Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

every fetting fun, do we not, with one accord, fervently offer up our prayers, that the days of our fovereign may be long !-that fill his reign may be profperous that he may leave behind him, to rule over our most remote pofterity, children who shall perpetuate his virtues !'

I fpoke with all the ardour of a loyal enthufiaft; nor could the prince fupprefs the tranfports with which, through that enthufiafm, he was agitated.-Never, it is evident, could he have received a ftronger affurance of the fincerity with which he was praifed; and with tears, which vainly he ftrove to conceal, he faid to me, Adieu, thou brave, thou virtuous youth !-Too much love haft thou for thy king, not to experience his friendfhip; and e're long wilt thou hear from him.'

[ocr errors]

Having thought nothing farther of what had paffed at this interview-for, ignorant as I was of courts, I knew too much of them, however, to pay a moment's attention to what a courtier might tell me I was not a little aftonished, the next morning, to receive a meffage from the king, commanding my immediate attendance at the foot of the throne.

"On being ushered into the royal prefence, I threw myself proftrate before my fovereign; and thus I remained, 'till, with his own hands, he raifed me from the ground.

Shepherd,' faid he, with an air of gracious affability, which never forfook Nourgehan, and which feemed to diffufe around his throne an additional luftre- Shepherd, I am he, of whofe life, at the peril of thy own, thou waft yesterday the preferver. Wert thou a man of vulgar mould, with riches, and with empty titles, would I acquit my obligations to thee; but, from the dignity of thy mind, and from the contempt with which thou lookeft down on opulence and grandeur, I pronounce thee to be worthy-more than worthy-to be my chief counfellor.-In the character of vizir, then, henceforth fhalt thou co-operate with me in the profecution of fuch measures as may yet more promote the happiness of my people, yet more conciliate to me

their love.'

"In a country like Yemen-where one glance of royalty is fufficient to elevate a fubject to the fummit of honour, or to plunge him into an abyfs of infamy-a choice fo precipitate, and, apparently, fo prepofterous alfo, is hardly productive of

wonder.

"Raifed as I now was to à fituation in which fo much good, and fo much evil, might be done, never did I court the favour of my royal matter, but by endeavours to merit, at the fame time, the affections of his people.Between their interests and his conceiving them to be effentially the fame-I ftrove 2 C 2

not

not to make the smallest distinction; nor did I ever dare to fubftitute my caprice, or my will, in the place of the established laws of the realm;-laws, however, of which I fcrupled not, on all occafions, to moderate the feverity, when it might be done without an abfolute perverfion of the ends of justice.

"For a long feries of years, fuch were my principles, fuch was my conduct; and for both I received an adequate rewardthe only one, indeed, worthy of an exalted mind, the smiles of my king, and the bleffings of my fellow-fubjects.

"Boftam, who enjoyed the chief command of the troops, had loft an important battle; and loud was the clamour excited against him for an event, of which, as having been fatally unfortunate, it was bafely endeavoured to ftamp him the guilty au ther.

Could I witnefs fuch proceedings, and not fpurn at them? No. In the midft, therefore, of a perfecution, unmerited as it was unprecedented, I ftood forth the advocate of the gallant, though difcomfited chief; and this I did, not because I knew him to be my friend, but because I knew him to be himself, on the prefent occafion, friendlefs;-becaufe I knew, alas! that it was determined to render him the victim of a difafter, which it had been impoffible for him to forefee, and which, at any rate, he had been denied the means to prevent.

"In vain was it to tell me, that Nourgehan had already doomed him, unheard, to a perpetual banishment. This circumftance ferved but to animate me the more in his defence; and with fuch zeal did I affert his ftill unfhaken loyalty, patriotifm, and courage, that I found myfelf fubjected to the heavy charge of having fet at defiance the royal authority.

Difpleafed at my firmness-or rather, as he had been taught to believe it, my contumacy, the king too readily liftened to this foul afperfion; and many days had not elapfed, when I received orders to accompany Boftam in his exile.

"Of the spot to which we should retire, happily the choice was left to ourselves; and here I accordingly fixed my refidence with all it was left me to ho.d dear on earth-a wife, a' daughter, and a friend.!

"In their arms I wept for the loft protection of a monarch, whom I now pitied yet more than I had ever loved; but if aught I knew of forrow, that I was no longer fuffered to enjoy the rank to which, againft my will, he had exalted me, it was because I was alfo no longer fuffered to enjoy the power, connetted with that rank, of contributing to the welfare of a grateful people.

"Boftam

Boftam bore hot his fall with the like equanimity.-Neither could the confolations of friendship, nor the fweets of tranquillity and retirement, efface from his difeafed mind the charms of ambition.To the confuming pangs of grief and difappointment, he remained a ceafelefs prey for the period of twelve revolving moons, when-ftill bitterly fighing for a restoration of the honours which had been fo cruelly torn from him-he breathed his laft upon my bofom.

[ocr errors]

By the death of my friend, I found myfelf infinitely more affected than I had been by the lofs of rank-by the lofs of even power; but in the tendernefs of my Nadina, and in the caréffes of an infant-prattler, the only remaining pledge of our loves, I ftill found a balm for all my woes.

"With them, for fifteen years, did I lead a life of calm delight. During that period, the whole of my time-unless what I devoted to the study of nature, and of nature's Godwas engroffed by the occupations which our daily fubfiftence rendered neceffary; or by thofe, yet more pleafing, which were effential to the plan of education I had laid down for a beloved. child-a child, who continued ftill to chear her father with the promife-now beyond his own: moft fanguine expectations realize that he would, one day, amply requite him for all the pains he took to cultivate her gemus, and to enrich her mind.

"But, ah! without fome intervening alloy, fleeting, at the beft, are all the enjoyments of man.-S.x months ago, Nadina left me, in order to obtain from heaven the reward of thofe virtues, which, to her husband, were, even on earth, a fource of felicity; and which, to her daughter, have proved a model of what, otherwife, the leffons of the fondeft parent could have but feebly inculcated to her.

"My Nadina, however, is happy; and, if happy, fhall an accent of murmur drop from the lips of Alfaleh!-No: with a pious reûgnation-the fruit of a well grounded affurance, that e're long, without the poffibility of a fecond difunion, blissful they fhall meet again,-chearfully will he ftill adore the Power that inflicted even this, the laft, and the feverest ftroke, he ever experienced."

Thus fpoke the venerable Alfalch, while down his furrowed cheek, in filent progreffion, trickled an unrefifled tear-a tear, which, to thofe who had themselves never known what it was to weep, or who, from weeping, had never known what it was to enjoy a pleafure, would have appeared a downright violation of his boafted ferenity; but which Candidus fympathetically felt to be a balmy effufion of joy at his having thus had an oppor

tunity of cordially unbofoming himself to a foul congenial with

his own.

A short Account of the CHARACTER and HISTORY of ACHMET the FOURTH, the prefent EMPEROR of the TURKS.

TH

HIS fovereign was born on the 18th of May, 1747 : he was the fon of Achmet the Third, who was dethroned in the year 1730. From his early years he has been the object of the most cruel misfortunes. The greatest part of his life has been paffed in a fort of state-prifon, where he remained 'till the death of his brother, which happened on the 24th of January, 1774. That prince, a few hours before he expired, fent for the prefent fultan, declared him his fucceffor, and recommended to his care his own fon Selim, then a boy about twelve years of age. Achmet was proclaimed fultan the fame day, and took the reins of government at the critical period of the Ruffian war. He, however, concluded a peace, after having changed most of the members of the divan, who had gained too great an afcendency over his brother. With respect to his nephew, far from revenging his own imprifonment upon him, he kept the young prince in his palace, loaded him with careffes, and has always behaved to him with the tenderness of a father. The prince has now reached his twenty-fecond year. The greatnefs of foul which appeared as well in this, as many other of his actions, gave the people the highest expectations of his government, and hitherto they have not been difappointed.

As foon as he was firmly feated on the throne, he employed every measure to produce feveral very neceffary regulations in various points, relating to the government of the empire. He was principally diligent in obferving that juftice was impartially administered; and thofe governors and bafhaws who had in any manner oppreffed his fubjects, he punished according to their different degrees of guilt. The civil wars, however, were too deeply rooted to be extirpated at once, and other bashaws and governors have from time to time become the victims of their own cruelty or avarice. In thefe laudable endeavours for the promotion of justice, and the welfare of his people, his highness was vigorously affifted by the prefent grand vizir, and by the captain bafhaw, or grand admiral, two men of incorruptible firmness and integrity. By their continual efforts, they have in a great degree removed the chief obftacle to the civilization of

the

the Turks this was an utter averfion to the manners and cuftoms of the Europeans, and indeed to all kinds of innovation. This prejudice is now almost furmounted; and the Turks now begin, without much repugnance, to fuffer the introduction of many European customs in the civil as well as military department. And if we may believe their laft accounts, the whole nation, animated by them, begin now to display a bravery and activity unknown 'till the prefent reign. In a fhort time, it is to be hoped that all the difficulties will be removed which have fo long kept them in a state of barbarism.

The COMPLAINT of BELINDA, an AFRICAN.

EVENTY years have rolled away fince, on the banks of
Rido da Valta, I received my exiflence.

SER

The mountains, covered with fpicy forefts; the vallies, loaded with the richest fruits, fpontaneously produced, joined to a temperature of air which excludes excefs, would have yielded me the most complete felicity, had not my mind received early impreffions of the cruelty of men-of men whofe faces were like the moon, and whofe bows and arrows were like the thunder and lightning of the clouds.

The ideas of thefe, the most dreadful of all enemies, filled my infant flumbers with horror, and difturbed my noon-tide moments with cruel apprehenfions !-But, alas! my affrighted imagination never reprefented diftreffes equal to thofe I have experienced in reality.

Before I had twelve years enjoyed the fragrance of my native groves, and before I had realifed that Europeans placed their happiness in yellow duft, wherein I carelessly marked my infant footsteps, even when in a facred grove, with each hand in that of a tender parent, paying my devotion to the great Oriffa, who creates all things, a band of white men, driving many Africans before them in chains, rushed into the hallowed fhades.

Could the tears, the fighs, the fupplications from tortured parental affections, have blunted the keen edge of avarice, I might have been rescued from that agony which thoufands of my country's children have experienced; but which none have ever defcribed.

In vain I lifted my fupplicating voice to an infulted fatherin vain I elevated my guiltless hands to a difhonoured Deity! I was ravished from the bofom of my country-from the arms of my friends while the advanced age of my parents rendered them unfit for fervitude, I was cruelly feparated from them for

ever.

Scenes

« ElőzőTovább »