11 Here oft my steps hath Contemplation led; Under this hoary elm, with lichens red, Nor is the day far distant, nor the hour 11 But man was made for bustle and for strife;" Are through the battling storm blasts; to erase Cold were the heart, and bigoted indeed, A doctrine so debasing in the breast? Since thus so feeble, happy 'tis for us, That the All-Seeing is our judge alone! We walk in darkness-but not always thus'; The veil shall be withdrawn, and man be shown With marvels, hidden in the womb of night,eft ellos. Man in his might, and woman in her bloom, And, e'er it enters on a new career, " Burn in the light of hope, or shrink with conscious fear. Then in resign'd submission let us bow To raise the meek, or bid the mighty fall; به ؟ i THE AGA OF THE JANIZARIES. ITALY has probably produced more of that distinctive quality called genius, than any other nation of Europe. What she was in the days of antiquity we scarcely know, farther than she was mistress of the world. Greece seems then to have borne away the prize of genius. But, before the question can be decided, we must remember that ancient Greece was exactly in the circumstances which are most favourable to the expansion of the intellect, while ancient Rome, from the time when she was relieved from the pressure of perpetual war, was exactly in the circumstances most unfavourable to that expansion ;-that Greece was a group of republics, which even, when under the dominion of Rome, were less enslaved than tranquillized, while Italy was a solid despotism, shaken only by civil wars, which at once riveted the fetters of the despotism, impoverished the nobles, and corrupted the people. But on the revival of Europe from the ruin and the sleep of the dark ages, Italy was placed under the original circumstances of Greece: the land was a group of republics; all was sudden opulence, wild liberty, and fiery enthusiasm. She became first the merchant, then the warrior, of Europe; then the poet, then the painter, of the world. From that period she was the universal school of the arts, those higher arts which regulate and raise the character knowledge, law, theology, poetry, of mankind, government, political not less than those graceful arts which soothe ter, and the pendulum. An Italian made architecture a new attribute of man, by hanging the dome of St Peter's in the air. An Italian made the wonders of ancient painting credible by surpassing them, and giving to mankind an art which now can never die. While Italy continued a warring nation, all the great leaders of the European armies were either Italians or the pupils of Italy. The Sforza, Castruccia, Parma, Montecuculi, were the very lights of martial science; and who was the subverter of Europe and its kings in our own day? who was the inventor of a new art of war, and the terrible realizer of his own fearful but bril. liant theory? An Italian! This universal supremacy in things of the intellect is genius. All was original; for genius is originality. All was powerful, practical, and made to impress its character upon the living generation, and the gene rations to come. For the highest genius is the most practical: genius is no trifler; it may be fastidious; it may love to dream a world of its own; it may look with scorn on the feeble and tardy progress by which humbler powers attain the height which it reaches with a wave of its wing, but when it once comes to its task, and treads the ground, its pressure is felt by the vigour of its tread. It moves direct to its pur. pose, its is worthy of itd powers; simplicity, strength, and the evidence of its noble interposi force, are its essence, and it leaves tion, perhaps in the overthrow of life; her music, sculpture, painting, or decorate human kingdoms, perhaps in their renova the drama, the dance, were unrival tion, but, in all its acts, leaves the proof of faculties given with the object of changing the direction, or re novating the strength, of the general ed. In all periods, when a science To come to the immediate purpose of the narrative. In the war threw a new stream of life into it, and it began its career again for new triumphs. An Italian revived geo- of the Russians and Imperialists on graphy by the discovery of a new the Ottoman Porte, which ended with hemisphere, and revived astronomy the peace of Oczakow, Dec. 1791, by giving us the televived, and throw it was remarked that the fortune world. An Italian awoke us to a gates of the starry which had so signally accompanied nature by the theme of deserted them its close; new knowledge an awokchanism of parts of the campaign, as signally the Imperialist armies in the earlier ing open the that Turkey, which had been saved by little short of miracle from the first incursion of the Austrian army, concluded by not merely repelling those arms, but placing herself in a higher rank than she had held before. The Osmanlis of course attributed this singular change to the protection of their prophet; but those who were unable to lift their eyes to the paradise where he sits on sofas of eternal green velvet, drinking pearl and ruby sherbet, and surrounded by Adalisques surpassing all the Circassians extant, found a sufficient reason in the good fortune which had raised Hassan Caramata from the rank of a camel-driver in the camp, to the high and responsible situation of Aga of the Janizaries. There was but little known of Hassan in his former career, as a matter of course, for Turkey has not yet had among the invaders of its quiet any amateurs in biography, collectors of "secret memoirs," or compilers of autographs. It was taken for granted that he was the son of somebody, and that was enough; but it was seen that he was a capital soldier, and that was more satisfactory to the general interest than if he had his veins incarnadined by the blood of all the Osmans. He had, besides, got a character, which effectually precluded all applications for his history from his own lips. He was not merely one of the best handlers of the scimitar in the dominions of the faith, but one of the most unhesitating in its use.. He was known to have cut from the skull to the chin, at a single sweep, one of his own captains, who had ventured to growl at an order in the field; and his habits were of a keen and vindictive vengeance, which above all other things turns the edge of curiosity. It is perfectly well known that there was no man in the dominions of the Sultan, whom that Sultan so thoroughly feared; yet when Hassan was but a captain of the Delhis of the body-guard, he had established so decided a character for bringing things to a speedy issue with the scimitar or the carbine, that he received plumes, diamonds, and embroidered bridles and saddles without number, under the pretext of his adroitness in riding or javelin-throw ing, but, as was well known, for his being able to strike off the neck of a bull at a blow, for his being the most unfailing shot in the service, and from, what was more to the purpose, the universal knowledge that an angry glance from the Sultan himself, would have been merely the preliminary to a trial of speed between them, whether the Sultan's Icoglans should first have Hassan's head in a sack, or Hassan should have sent an ounce ball through the heart of his angry master. The question was easily settled, for the Sultan must act by proxy, which, however sure, is slow, while Hassan would act in person, which is at once sure and swift. The consequence was, that this fiercest of men and most uncourtly of courtiers was suffered to take his way, treating Sultan and slave with nearly equal want of ceremony, and still, to the universal astonishment, advancing in military rank. It was notorious, too, that he openly scoffed at all the accredited modes of rising in the body-guard of any nation under the sun. He neither made a party among the clerks of the Divan, by promising them double allowances when he should be Vizier, nor bribed the Sultanas, nor told fables of his superior officers, nor made a lowersalam to the Vizier, the Mufti, or the Capudan Pasha, ha, than to his own Korseruldeer. On the contrary, but a short time before the fight of Tchesme, he had a furious altercation with the Capudan, in the presence of the Sultan himself. He tore the beard and struck off the turban of that fortunate slave and miserable admiral, pronounced that, as he had been a slipper-maker in his youth, he was fit for nothing but to make slippers to the end of his days, struck him with the sheath of his scimitar in the face, and declared that as surely as he took the command of the Turkish fleet, so surely would he either leave it on a sandbank, or in flames, or in the enemy's hands;three predictions which were all verified in one fact. For all the world now knows that the Capudan actually first stranded his fleet, saw it strike to the Russian flag, and then saw it burn to cinders on the shores of the memorable bay of Tchesme. The whole assemblage of Pashas round the head of the Moslemans were in 1 1 Ne ere dignant at this breach of decorum, but silence is the virtue of courts, even in Turkey. They waited for the Sultan's indignation to speak. But it said nothing. And Hassan Caramata quietly stalked through the midst of a hundred and fifty diamond-hilted daggers, and ten thousand carved and filagreed muskets, all thirsting for his blood. Yet neither dagger nor trigger moved. All eyes were fixed on the Sultan, and his were fixed on the towering height and undaunted stride of the Delhi as he moved from the hall. In half an hour after, every Pasha in Constantinople saw, to their utter, astonishment, Hassan Caramata, the accursed, the ferocious, galloping along the valley of the Limes, in command of the Sultan's escort, shooting off the necks bottles as usual with his infallible balls, and throwing the javelin with a force that made competition desperate, and drew loud applause even from the gravity of the Commander of the Faithful himself. This was de cisive. The Capudan Pasha put to sea, content with the loss of his every thing but cannon, bayonets, and men. The black beards (the Austrians) will trample them, the yellow beards (the Russians) will trample them. The Vizier will leave every thing behind but his brains, and the troops every thing but their hearts." The Sultan, with a familiarity extended to no other of his officers enquired how it was possible to conv vey either, after leaving the man behind." Simply," said Hassan, "because no man can lose that which he never possessed." The answer would have cost the Vizier himself fifty heads if he had them; but Hassan seemed guarded by a spell. The result of his last retort was an instant commission of Aga of the Ja sovereign eign, do Tounizaries invincible?" asleep and awake, on his sofa, and with as much dexterity at one time as at another. But Caramata was in the field. The Delhi had brought some corps of his favourite troops with him, and, what was better, he had brought the Delhi spirit with his troops. Before a month was past, every Spahi was as eager for a trial of his scimitar on the Austrian helmets as if he had ate nothing but opium from the beginning of the campaign. The Janizaries brightened their kettles anew, and the sight of the horsetail was soon a terror to the platoons of the yellow beards. Hassan was still the same gloomy, solitary, and incomprehensible being; more sarcastic than ever, and more ferocious in quarters, in camp, and in the field. He had but one punishment for all offences-the edge of the scimitar. "We come to the field to slaughter men, not to save cowards," was his expression, when he ordered a troop of his Delhis to ride in upon a regiment of Janizaries that had suffered itself to be surprised. "You reproach us Turks with cruelty," said he one day to an Austrian general, who came to propose a cessation of arms, "but the only difference between us is, that you are hypocrites, and we are not. You call yourselves soldiers, and you murder all that you can; we call ourselves murderers, and we act up to the pro fession." and yellow-that cowards required warm weather to put blood into their veins, but that brave men could fight in all weathers. He grew more adventurous than ever, dashed with his Spahis at every thing that appeared within a horizon of a hundred miles, broke into the detached camps of the allied forces, took cannon, ammunition, and waggons; and, before a month was out, sent a pile of standards to Constantinople large enough to hang the ceiling of the Santa Sophia, and beards and mustaches enough to stuff all the footstools of the Seraglio. Joseph and Catherine were astonished. Alarm followed, and then wisdom. They sent a proposal for an armistice to the Vizier. The Vizier for once laid aside his pipe, and prepared to forward the envoy to the Sultan. Caramata came in during the conference, ordered the envoy to be seized, gave him into the hands of his Delhis, and turned him out of the camp, with a solemn declaration, that the next envoy should have his choice of the bastinado, or the mouth of the largest howitzer in the Turkish lines. The Vizier said, "Allah il Allah," resumed his pipe, and said no more. The envoy was escorted to the enemy's camp, and on that night Cobourg found his tents on fire about his ears, and was forced to make his way as well as he could towards the Barmat. Within three nights after, the redoubtable Suwarrow was forced to fight his way through ten thousand gallant horse, who stripped him of every gun and fragment of baggage. Bender and Belgrade were now both effectually cleared. The Sultan sent his Aga the Cheleuk* of honour; the Vizier was ordered to Constantinople, there to cure asthma by the fresh air of the Bosphorus, and Hassan Caramata was appointed in his room, first counsellor to the king of kings, commander of the armies of the faithful, and vanquisher of all the unbelievers and Kafirs under the sun. his The campaign began again: Leopold had succeeded Joseph, and he resolved to distinguish himself at three hundred miles' distance by the cheap heroism of a cabinet warrior. He sent an autograph letter to Cobourg, commanding him to signalize Diamond plume. |