am a King again! * His exulting exclamation after crossing the river Andaye on his release, and mounting his Arabian horse.-See Robertson. When, all but fame and honour lost,* My wandering soul has often flown Dear Marguerite her magic lay Waked there for me with watching voice : And gentle Claude awhile was gay That happy Francis might rejoice. My queenly mother's brow of pride There Bayard, virtue's champion, met His fame, his country, and his king! Oh, Françoise! may no adverse fate I come to dry those flowing tears, To shield thee in this throbbing heart- Was love like ours ordain'd to part? Beloved France! again, again, Your echoes shall my triumph ring, " His short but emphatic letter to his mother, after the fatal battle of Pavia, "Tout est perdu hormis l'honneur." + Françoise de Foix, Countess de Chateaubriant, beloved by Francis, murdered by her husband during the King's detention. A RENCONTRE IN THE DESERT. "Non levia, aut ludicra petuntur Præmia." Virg. Eneid. HOмs, or Hems, the ancient Emesa, is the last town which the traveller meets on his way through the desert of Tedmor or Palmyra. In coming from Baalbek, it is discoverable for many miles before one reaches it. The great height of the conical truncated hill of the citadel, and the continuous line of town stretching out from its base to the west, mark it conspicuously, at a great distance, on the horizon. On entering the town, this citadel, or Acropolis, is found to form the centre of a circle, of which the diverging streets may, in some measure, be considered the radii. It is regularly cut on all sides in the solid rock, in an angle of about sixty degrees, girt with a ruinous wall, above and below, and crowned by a fortress, now in a dismantled state, and, as far as I could perceive, without guns. The walls of the city are equally dilapidated, the population dwindled to about seven thousand; the suburbs occupied by cemeteries, which, when the wind blows from the south and the graves are new, infect the neighbourhood with exhalations sufficiently pestilential to expel every one but the women.* The gates, with the exception of that generally described by travellers, are of no beauty or interest; nor is there any monument or relic of antiquity in the town worth looking at, unless, perhaps, a few fine columns in the church belonging to the Greeks. Without the walls is a sort of pyramidal mausoleum, at the distance of a few hundred paces to the west. A great portion of two of the sides has fallen down, but the slab, containing the inscription, (not very brief or legible) still exists. The architecture is of that mongrel character which connects it with the decadence of Roman art. stretches from this centre in every direction over an immense expanse, thinly covered with a very meagre vegetation, and here and there dotted, in the immediate vicinity of the town, with a few starved and stunted trees. Beyond this, like the mists arising from a boundless sea, are dimly descried the dust and haze of the Desert. The eye In this frontier town of Turkish rule we arrived on the 3d of June, after a very fatiguing two days' march from Baalbek, with the intention of penetrating onwards as far as Palmyra.+ The information we had received at Damascus led us to hope that we should meet with few difficulties: the sequel, as in other instances, very remarkably contrasted with our expectations. The first aspect of the town was by no means encouraging: the streets were silent, the houses closed, and the market-place, though full of poor merchandize, and Turkish turbans had so few black Bedouin faces scattered amongst them, that we at first apprehended an altercation had taken place between the governor and the neighbouring tribes, resulting from the late rencontre in the Hauran. These alarms were in some degree dissipated by the courtesy of the Mouzzelim, to whom we had sent, immediately on our arrival, our principal interpreter with the letters of Saali Vizir, the Pasha of Damascus. After a short delay in the streets, his Seraf was dispatched to meet us. He The Turkish women count a visit to the tombs, like a visit to the bath, amongst the chief gaieties of their monotonous existence. They rarely miss their Thursday rounds. Numerous groups are to be seen in most eastern capitals, towards the evening, gliding under the trees of these last repositories of mortality. Their long white costume (it is the female uniform in Turkey, as black was once at Venice), contrasting with, and chequering the massive gloom of the cypresses, is peculiarly spectral and imposing. If I am correctly informed, and I had my information from an assistant, their conversazione is of a very opposite character. It savours very little of Hamlet, or his philosophy. We were then six in party with a numerous suite. Should these pages meet the eyes of any of the gentlemen with whom I had the fortune to travel; I hope they may be the means of recalling to their recollection some of the happiest moments of our lives. conducted us with all due honours to his house, and, on alighting, we were seated on a comfortable divan, and regaled in great pomp with the ordinary refreshments. Immediately after breakfast the succeeding morning we visited the Mouzzelim, or governor, to thank him for our reception, and to concert measures for our proposed excursion. We found him seated on a very discreditable divan, in a dirty room : the walls yellow with smoke, and the windows closed and stifling with cobwebs; a want of tenue for which we were somewhat prepared by the rickety appearance of his staircase, and the disorder and abandonment of the court below. His levee had a very provincial appearance, and brought back the imagination to the maimed and limping state of an ancient village baron, or of a modern German sovereign: it consisted of his Cafigee, an officer of scarcely less importance than a private secretary, and his minister Scander, a Copt of the usual Coptic rotundity of countenance and plethoric heaviness of manner, but distinguished even above his countrymen for the good sense and temper of his administration, and the honourable characteristic, as we deemed it, of unbounded attention to strangers. The centre of this group was the Mouzzelim himself. His broad and somewhat drowsy physiognomy, seldom dimpled, by thought, from its habitual repose, a more than Turkish honesty in his grave and homely manners, detracted perhaps, at first, from the impressions which Turkish courtesy in general conveys. By degrees we became more nearly acquainted, and found, as in the case of the palaces of the country, we had formed rather an erroneous estimate of the man from his exterior. After the customary preliminaries of pipes, &c. it was arranged that the Mouzzelim should, upon our part, dispatch a confidential messenger to the chief of the tribe Saba, Douaki, then encamped a day and a half's distance from Hamah, requesting him to conduct a party of travellers, under the immediate protection of the Pasha, to Palmyra, and promising, in case of acquiescence, such recompense as should be adjusted between us before setting out. The same evening the courier left Homs. In the mean time we are lodged and entertained by order of the Mouzzelim, at the Serâf's.... The messenger did not return for two or three days, and we were left, having already exhausted the neighbouring sights, and got tired of reading our books for the third time, to the slender resources of Arab society, and to John Bull's lamentations on the unreasonable heat of the weather. The Serâf's establishment was numerous and noisy enough. We inhabited two apartments at one extremity of the court, lately built, almost entirely of wood, and, as is frequent in the East, unpainted. They seem to have been designed for strangers only; the remainder of the court, paved with much skill and taste, had been reserved for the family. The father, a septuagenarian, had been for some time an invalid, and was actually, at the moment of our arrival, confined to his bed: the female portion of the establishment, though Christians, were not permitted to wander beyond their nursery, or harem, and were protected from all profane inquiry with little less than Moslem scrupulosity. We occasionally saw the two brothers: the eldest, about thirty, had been some time married: the second, not more than sixteen, was on the eve of a similar connexion. His mind was still younger than his body; he had all the giddiness and noisiness of childhood, with the peremptory vivacity of a young Arab, He asked a thousand questions at once, and impatient at their slow transmission through our interpreter, waited for scarcely any other answer than what could be collected from the ambiguous expression of our countenances. This, of course, produced an infinity of mistakes; but unchecked by our ennui, and at last reproof, he continued the amusement uninterrupted until evening. Cards and talking were his passion, and we found no other means to extricate ourselves from his at tentions than a resolute attempt at taking his portrait: an infallible specific against intrusion in the East: no Turk we have ever met with submitting with ordinary patience to have his likeness thus pirated by men, who, for aught he knows, may be vampires or necromancers. As to his marriage, it |