Friday. I wish I could note down a tithe of y pleasant things y' were said last nighte. First, olde Mr. Milton having stept out with his son-I called in Rachael, y younger of Mr. Russell's serving-maids, (for we have none of our owne as yet, which tends to much discomfiture,) and, with her aide, I dusted the bookes and sett them in half ye space they had occupied; then cleared away three large basketfuls, of ye absolutest rubbish,

me to such a home as this? I will not think. Soe | aboute to take boat, he volunteered to goe with us this is London! How diverse from the "towred on y river. After manie hours' exercise, I have citie" of my husband's versing! and of his prose come home fatigued, yet well pleased. Mr. Martoo; for as he spake, by the way, of yo disorders vell sups with us. of our time, which extend even into eache domestick circle, he sayd that alle must, for a while, appear confused to our imperfect view, just as a mightie citie unto a stranger who shoulde beholde around him huge, unfinished fabrics, the plan whereof he could but imperfectlie make out, amid y builders' disorderlie apparatus; but that, from afar, we mighte perceive glorious results from party contentions-freedom springing up from oppression, intelligence succeeding ignorance, order following disorder, just as that same traveller look-torn letters and ye like, and sent out for flowers, ing at y citie from a distant height, så beholde towres, and spires glistering with gold and marble, streets stretching in lessening perspectives, and bridges flinging their white arches over noble rivers. But what of this saw we all along y Oxford-road? Firstlie, there was noe commanding height; second, there was y citie obscured by a drizzling rain; y ways were foul, y faces of those we mett spake less of pleasure than business, and bells were tolling, but none ringing. Mr. Milton's father, a grey-haired, kind old man, was here to give us welcome; and his firste words were, "Why, John, thou hast stolen a march on Soe quickly, too, and soe snug! But she is faire enoughe, man, to excuse thee, royalist or noe." And soe, taking me in his arms, kist me frank-ar when a boy; thence, to y fields of Finsbury; lie. But I heare my husband's voice, and another with it.

us.

(which it seemeth strange enoughe to me to buy,) which gave y chamber a gayer aire, and soe my husband sayd when he came in, calling me y fayrest of them alle; and then, sitting down with gayety to ye organ, drew forthe from it heavenlie sounds. Afterwards Mr. Marvell came in, and they discoursed about Italy, and Mr. Milton promised his friend some letters of introduction to Jacopo Gaddi, Clementillo, and others.

After supper, they wrote sentences, definitions, and ye like, after a fashion of Catherine de Medici, some of which I have layd aside for Rose.

-To day we have seene St. Paul's faire cathedral, and ye school where Mr. Milton was a schol

where are trees and windmills enow: a place much frequented for practising archery and other manlie exercises.

Thursday.-T was a Mr. Lawrence whom my husband brought home last nighte to sup; and y Saturday.-Tho' we rise betimes, olde Mr. Milevening passed righte pleasantlie, with news, jestes, ton is earlier stille; and I always find him sitting and a little musicke. Todaye, hath been kindlie de-at his table beside y window, (by reason of y voted by Mr. Milton to shewing me sights;—and chamber being soe dark,) sorting I know not how oh! the strange, diverting cries in y° streets, even manie bundles of papers tied with red tape; eache from earlie dawn! "New milk and curds from so like y° other that I marvel how he knows them y dairie!"—" Olde shoes for some brooms?"- aparte. This morning, I found y poore old gen"Anie kitchen stuffe, have you, maids ?"-" Come tleman in sad distress at missing a manuscript buy my greene herbes!"—and then in y streets, song of Mr. Henry Lawe's, the onlie copy extant, here a man preaching, there another juggling; which he persuaded himselfe that I must have sent here a boy with an ape, there a show of Nineveh; down to y° kitchen fire yesterday. I am convinced next y news from the north; and as for y* China I dismist not a single paper that was not torne shops and drapers in y Strand, and y cooks' eache way, as being utterlie uselesse; but as y' shops in Westminster, with the smoking ribs of unluckie song cannot be founde, he sighs and is beef and fresh salads set out on tables in ye street, certayn of my delinquence, as is Hubert, his owne and men in white aprons crying out "Calf's liver, man; or, as he more frequentlie calls him, his tripe, and hot sheep's feet"-'t was enoughe to "odd man ;"-and an odd man indeede is Mr. make one untimelie hungrie-or take one's appe- Hubert, readie to address his master or master's tite away, as y case might be. Mr. Milton showed sonne on y merest occasion, without waiting to me y noble minster, with King Harry Seventh's be spoken to; tho' he expecteth others to treat chapel adjoining; and pointed out y old house them with far more deference than he himself where Ben Jonson died. Neare y Broade Sanc-payeth.

tuarie, we fell in with a slighte, dark-complexioned —Dead tired, this daye, with so much exeryoung gentleman of two or three and twenty, cise; but woulde not say soe, because my huswhome my husband espying cryed, "What, Mar- band was thinking to please me by shewing me vell?" the other comically answering, "What soe much. Spiritts flagging however. These marvel?" and then handsomlie saluting me and London streets wearie my feet. We have been complimenting Mr. Milton, much lighte and over y house in Aldersgate St., the garden pleasant discourse ensued; and, finding we were whereof disappointed me, having hearde soe much

of it; but 't is far better than none, and y house | hands, gazing on I knew not what, and feeling is large enough for Mr. Milton's familie and my like a butterflie under a wine-glass. father's to boote. Thought how pleasant 't would be to have them alle aboute me next Christmasse; but that holie time is noe longer kept with joyfullnesse in London. Ventured, therefore, to expresse a hope, we mighte spend it at Forest Hill; but Mr. Milton sayd 't was unlikelie he s be able to leave home; and askt, would I go alone?-Constrained, for shame, to say no; but felt, in my heart, I woulde jump to see Forest Hill on anie terms, I soe love alle that dwell there.

I marvelled why it seemed soe long since I was married, and wondered what they were doing at home-coulde fancy I hearde mother chiding, and see Charlie stealing into y dairie and dipping his finger in y cream, and Kate feeding the chickens, and Dick taking a stone out of Whitestar's shoe. -Methought how dull it was to be passing y best part of the summer out of y reache of fresh ayre and greene fields, and wondered, would alle my future summers be soe spent?

Thoughte how dull it was to live in lodgings, Sunday even.-Private and publick prayer, ser- where one c not even go into y kitchen to make mons, and psalm-singing from morn until nighte. a pudding, and how dull to live in a town, withThe onlie break hath been a visit to a quaint but out some young female friend with whom one pleasing Quaker lady, (y first of that persuasion might have ventured into y streets, and where I have ever had speech of.) by name Catherine one could not soe much as feed colts in a padThompson, whom my husband holds in great rev-dock; how dull to be without a garden, unable erence. She said manie things worthy to be re- soe much as to gather a handfulle of ripe chermembered; onlie as I remember them, I need not ries; and how dull to looke into a churchyarde, to write them down. Sorrie to be caughte nap- where there was a man digging a grave! ping by my husband, in y° midst of the third long sermon. This comes of over-walking, and of being unable to sleep o' nights; for whether it be y" London ayre, or y London methods of making y beds, or y strange noises in the streets, I know not, but I have scarce beene able to close my eyes before daybreak since I came to town.

Monday. And now beginneth a new life; for my husband's pupils, who were dismist for a time for my sake, returne to theire tasks this daye, and olde Mr. Milton giveth place to his two grandsons, his widowed daughter's children, Edward and John Philips, whom my husband led in to me just now. Two plainer boys I never sett eyes on; the one weak-eyed and puny, the other prim and puritanicall-no more to be compared to our sweet Robin! After a few words, they retired to theire books; and my husband, taking my hand, sayd in his kindliest manner,-" And now I leave my sweete Moll to the pleasant companie of her own goode and innocent thoughtes; and, if she needs more, here are both stringed and keyed instruments, and books both of the older and modern time, soe that she will not find the hours hang heavie." Methoughte how much more I s like a ride upon Clover than all y books that ever were penned; for the door no sooner closed upon Mr. Milton than it seemed as tho' he had taken alle y sunshine with him; and I fell to cleaning y casement that I mighte look out y' better into y churchyarde, and then altered tables and chairs, and then sate downe with my elbows resting on y window-seat, and my chin on y palms of my

-When I wearied of staring at y grave-digger, I gazed at an olde gentleman and a young lady slowlie walking along, yet scarce as if I noted them; and was thinking mostlie of Forest Hill, when I saw them stop at our doore, and presently they were shewn in, by y name of Doctor and Mistress Davies. I sent for my husband, and entertayned 'em bothe as well as I c", till he appeared, and they were polite and pleasant to me; the young lady tall and slender, of a cleare brown skin, and with eyes that were fine enough; onlie there was a supprest smile on her lips alle y time, as tho' she had seen me looking out of y window. She tried me on all subjects, I think; for she started them more adroitlie than I; and taking up a book on y window-seat, which was y Amadigi of Bernardo Tasso, printed alle in Italiques, she sayd, if I loved poetry, which she was sure I must, she knew she shoulde love me. I did not tell her whether or noe. both silent. Then Doctor Davies talked vehementlie to Mr. Milton agaynst y King; and Mr. Milton was not so contrarie to him as I c1 have wished. Then Mistress Davies tooke y° word from her father and beganne to talke to Mr. Milton of Tasso, and Dante, and Boiardo, and Ariosto; and then Dr. Davies and I were silent. Methoughte, they both talked well, tho' I knew so little of their subject-matter; onlie they complimented eache other too much. I mean not they were insincere, for eache seemed to think highlie of y other; onlie we neede not say alle we feele. To conclude, we are to sup with them to-morrow.

Then we were

From the Quarterly Review.

*

Nor-haunting as he does with such gusto the dim and flinty corridors of Oriental cœnobites, poring morning after morning over unciated and miniatured parchments, and in the evening hobnobbing Meteora or Athos (within which last entire penin(rosoglio to wit) with holy recluse Agoumenoi of sula of piety no female creature is known to have ventured for ages, except only one cat and certain fleas) does our

We

Visits to Monasteries in the Levant. By the Hon. ROBERT CURZON, JUN. With numerous woodcuts. London. Post 8vo., pp. 449. 1849. SOME few years ago we submitted to our readers a brief account of the Syriac and other MSS. with which the British Museum had been enriched through the zeal and industry of Mr. Archdeacon Tattam; and we were fortunate enough to be al- having retained in one corner a decorous but geMilordos Inglesis" conceal his lowed to enliven our article on apparently a rather nial devotion to the cowl-eschewed charms. dry subject, by several sketches of manastic man- should be inclined to form a very favorable notion ners, extracted from the private letters and jour-of our author's whole character and disposition : nals not only of Mr. Tattam's niece and compan- but not to trespass further on what may seem ion, Miss Platt, but also of Lord Prudhoe (now hardly lawful ground, we think all his readers Duke of Northumberland) and the Hon. Robert will feel how gracefully the literary and antiquaCurzon—both of whom had preceded the arch-rian enthusiasm that prompted and gives impordeacon in the inspection of the Coptic convents of the Natron Lakes, and negotiated, with more or less success, for the purchase of ancient books and scrolls no longer intelligible to the few poor harmless drones that still doze out life in those mouldering cradles of asceticism. The fragment of narrative then furnished to us by Mr. Curzon total absence of all conceits and affectations. The greatest and rarest merit of the book is the (Quar. Rev., vol. 77, pp. 52-55) seemed to our- have seldom read one that has less the air of being selves a particularly entertaining one, and we hint-written for effect. Nobody can put a volume of ed our hope that he might take courage to give the public more copious specimens of his adventures as a bibliomaniacal tourist in the Eastern regions. This volume consists of such specimens -being the descriptions of visits to several of the Egyptian convents above mentioned in 1833-to those of the Holy Land in 1834—and subsequently to others in different parts of the Ottoman empire-ending with the extraordinary conglomera

tion of monasteries on Mount Athos. He seems to have spent about five years in his expedition, and his notes leave no doubt that they were wellspent years. Whether or not he passed part of them in Italy we are not told; but he seems to be very well acquainted with her monuments of antiquity and art, especially with her ecclesiastical architecture and old religious painting and sculp

ture.

It is needless to add that the ardent Roxburgher shows himself to be familiar with her great libraries—as well as those of France. The reader, however, is not to anticipate a ponderous dose of erudition and artistic criticism. Anything but that. Mr. Curzon, a young gentleman of rank-heir indeed to a peerage-had left Oxford with the usual tastes and habits of his contemporaries, as well as with a rare and praiseworthy love and affection for the darkest recesses of the Bodleian, and such a filial reverence for its antique gems of calligraphy and typography as must have satisfied the warmest wishes of Doctor Bliss. He had kept a healthy appetite for the ordinary comforts and pleasures of prosperous youth, and evidently enters into all innocent varietics of sport and fun with a fearless zest. He would not be a worthy Roxburgher if he did not, among his other scientific developments, include a cognoscent appreciation of eatables and drinkables —the “portly eidolon" of Dibdin would frown!

*Printed in No. 94 of the Living Age.

tance and dignity to his wanderings is set off by the artless, unchecked juvenility of spirit which he carries everywhere with him in his social intercourse, and the fresh, hearty enjoyment he has in

the beauties of external nature.

We

light sketches from a tour for missals and triptics on a level with such a masterly record of gallant but it will, we are confident, take a good place enterprise and exciting discovery as Mr. Layard's; and keep it.

No book could well be less like

Eöthen-in spirit, in substance, in temper, in style, they are each other's antipodes; but we hazard little in prophesying that Mr. Curzon's work will be more popular than any other recent lake's; and however that remarkable writer may set of Oriental descriptions, except Mr. Kingclaim the superiority in wit, point, and artistical finish, we should not be surprised if the respectable oddity of Mr. Curzon's objects and fancies, with the happier cast of his general sentiments and reflections, should be sufficient to win fully equal acceptance for the Visits to the Monasteries

of the Levant.

first book, we consider it our duty to adhere, or When an author of such promise publishes his rather to revert, to the old style of reviewal, and allow our readers the opportunity of judging him for themselves from as copious extracts as we can

well afford.

the monasteries of the East with those of the No one will pretend to compare on the whole look to religion, to literature, to science, to art, West-the influence of the former, whether we been far inferior to that which all historians recogor to the political arrangements of society, has nize in the other case. But still the Eastern monasteries deserve more attention than has fallen to their share-and to trace them from their origin to the present time would be a task worthy of no addition to the many excellent qualities he has ordinary talents. Should Mr. Cruzon possess, in already given proof of, the fixity of purpose and resolution to devote his leisure to this task, he might, we do not doubt, earn for his name a per

hopes, even as to remains of classical literature; a wandering Mai may yet work wonders of decipherment. But the stores of Eastern and ecclesiastical history are undoubtedly very great. and after what we have just seen gathered from the Natron Valley, it is hard to put limits to still rational anticipa

manent station in a high department of historical and books themselves, the great objects of Mr. research. These establishments in their earlier Curzon s quest, are often of equal antiquity; and day were the residences of the Christian Fathers but for the unhappy device of the Palimpsest, and from whom we ourselves inherit our noblest litur- the utter ignorance of the more modern monks, we gies, many of whose doctrinal expositions remain might not unfairly hope for the recovery among of uncontested authority, and whose command of their tranquil shelves of all those treasures which lofty and pathetic eloquence must always rank were accessible, it seems as but yesterday, to the them foremost in the literature of the pulpit. Con-grammarians and epitomizers of the Byzantine tinuously as the Greek monasteries have been school. As it is, we by no means give up all such sinking during many centuries past, their preservation from utter destruction amidst so many violent revolutions, in spite of the downfall of Christian empires and kingdoms, the conquests of unbelieving powers, the cruel persecutions and oppressions, murderings and spoilings of ages of barbarous tyranny, has more than any one circum-tion. stance besides kept alive many traditions of antiquity; and to the very buildings themselves, few, comparatively, though they be that still exist, we owe all but our best materials for realizing the modes and conditions of ancient life among any one class of men. But for the revelations of Pom-destroyed; nor do we see how the process is at all peii and Herculaneum we should in this respect have had nothing at all to place above or beside them.

There can be no question that the ever darkening ignorance of the monks has induced neglect in the one department where care would have been most important; that thus, even within a recent period, very many curious MSS. have been lost or

likely to be checked, except by the excitement of cupidity from the visits of such liberal merchants as Mr. Curzon. The examples his own narrative Their troubled history too well explains why, affords of woful waste are frequent and most painfrom a very early date, they all assumed the char-ful; in his preface he retails at least a good story:acter of fortresses. Everywhere, from the morasses of Moldavia to the cataracts of the Nile, from the A Russian, or I do not know whether he was not vale of the Peneus to the mountains of Koordistan, a French traveller, in the pursuit, as I was, of anthey have been and are castles. Sometimes they cient literary treasures, found himself in a great are found hanging like birds'-nests or bee-hives on Cavalla; he had heard that the books preserved in monastery in Bulgaria to the north of the town of some shelf in the face of an enormous precipice- this remote building were remarkable for their anaccessible only by pulleys or ladders. Not uncom- tiquity, and for the subjects on which they treated. monly they occupy the summit of an isolated pillar His dismay and disappointment may be imagined of rock, rising hundreds of feet sheer from the pass. when he was assured by the agoumenos or superior In flat regions, where violence has been rife, as in of the monastery, that it contained no library whatEgypt and Mesopotamia, the whole is enclosed ever, that they had nothing but the liturgies and church books, and no palaia pragmata or antiquities within a high dead wall-with no windows outat all. The poor man had bumped upon a packwards, except perhaps in some wooden gallery or saddle over villanous roads for many days for no wicker cradles that top the massive battlement, and other object, and the library of which he was in may be removed with ease, or destroyed without search had vanished as the visions of a dream. The serious inconvenience. If by such means they can agoumenos begged his guest to enter with the monks baffle external assault, their own hereditary feelings into the choir, where the almost continual church ensure a most sacred watch over whatever is en- service was going on, and there he saw the double closed within, and can be in any degree appreciated row of long-bearded holy fathers, shouting away at the chorus of Κύριε ελεισον, Χριστε κλεισον, (proby the community. If a chapel, a refectory, even nounced Kyre eleizon, Christe eleizon,) which oc a kitchen or a cellar requires repair, it is restored curs almost every minute in the ritual of the Greek with the most anxious precision, and all trace of Church. Each of the monks was standing, to save the modern hand is very soon indistinguishable. It his legs from the damp of the marble floor, upon a is the same with every painting-a careful pencil is great folio volume, which had been removed from always ready to freshen the least spot of decay or the conventual library and applied to purposes of dimness-and such as they were a thousand years The traveller on examining these ponderous tomes practical utility in the way which I have described. ago or more, such are they at this hour. The found them to be of the greatest value; one was in artists are servilely mechanical-they have sets of uncial letters, and others were full of illuminations rules many centuries old, with pattern tints for of the earliest date; all these he was allowed to every object of detail, and by these they guide carry away in exchange for some footstools or hasthemselves from generation to generation, as scru- socks, which he presented in their stead to the old pulously as if the most serious duty of religion monks; they were comfortably covered with ketché were concerned. Their shrines, reliquaries, chal- or felt, and were in many respects more convenient ices, every article in metal, the carved and embossed to the inhabitants of the monastery than the manuscripts had been, for many of their antique bindings frames of pictures and boards of holy books, have were ornamented with bosses and nail-heads, which in many instances come quite unharmed through all inconvenienced the toes of the unsophisticated conthe chances of twelve centuries. The MS. charters | gregation who stood upon them without shoes for