pur

should be fed off before the end of his fourth thought that a saving of about 201. per annum year at latest; whereas at that age he scarcely may be effected upon every pair of horses. becomes valuable as a worker. Different kinds of oxen, too, are required for working We believe this plan attempts to combine and feeding. Nothing can compete with two inconsistent objects, the production of Shorthorns and Herefords for the latter meat and farm labor by means of the same pose; but for working only, we believe the animal, and that those objects would be more Sussex breed would equally surpass all com- profitably pursued separately. Oxen have petitors. Sometimes been objected to as slow, but it has been repeatedly proved that, if welltrained and kept, they will in ploughing step as quickly as horses.

The increased facilities for transmitting produce now afforded by railways is another reason for keeping fewer horses, and on strong lands we are convinced that the farmers might usefully substitute mature and well-fed oxen for some of their horses. The writer we have

referred to, in a great measure supports this view. He says, after referring to the causes which have induced the generally existing preference for horse labor

The comparative abundance, then, of winter keep, is one of the circumstances which has materially altered the question, as to the comparative advantages of oxen and horses. The other change that time has brought about is the rails, by which the long and heavy carriages required for farm purposes can be accomplished without the intervention of the farm carts, further than the transport from the station. This precludes the necessity of having carts much upon the road, for which species of work cattle are supposed to be less useful than horses. Allowing, then, for the change which the above circumstances have made, the question remains for agriculturists to decide whether cattle would not work the general work of the farm, that is, plough, harrow, grub, and go in the threshing mill, as well as horses-if so, then it will be submitted that a very important saving may be effected in the farmer's expenses.

We doubt, however, whether the plan he proposes is that best adapted for the economical employment of ox labor. It is this:

DEVIL'S MARKS IN SWINE. "We don't kill

a pig every day," but we did a short time since;
and after its hairs were scraped off, our attention
was directed to six small rings, about the size of
a pea, and in color as if burnt or branded, on
the inside of each fore leg, and disposed curvi-
linearly. Our laborer informed us with great
gravity, and evidently believed it, that these
marks were caused by the pressure of the devil's
fingers, when he entered the herd of swine, which
immediately ran violently into the sea.
Mark v. 11-15; Luke viii. 22, 23. — Notes
and Queries.

See

The Text of Shakespeare Vindicated from the Interpolations and Corruptions advocated by John Payne Collier, Esq., in his Notes and Emendations. By Samuel Weller Singer.

Mr. Collier's publication of the manuscript emendations from his old folio, followed by the edition of Shakspeare in which those emendations were incorporated with the text, has called into the field a critic and commentator of the olden school, with whom extensive popularity was not a primary object. In his Shakspeare Vindicated, Mr. Singer goes seriatim through the principal "interpolations and corruptions" advocated by Mr. Collier; pointing out the why and wherefore of the errors; noting when judicious emendations have been already made by The system, then, which the writer would rec- some of the numerous editors of the poet; and ommend, after a good many years' experience, fairly allowing merit where merit is due. The is this. That cattle should be introduced to the conclusion of Mr. Singer is the one we came to yoke at 2 or 2 years old; that they should be on the appearance of Mr. Collier's first volume selected with a view not only to work, but for -that the manuscript is of no authority whatcapacity of growth and improvement; that four ever, and that each passage must stand or fall cattle should be substituted for each pair of like any other critical suggestion upon a reading. horses laid aside, and consequently that each The most curious point raised by Mr. Singer is, pair of cattle should work only one yoking. whether Mr. Collier's old book is not after all the With this amount of work, it is confidently stated reverse of a rara avis. Mr. Singer has in his that the animals will grow and thrive fully bet-possession two of the folios with manuscript alterter than mere store beasts. - the work seems to ations, emendations, and corrections, and, like be no more than wholesome exercise, rather de- Mr. Collier's, in more than one handwriting. veloping than checking their growing powers. Both books, Mr. Singer infers, originally beTheir feeding during the period of working to be longed to some manager or company, to whom he nothing but grass in summer, and turnips and ascribes the stage-directions, the rejection of straw in winter. In this way they will be worked whole passages deemed unfit for the stage, and till the end of the turnip-making in the second unwarrantable insertions. The minor emendayear, when they will be put up for feeding off, tions he attributes to later possessors, who most and as they will at that time be mature and not probably had recourse to some critical edition old, the highest price ought to be got for them from which they made their corrections. - Specfrom the butcher. Upon this system it is tator.

LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 479.-23 JULY, 1853.

SHORT ARTICLES: Goes of Liquor, 203; The Dropped Number of The Idler-Ferdinand II. - Singularities, 208; Clearness of the Northern Seas-The Pope's Bull, 214; Poets in Perugia, 244.

NEW BOOKS, 194, 203, 222, 233, 249, 256.

From Chambers' Journal.

APRIL.

Roll back the shroud from this our life's lost day

The mournful day, the pale, gray, wasted day,

And he that sat upon the throne said, "Behold, I make Setting in showers. and in thy glowing arms

all things new."

Lift dead morn out o' the west, and bid her

From Blackwood's Magazine.
SYRIA.*

WESTERN ASIA has been the scene of the most remarkable events of empire, and the most striking triumphs of civilization, since the origin of society. The earliest associations of man, the earliest inventions by which man has dominion over nature, the earliest statesmanship, the earliest heroism, the earliest science, the earliest legislation, and even the earliest poetry, all belong to this magnificent, lovely, and illustrious region. We are beginning at length to comprehend the grandeur, of which the Scriptures had only given the outline, in the capitals of the East; and Babylon, Nineveh, Persepolis, and probably a multitude of other buried monuinents of the slavish power and lofty conceptions of man, are yet to remind us, even in the ruins, of the superb beauty combined in Asiatic genius and Asiatic opulence.

Yet this vast and teeming territory has, for almost a thousand years, been lost, if not to the human eye, to the human contemplation. The Mahometan invasion, in the eighth century, swept away its civilization, destroyed its efforts to share in the progress of Europe, and, like the lava, cooling from a torrent of fire to a covering of stone, left the soil barren until our time.

At the close of the last century, the French expedition to Egypt, under Napoleon, revived the attention of Europe; and from that period it has been almost an anxious object to the policy of the great European powers. The defence of Acre, one of the most noble achievements even of British bravery, awoke a national feeling to the fortunes of this memorable soil; and the seizure of Syria by Mehemet Ali, in 1831, and in reserve by a great European Convention, brought the condition of Eastern Turkey immediately before the general eye.

The question of Turkish decay is too large for our inquiry at present; but there can be no doubt that it forms an important topic in the councils of the leading cabinets. The chief object of the French invasion of Algiers in 1830. a desperate breach of faith, which has already cost the ruin of two dynasties the Bourbon at the instant of its commencement, and the Orleans at the instant of its completion -was probably the future possession of Egypt, on the dismemberment of the Turkish empire. France had found the peril of attempting its seizure by sea, and had designed the safer conquest by a march overland. But whether this is truth or conjecture, Egypt, for the last hundred years, since the

*Mount Lebanon, a Ten Years' Residence, from 1842 to 1852. By Colonel Churchill. Three Volumes. Saunders and Otley, London.

memoir of Savary and the projects of Sartine, has been an especial object of French ambition. The protectorate of the Wallachian and Moldavian provinces by Russia, and their possession in the first shaking of the Sultanry, is as regular a conception in the Russian heart as its daily bread, and the seizure of the provinces bordering on Austria is regarded as a kind of political necessity.

Under the present circumstances of Asiatic affairs, the whole territory at the head of the Mediterranean must demand the strictest observation, and the most accurate inquiry. And those objects ought not to be left to the reports of mere travellers, probably unfurnished with knowledge, and as probably biased by private considerations. England ought to have agents in those countries, expressly prepared and commissioned for the purpose, and thus place herself in a position not merely to protect her ally in the hour of danger, but to prevent their possession by an enemyfor on Syria must depend, in a great degree, the safety of the Indian empire. A hostile power in possession of the Euphrates, and the road through the Desert, would soon cut off the route through Egypt, and reduce us to the circuit of the Cape once more.

But the policy of England is honest and true. It will take no part in the fall of an ally, and will respect the faith of treaties. We say this as a mere matter of principle, for we do not contemplate the fall of Turkey. She has thirty millions of people, and that people divided between strong attachment and humble submission. The Greek may murmur, but he will obey; the Turk will cling to the mosque and the throne till he is hacked from them by the sabre. He has no revolutionary follies in his head; he hates change; he despises European innovation, and he looks upon his European neighbors only with the recollection that his fathers

once made them slaves, and the conviction that, if well led, their sons would make them slaves again. European politicians have predicted the fall of Turkey for the last hundred years, and it has baffled the prediction. When it falls, it will not be by the power of man. Barbarism will be shattered by a superior blow, and then the European kings may rush in and fight for the fragments. We altogether doubt the decay of Turkey. We cannot discover it in the decay of her national spirit, in the timidity of her councils, in the mutiny of her troops, in the disaffection of her people, or in the bankruptcy of her commerce; on the contrary, the spirit of improvement is giving evidence of action in all those sinews of national strength; and while we deprecate the infinite guilt and reckless ambition which tempts imperial power to look upon all within its reach as its [prey, and, like the heathen, makes the namo

of neighbor equivalent to that of enemy, we would be the chief field of battle, and its cannot doubt that principle as well as policy possession would determine the fate of the will prompt England to maintain her own whole. While Turkey stands, Syria must not honor in maintaining the honor of her treaties be shaken; but if this great contingency with the Sultan. should come, it is difficult to set any limit to We proceed to give a sketch of the history the power, prosperity, civilization, and opuand circumstances of Syria - perhaps, for de-lence, for which it seems to have been designed. liciousness of climate, beauty of landscape, Commanding the head of the Mediterranean, and richness of production, the finest territory the route by the Persian Gulf and the desert of the globe. The origin of the name has been, between India and Europe abundant in ferof course, an old subject of antiquarian discus-tility-possessing minerals, marbles, and sion. Some suppose it to be derived from the forests-guarded by mountains and sands ancient name of Tyre (Sur); some, with from surprise-and having a compact and greater probability, from Assyria, of which vigorous population, which might be augempire it once formed a part, and which was mented to any number (for the land, under named from Asshur, the second son of Shem. proper cultivation, might feed a hundred milIn the Hebrew it is called Aram. Syria formed lions, and even then have a surplus for feeding an important feature in the Jewish history, Europe), Syria, under an intelligent governfrom the time of David (B. c. 1055), by whom ment, equal laws, a rational religion, and a it was conquered, till the division of the empire free monarchy, would be a model to the East, of Alexander. The next masters were the and a glorious highway for the progress of Romans, in the general conquest of Western man. Asia. In the middle of the seventh century, the Saracens rushed on it like a whirlwind, and swept the Greek throne from the land. After three hundred years of possession, the Turkish invasion burst over the borders, and swept in its turn the throne of the Saracens, In the sixteenth century, Syria was united to the throne of the Sultan, under Selim the First. In 1799, it was invaded by Napoleon, who was beaten out of the country by the English, fled from his army, and left them to defeat and captivity.

In the year 1831, Mehemet Ali, who had assumed the sovereignty of Egypt, invaded and reduced Syria, routed the Turkish army at Hems, pressed on to the defiles of Mount Taurus (the key of Asia Minor), again beat the Turkish army at Rouiah, taking the Grand Vizier prisoner, and threatened to expel the Sultan, and finish the war at Constantinople! The European cabinets stopped his march, and commanded him to retire, making a treaty by which he was left in possession of Syria. War again commenced in 1839, and an English fleet and army drove Ibrahim, his son and general, out of the country, which was finally restored to the Sultan: Mehemet Ali receiving the hereditary sovereignty of Egypt, though as a vassal of the Sultanry (1841).

The names Syria and Aram are equally unknown to the natives, whose name for it is Esh-Shaus (the country to the left), in contradistinction to Arabia, Yemen (the country to the right), as looking towards the east they take their bearings. Ancient Syria generally included the whole country from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates, and between the Taurus and the borders of Egypt.

If western Asia should ever become the theatre of war again which it would unquestionably become in case of any attempt to dismember the Turkish dominions-Syria

But from what supremacy could we look for those magnificent results? Russia has her own task to fulfil in the deserts of the north; Germany has to sustain her own struggle in the midst of vast, active, and ambitious military powers; France never colonizes effectively, and has the violent and difficult experiment before her of keeping Algiers in submission, to say nothing of progress. England alone is the power from which the full development of Syria could be derived. But England is an enemy to European extension of territory, has no ambition, and comprehends the weakness, the cares, and the political hazards of distant government too well, to desire the possession of territory which she could not con- . trol, and would not conquer. Thus its prosperity must rely on a native government, founded on freedom, possessing an enlightened faith, and giving to every man that power of advance, and that right of possession, which places a whole people under their own vine and their own fig-tree. There is no single event which could give a more effectual impulse to those noble regions, or to the general prosperity of the world, than an independent government, equal to its duties and worthy of its inheritance, in Syria.

But we must now limit our observations to a single province of this mighty country.

Mount Lebanon (the white mountain) designates a portion of the great range of hills on the northern border of Palestine. The Greek name is Libanus, which enables the geographer to distinguish its two portions or parallel ranges, the Libanus and Anti-Libanus

-the former being the western ridge, facing the Mediterranean, and the latter the eastern, facing the plains of Damascus. These ranges include a fertile valley, about fifteen miles in breadth, called of old Coelo-Syria (hollow Syria), but now El-Bekar (the valley). The