Impediment to which (the taking of the city) is a diminutive human figure," etc.; as though the figure were a charm or palladium. And this view derives some support from the passage in Nicetas Choniates, relating to the statue, to which we shall presently refer.

The statue was taken for that of Joshua the son of Nun, because the figure had its arm stretched out as though to stop the course of the sun and moon.

The

was read, or supposed to be read, in that inscription. Gibbon's words, "an equestrian statuewas secretly inscribed with a prophecy," seem totally unauthorized. If the inscription was coeval with the statue-as there is nothing to show that it was not-the statue having been brought from Antioch, the whole story is absurd.

And now hear the author of The Turks :

they have to encounter the direct cupidity, hatred, and overpowering pressure of the multitudinous North, with its fanaticism almost equal, and its numbers superior, to their own; a peril more awful in imagination, from the circumstance that its descent has been for so many centuries foretold and commenced, and of late years so widely acquiesced

And last of all, as if it were not enough to be There is nothing to indicate that the name of unable to procure the countenance of any Christian the Russians appeared, or was supposed to ap- power, except on specific conditions prejudicial to pear, in the mysterious inscription. The inscrip- their (the Turks) existence; still further, as the altion was supposed to relate to the fated destroy-ternative of their humbling themselves before the ers of the city, and the monk, writing when the haughty nations of the West, whom they abhor, memory of the Russian attack was fresh, identifies these destroyers with the Russians. words will bear no more than this. Moreover, it is clear that the prophecy was intended for the capture of Constantinople from the Greeks, and of the fall of the Byzantine Emvire. And, therefore, if the Russians were men-in as inevitable. Seven centuries and a half have tioned, the whole of the prediction came to the passed, since, at the very beginning of the Cruground when Constantinople was taken and the sades, a Greek writer, still extant, turns from the Byzantine Empire overthrown by the Turks. then menacing inroads of the Turks in the East, Nicetas Choniates, Gibbon's other alleged au- in prospect, to record a prophecy, old in his time, and the long centuries of their triumph which lay thority, is speaking of the sack of Constantino- relating to the North, to the effect that, in the last ple by the Latins, of which he was an eye-wit-days, the Russians should be masters of Constantiness. He says, if we understand his dreadfully nople. When it was uttered no one knows, but he obscure language rightly, that the Latins took tells us it was written on an equestrian statue, in pains to destroy the charmed defences of the his day one of the special monuments of the Impecity, and especially all those which they under-rial City, which had one time been brought thither stood to be directed against their own race; and from Antioch. That statue, whether of Christian that, among other things, they forced up the or Pagan origin, it is not known, has a name in near forehoof of the brazen horse, in this eques-ed by the Latins, in the taking of Constantinople; history, for it was one of the works of art destroytrian statue, and found under it a human figure, and the prediction engraven on it bears, at least, a r more like a Bulgarian in appearance, than like remarkable evidence of the congruity in itself, if I a representation of a Latin, as had been long may use the word, of that descent of the North and universally reputed." This image they upon Constantinople, which, though not as yet melted down, "lest they should lose the city accomplished, generation after generation grows which they had won. more probable.

It seems, then, that they expected to find a representation of a Latin, chained and kneeling, if we compare the monk's description, but it proved more like a Bulgarian; the Bulgarians, again, being old enemies of the empire, who perhaps, in their day, had been regarded as its destined destroyers. At all events here is nothing about the Russians, but, on the contrary, a belief, said by Nicetas to be old and universal in his time, that the mysterious little figure represented a Latin, and, as the context shows, that it was intended to avert a Latin invasion, its chains and kneeling position perhaps symbolizing the defeat of the invader.

There are many points in the passages quoted by Gibbon-such as the exact nature and position of the mysterious little figure itself, which we must be content to leave to the judgment of those who are better skilled than we are our selves in Byzantine phraseology and antiquities. Thus much, however, appears clear to us, that the name of the Russians was mentioned as the destined captors of Constantinople from the Greeks, and when the terror of their invasion was fresh; that as that terror ceased, their name was forgotten; that there was no prophecy distinct from the inscription on the statue; and that there is no proof that the name of the Russians

This is mere romancing. The Greck writer does not "turn from the menacing inroads of the Turks:" he is giving a catalogue of works of art in Constantinople. There is nothing about "a prophecy old in his time." All the rest is mere fanfaronade, which may be estimated by the light of the facts which we have given.

From Fraser's Magazine.

FLITTING AT KOSTENDJE. MANY a long day has sped by since the eyes of the world were last cast on Kostendje, though it must have been a busy place enough in the olden time. Trajan's Wall runs from the Danube to the sea half a mile south of it; the wall whereby the warlike emperor sought to curb the wild warriors of the North. The great white eagles perch fearlessly now on the two mounds and in the grassy intervening hollow which comprise all that the lapse of eighteen centuries has spared. What with legionaries and the fierce Masians bowed to the yoke of the iron empire, there could have been no lack of bustle in Constantiana; the Roman, too, when he looked across the bay

and saw the green slopes whereon stood Tomi, | for burial-ground, by a path bordered by the might remember, what very few in Bulgaria re- graves of the faithful, each pointing to the Promember now, that before him was the spot where phet's tomb at Mecca, we came upon a scene of his poet Ovidius Naso wore his heart out with bustle and confusion which amply accounted for vain complaints. In mournful numbers, through the former silence. Around a long string of the nine books of the Pontine Epistles, does he Bulgarian waggons crammed with bedding, probemoan the hard fate which had torn him from visions, and all the simple household stuff of an the delights of Rome,-the lounges in the Camp- Eastern family, were sixty or seventy persons of us Martius, the "noctes cœnæque Divum" with men all ages, from the infant in arms to the worn-out such as Horace and Mecenas,-and cast his lot crone; of those who could work, some loaded, amongst savage hordes from whose debasing some endeavored with goads to force on the uncontact he fears that not even after death will willing oxen, some looked calmly on with the his shade be able to separate itself. The scorn- phlegm of their race. It was evidently an Exoful strength of the great roul of Juvenal might dus, the choosing of the lesser rather than the have bore him up in such an exile, the gentle greater evil. We had scarcely, however, comspirit of the Bard of Mantua might have accom-menced to make the acquaintance of a rosy-faced modated itself to an inevitable necessity, but we may search in vain for the high thoughts which enabled even a heathen man not to sink beneath calamity in the pages of the gifted disciple of the garden.

Greck woman, who was informing us of the cause of all this, than we heard the rush and tramp of horsemen, and there stood around us a dozen of such wild, picturesque-looking horsemen as we see occasionally at Astley's. ImaSince the day when the burning light of Ovid gine a swarthy bravo mounted on a small but was quenched, and the one a century later when powerful horse, the turban of many colors wound the echo of Pliny's panegyric over Trajan died gracefully round the head, the red sash full of away, history has passed almost silently over daggers, knives and pistols, and a flint gun slung this region, save when the glimmering torch of over the shoulder, a scimetar by his side, and an a Byzantine historian throws its flickering light amber-mouthed chibouk thrust into the brown on some story of border warfare. But the occu- cloth legging, and you will have a tolerably pation of the Dobrudska by the Russian army fuithful picture of His Highness's Irregulars. bids fair amply to indemnify it for the world's After wheeling half round the place where we long neglect, and the importance of Kostendje stood, they seemed satisfied with our appear as its chief seaport must be apparent to both the ance, for they dismounted, and proudly displaybelligerent parties; to the one as a strong posi-ed their gold inlaid arms, telling us at the same tion where they may at any time disembark time that the "Muscove" was only six hours (a troops close to the seat of warfare; to the other, Turk always computes distance by time) from as a port into which (unless closely blockaded) thence. The pilgrims meanwhile regarded them supplies might be thrown from Odessa, and with anything but pleased countenances, and which, at the time I am writing of, contained in told us, after they had galloped off as suddenly its storehouses the harvests of the rich corn-fields as they appeared, that they were Bosnians or of Bulgaria. Situated as it is on the extreme south of the low tract of country enclosed on three sides by the Danube and the Euxine, the news of the Russian army having crossed the river, and the moral certainty of the speedy appearance of the Cossack horsemen, was alarming enough even to rouse the Turk to the determination of evacuating the place rather than making a trial of Muscovite mercy, and it was to this we owed it that our three steamers, which had been detached from the ficet at Kavarna, lighted on a scene of activity by no means usual in Kostendje. The landing-place is encumbered with the remains of an ancient pier, and from it we pro- As we went on, and out of the town, the same ceeded leisurely up a gentle eminence to the scenes were continually repeated; the men of town, which stands on a peninsula somewhat re- Kostendje had lit their hearths for the last time. sembling that of Sinope, and might be made a When we stood outside the town, on one of the place of great strength; but in spite of the figure barrows so numerous on this coast, there stretchit has lately played in our newspapers, it is (with ed before us, for nearly a mile and a half, the the exception of some granarics close to the melancholy procession, which, allowing for the landing-place) the same wretched assemblage of difference of race and customs, was not unlike tumbledown, weatherbeaten wooden nests perch- the flight described in words which are now ed on a lower story of mud walls as usually con-household words :— stitutes a Turkish town. The chief thing that attracted our attention was the absence of all living beings; even the Pariah dogs were absent; only a sainted stork or two looked down misanthropically from the house-tops. When, however, we had reached the level space, and passed through the square formed by the uncared

Arnaouts, (the latter appears to be a generic designation for a robber), and were far more dreaded by the villagers than the Russians themselves. "Murderers and Ravishers, the curse of Allah be on them," said our fair friend, as she spat on the ground. Such men are ever called into action by war, and these Eastern moss-troopers, whose hand was against every man's, re minded me of the humbling truth that the same crimes never leave the earth, they only stalk from one land to another, ready, when the times shall call them forth, to appear again in all their terrible strength.

Aged folks on crutches,

And women great with child;
And mothers sobbing over babės
That clung to them and smiled.
And sick men borne in litters,
High on the necks of slaves;

And troops of sunburnt husbandmen,

With reaping-hooks and staves.

landed them at Kavarra comparatively happy. Two, however, of our passengers we shall not so easily dispose of; these are two little boys, one There they were, a sight worth even a Czar's about three years old, the other but a few looking on; the rude wooden sides of the low months; the one was severely wounded in the waggons crowded with household goods, with arm, and the infant had been slightly wounded the women and children placed on the top, though in its mother's arms, but she, with her husband here and there ran some urchin with his baby-and brother, had been murdered by the irregusister tied on his back, or some stout Bulgarian lars, and the children were found lying half dead lass boldly led on the reluctant oxen yoked to in a small boat. The elder one was long very the caravan, to the back of which were tied the ill, but with the exception of not having yet retwo oxen off duty, who would appear, however, covered the use of his arm, is now perfectly well, by their complaints, to be but little better off and (dressed impromptu as a little Turk) is quite than their brethren in front. Yet, amid all this at home. It is amusing to see how readily the desolation, there was visible the spirit of that fatal- roughest sailor turns himself into a nurse for the ism, which, debasing as it is in prosperity, raises baby, gorgeously arrayed in a nondescript frock, the Turkish character, in all time of their tribu- a source of pride to the artist, but to be found in lation, if not to the height of the Christian, to no book of fashions, and a peculiarly hideous the level of the Stoic. In all that company there cap, with "Firebrand" in large letters on the was no sound of weeping or lamentation; sad- front thereof. They have surpassed in popularness, indeed, in the demeanor of the women, but ity all the established pets; the cats, the dog, the they lifted up no voice of wailing at leaving thus, tortoises, even Jack the ram, who is reported to perhaps for ever, the homes of their childhood-be a connoisseur in tobacco, and who was decomore touching thus in their silence than any dis-rated with a brass collar subscribed for by his play of grief could have made them. "Whither admiring friends, all have to mourn over the are you journeying, O Effendi ?" said I to a large fickleness of popular favor. turbaned Moslem. "Eeffah Allah," "God will show," was the laconic answer. We only saw one instance of a display of feeling, and that was a very painful one: running beside the waggons was a woman bent double by age; she was evidently insane, for she filled the air with her wild shrieks and gesticulations, as she hurried on, bearing in one hand an egg, and in the other a few sticks, which she evidently fancied indispensable for the journey, for no efforts of a man who endeavored to take them from her, and place her on one of the waggons, could induce her to part with them; not even a tolerably rough shaking from one of the drivers; for still, as far as our eyes could follow her, she ran on, sustained by the strength of insanity. Her pilgrimage could not have been a long one; she must have laid enemy. down to take her rest till the Resurrection morning. On went the motley company, winding southward, through the mounds where sleep the mighty men, the giants of yore; the creaking of their waggons grows faint in our ears, and still, as they emerge into the great Bulgarian plain, the wild horsemen hover round them, awakening in our minds fears for their future journey.

The greater part of the Dobrudska, far from being the barren marsh it has been described as, is excellent corn and pasture land, chiefly culti vated by Christians, who are allowed in this part of the country to occupy any unused land on payment of the customary tithe of the produce. But this year the land may enjoy her rest; this year there will be little reaping in Bulgaria; the very seed corn was often taken from the Rayals for the support of the Turkish troops without their receiving a piastre in return. Much of it was laid up in the granaries of Kostendje, and while we lay there, the Cossacks made many attempts to bear it away to the relief of their hungry comrades until at length it was destroyed in order to prevent its ultimately falling into the hands of the

The range of our 68-pounders, with which we occasionally disturbed their marauding parties, evidently astounded them, their previous experience not having made them acquainted with guns from whose effects a distance of two miles was no protection. Ours probably were the first English cannon-balls which had awakened the echoes of this land in anger, and the sorrowful thought would not be silenced, that many a bold heart would cease to beat before the boom of the salute for victory shall show that the robber has been driven back, and that a living peace and not a dead one has been restored to the nations. Φ

On our return we had to wait for three of our companions, who, in the course of their wander ings, had fallen in with some Badshibadschouks, who at first seemed disposed to attack and rob them; however, on having the ships pointed out to them, they desisted, and afterwards rode to the beach with protestations of fraternity; still we were inclined to believe that the "lidless iron OLD ROWLEY.-The late Sir Charles Buneyes," which were watching us were better pro-bury, who was long the father of the Jury, and tectors even than our nationality. Nor did the considered as an oracle in all matters relating to event prove our estimate to be an uncharitable it, told me, many years ago, that Charles II. one, for on our return four days later from the was nicknamed "Old Rowley" after a favorite mouths of the Danube, we found that they had stallion in the royal stud so called; and he adpillaged the village and destroyed nearly all the ded, that the same horse's appellation had been faw remaining inhabitants in the interval. We ever since preserved in the Rowley Mile," took on board several men and women severely portion of the race-course still much used, and wounded; their wounds were carefully dressed, well-known to all frequenters of Newmarket.and a little money collected for them, so that we Notes and Queries.

From the New Monthly Magazine.
DR. CROLY.

ant pride on his achievements in rebuilding into one superb confederacy the broken system of Europe, and closing by an unexampled triumph an unexampled war, which menaced the dissolution of every tie of nations and of men.

FOR nearly forty years past, Dr. Croly has been distinguished in the paths of polite literature, by his contributions to the departments of It is a long tale of years since Dr. Croly won poetry, history, biography, romance, and criti- his first laurels in verse by his "Paris in 1815"* cism. As a politician and a divine, he is one of -a decided success, which he followed up by a the few surviving representatives of old-fashioned, variety of other poetical ventures,-for example, consistent, leal-hearted conservatism in Church" The Angel of the World," an Arabian legend; and State. Not High Church, if that implies" Sebastian," a Spanish tale; a comedy, entitled sympathy with the opinions and practices of our "Pride shall have a Fall;"" Catiline," a trage Puseys and Denisons; not Low Church, if a dy; "Gems from the Antique;" numerous lyrics penchant towards the technicals of the Clapham Sect, and the policy of the Evangelical Alliance, enters into that definition; not Broad Church, according to the modern Latitudinarians, as depicted in the Edinburgh Review; but one of those staunch, steadfast Church-of-England Protestants, whom we are wont to regard as the model clergy after the very mind and heart of good old George the Third. Exception, however, must be allowed to his peculiar views on Prophecy, which are dissonant enough from the harmony of the theological Georgium sidus.

Nowhere, probably, is Dr. Croly more emphatically and satisfactorily himself, than in his political memoir of Edmund Burke; a memoir which, had it but comprised also some account of the great statesman's home and private life, would have secured a far more prominent, and maybe a permanent, place in the world of books. The Doctor's enthusiastic appreciation of Burke, it does one good to follow; nor is his own style an unworthy vehicle of such eulogy-cast as it is in so similar a mould, and presenting so many features of high, and not merely mimic, relationship. The glow of affectionate reverence colors with hues warm and lustrous the pages of this biography. The biographer's own eloquence kindles high, when he revives for us the scene of the arch-Orator's parliamentary battles :

While he forewarns, denounces, launches forth,
Against all systems built on abstract rights,
Keen ridicule; the majesty proclaims
Of Institutes and Laws, hallowed by time;
Declares the vital power of social ties
Endeared by Custom; and with high disdain
Exploding upstart Theory, insists

Upon the allegiance to which men are born*

and occasional verses, "Scenes from Scripture," etc., etc. We cannot but assent to a lately deceased critic-himself a poet, tender and truewho, while according to Dr. Croly, as a poet, many great and shining qualities; a rich command of language, an ear finely attuned to musical expression, a fertile and lucid conceptive power, and an intellect at once subtle and masculine; yet observes, even of the best of his poems, that they are rather effusions than compo sitions, and abound with passages of mere declamation however cloquent, and not unfrequently, substitute rhetoric for inspiration. We are reminded of the buskined tread and the stately regularity of the French theatre. We see the poet don the "learned sock" of one of our great masters, but listen in vain for an echo of the "wood-notes wild," of another and a greater. We mark the imposing flow of canorous rhythm, the processional pomp of artful versification, the classical refinement of an uniformly elevated diction; but the touch of nature, the sudden thrill of feeling, the simple response of the heart to one that can sway it at will,-these we miss, and missing we deplore. Yet as we write, there occurs to us, as an instance quotable per contra, the touching song of the gentle Moorish minstrel in Sebastian"-which may be given in as evidence against us:

Farewell, my gentle harp, farewell,
Thy task shall soon be done,
And she who loved thy lonely spell
Shall, like its tones, be gone;

*Perhaps the most vigorous and characteristic portion, as certainly the best known, of this poem, is that descriptive of the French retreat from Russia in times big with ominous change, which "night" Magnificence of ruin! what has time in 1812, beginning with the stanzas— by night, provoked keen struggles, and black clouds of passion raised"-but when the flightiest and the fiercest of the Orator's foemen would sit "rapt auditors," "dazzled beholders,"

When Wisdom, like the Goddess from Jove's brain,
Broke forth in armor of resplendent words,
Startling the Synod.

A companion work is the similarly executed dloge of William Pitt-in whose personal character Dr. Croly impressively records the "solid connection of private virtues with public fidelity" -while he insists on the "heaven-born minister's" success as commensurate with the lofty integrity of his principles, and dwells with exult

*Wordsworth: "Prelude," book vii.

In all it ever gazed upon of war,

Of the wild rage of storm, or deadly clime,
Seen, with that battle's vengeance to compare?
How glorious shone the invader's pomp afar!
Like pampered lions from the spoil they came;
The land before them silence and despair,
The land behind them massacre and flame;
Blood will have tenfold blood. What are they
now? A name.
"Homeward by hundred thousands, column-deep,
Broad square, loose squadron, rolling like the flood
When mighty torrents from their channels leap,
Billow on endless billow; on through wood,
Rushed through the land the haughty multitude,
O'er rugged hill, down sunless marshy vale.
The death-devoted moved, to clangor rude
Of drum and horn, and dissonant clash of mail,
Glancing disastrous light before that sunbeam
pale."

Gone to the bed, where mortal pain
Pursues the weary heart in vain,

I shed no tears, light passes by

The pang that melts in tears,
The stricken bosom that can sigh,

No mortal arrow bears.
When comes the mortal agony,
The lip is hush'd, and calm the eye.

And mine has come, no more I weep,
No longer passion's slave,
My sleep must be th' unwaking sleep,
My bed must be the grave.
Through my wild brain no more shall move
Or hope, or fear, or joy, or love.

It were libellous to say there are no other such examples of the simply pathetic and tenderly natural' in the author's volumes of.verse, but there are not many such, so far as our judgment and memory will serve.

the dread sentence, "Tarry thou till I come!" In fact, we should peruse the tale with greater interest were Salathiel not the Wandering Jew since the supernatural destiny affixed to that traditional being goes far to remove him from the ordinary pale of human sympathies, and transplants him into the shadowy region of creatures unreal and allegorical. Dr. Croly, indeed claims for him a share of the common repugnances, hopes, and fears of human nature and makes him shun pain and disease as instinctively and intensely as if he held his life on the frailest tenure. But there is something incongruous and unsatisfactory in all this. Allan Cunningham observes, that we feel with Salathiel for eighty years and odd; and at the close of the usual term of human life, shut our hearts, and commence wondering. The observation almost implies, however, that "honest Allan " either had never read, or else had forgotten all about Salathiel; for Croly confines his three volumes to fewer than eighty years and odd," concluding them with the destruction of Jerusa lem by the Romans under Titus.

From his doings in minstrelsy, turn we to his doings in prose fiction. Most people have heard of "Salathiel," but not many have read it. The reputation which it ensured its author was wide, If ever the veritable Wandering Jew turns up, and emphatic, but it was of a hearsay kind. and gives the world his autobiography, or some Men pronounced the story of the Jew a work of one graphic section thereof, it will not be much genius, and Dr. Croly a distinguished writer; but in the vein of "Salathiel." Dr. Croly is too rhethey wisely confined their admiration to the safe thorical by half. His excited orientals in their platitudes of general terms, and abstained from wildest vagaries are cool enough to sacrifice asking one another, Have you read "Salathiel?" passion for a period, and not unfrequently prefer To have solicited their special opinion on the character of Sabat the Ishmaelite, or the description of Rome in flames, and the "Christians to the lions!" would speedily and sadly have reduced them to a nonplus. How often does the same principle hold good in the circles of the fashionable reading world! Even the popularity of the most popular, were it carefully analyzed, might show such an absence of the elements of intelligence and actual sympathy as would considerably disgust the object of it. The voice of the multitude is not the most trustworthy of guarantees for immortality- too frequently it illustrates the scornful lines of old Horace in the French tragedy:·

Sa voix tumultueuse assez souvent fait bruit
Mais un moment l'eleve, un moment le detruit;
Et ce qu'il contribue a notre renommee
Toujours en moins de riens se dissipe en fumee.*

pomp to pathos. They have one and all been taught to declaim, and to speak their speeches trippingly on the tongue. If they have something akin to Isaiah and Ezekiel, to Paul and John, they also betray their obligations to Edmund Burke and modern oratory. Another valid objection to "Salathiel," is want of unity. It is almost a thing of shreds and patches-a portfolio of ill-connected sketches. It is a rolling picture of eastern scenery, a cyclorama of moving accidents by flood and field. Many of the details are giyen with the hand of a master. The reader of Salathiel" cannot but be struck by descriptions like that of the demoniac by the Dead Sea, the burning of Rome under Nero, the fight of Constantius with the lion, the surprise of the citadel of Massada, the orgies in the pirates' cave, and, above all, the solitary passage of Salathiel in the burning galley, when, plunging and tossing like a living creature in its last While, then, we are not prepared to say that agony, the trireme he had boarded burst away from her anchors, the wind was off the shore "Salathiel" deserved more popularity, we think that it deserved more readers. What a magnifi-struck her, and on the back of a huge refluent a gust, strong as the blow of a battering ram, cent theme, even though a trite and faded one, wave, she shot out to sea, a flying pyramid of that of the Wandering Jew! What scope for a fire. The book contains, also, several portraits soaring imagination, what background for a glowing fancy, in the story of the mortal immor touched off with considerable talent: Sabat the Ishmaelite, first seen as the crazy beggar, the son tal, the "everlasting" stranger upon earth, the of El Hakim, and afterwards as that terrible unresting, undying one! And here meets us a herald of evil, so vigorously described by Josefault in Dr. Croly's romance. Beyond a page or two at the beginning and the end of his fiction, phus, who, in Jerusalem's hour and power of there is positively no connection between Sala: darkness, wandered up and down her streets, thiel and the Wandering Jew. The interest crying" Woe! woe! woe!"-Jubal, the impetudoes not attach to the latter as such. The plot the infamous Roman procurator, ous and ill-fated Jewish warrior-Gessius Florus, a little bloatdoes not gather around him as such. He is almost ed figure, with a countenance that to the casual uninfluenced, his career is almost unaffected by observer was the model of gross good-nature, a *Corneille : Horace, Acte v. Scene iii. twinkling eye, and a lip on the perpetual laugh',