"'From Wady Sebaiyeh we crossed over the granite spurs, in order to pass around the southern border of Sinai into Wady Lejah. These spurs are of sufficient size to have separate names among the Arabs. Around them were generally deep and rugged gorges and ravines, or water-courses, whose sides were formed of ledges of granite nearly perpendicular, of a pink color, and fine texture. There are no gravel hills, as mentioned by Dr. Robinson, but a series of low granite hills, much broken up, and of different colors, principally of a greenish-gray and brown. The plain is covered with a fine débris of granite. Whilst crossing over these low hills, my friend pointed out the path between them and Sinai, in the ravine, through which he had passed yesterday on his return from St. Catharine; and it was seen that no plain would be visible from any part of it, owing to the height of the spurs which separated the ravine from Sebaiyeh, and we concluded that most travellers had been led into false views concerning this part of the mountain from having taken the same path, and hence it was that no account has been given respecting the plain of Sebaiyeh. This ravine around Sinai becomes a deep impassable gorge, with perpendicular walls, as it enters Wady Lejah, passing through the high neck connecting with the mountain on the south.
"'Descending into Lejah, under the rocky precipice of Sinai, we found the wady narrow and choked up with huge blocks of granite which had tumbled from the sides of the adjacent mountains. We could now see the olive-ground of the deserted convent of el-Arbain, situated in the bottom of the narrow valley. Passing through this garden, we found a fine running stream of crystal water, of which we partook freely, for our thirst was great. The garden was walled, and well irrigated by many small canals, but nothing seemed to flourish but the olive.
"'Continuing down the valley, amidst loose rocks of granite, upon some of which were inscriptions in the Sinaite, Greek, and Arabic characters, and enjoying the wildness of the scene, and the gloomy grandeur of the lofty mountains of naked rocks which almost overhung our path, we saw Horeb on our right, and soon entered upon the plain before it called Wady Rahah. After taking a view of Horeb as the sun was setting, we made our way to the convent, to pass the night within its hospitable walls. Thus was completed a walk around the whole mountain of Sinai.
"'The results of these investigations, together with the information afforded by Burckhardt and other travellers, have served to convince my own mind that this district is every way adapted to the circumstances attending the encampment of the Israelites during the promulgation of the law upon Mount Sinai Though other mountains in this vicinity may answer as well as that of Jebel Musa for this great purpose, still I cannot see any good reason for taking from this mountain that holy character with which tradition has invested it for the last fifteen centuries.'
"Thus," says Dr. Kitto, "it seems that the question as to the camping-ground of the Israelites, which seemed to have been settled by the researches of Dr. Robinson and others, must now be regarded as re-opened for further investigations. The fact is, that a complete and careful survey of the whole of this central mountain region yet remains to be taken."
The friend of Mr. Kellogg alluded to in the preceding pages was an English gentleman, Mr. Ackanth, (of the East India Service,) whose notes will amply vindicate Mr. Kellogg's conclusions.
LAFAYETTE, TALLEYRAND, METTERNICH, AND NAPOLEON
Sketched By Lord Holland. 8Lord Holland, says the Examiner, has been induced by "the recent events on the Continent" to publish what his father had written on foreign politics. "If not wholly impartial," the present Lord Holland remarks of his father, "he is acknowledged by all who knew him to have been as candid as he was benevolent." He might have said more than thisindeed far more than it might have been quite becoming in a son to say. The late Lord Holland was a noble example of the highest and best traits of the English character. Throughout his public life he was the champion of all just causes; the friend of all who fairly sought redress; the fearless advocate of liberty, religious and civil, in days disastrous to both; a statesman of singular courage and consistency, a most accomplished gentleman and scholar. He had learning without pedantry, and wit without ill-nature. His sweetness of temper and fascinating grace of manner had been commemorated by many distinguished men who had felt their winning potency and charm. But above all he had a store of observation and anecdote of the richest kind, and a power of applying it with surprising felicity to whatever subject might be under discussion. This book is a delightful surviving proof of that quality in his character. Its anecdotes are told with a charming ease and fulness of knowledge. No one so quickly as Lord Holland detected the notable points, whether of a book or a man, or turned them to such happy account. We do not read a page of this volume without feeling that a supreme master of that exquisite art is speaking to us. It comprises recollections of the scenes and actors in the stirring drama which was played out on the Continent between 1791 and 1815. It opens with the death of Mirabeau and closes with the death of Napoleon. France, Denmark, Prussia, and Spain are the countries principally treated of. Lord Holland's first visit to France was in 1791, just after the death of Mirabeau and the disastrous flight to Varennes. Lafayette seems to have been more disposed than any other public actor in the revolution to put faith in the king even after that incident, and his confidence won over the young English traveller. But the weakness as well as strength of Lafayette is well hit off.
"Lafayette was, however, then as always, a pure disinterested man, full of private affection and public virtue, and not devoid of such talents as firmness of purpose, sense of honor, and earnestness of zeal will, on great occasions, supply. He was indeed accessible to flattery, somewhat too credulous, and apt to mistake the forms, or, if I may so phrase it, the pedantry of liberty for the substance, as if men could not enjoy any freedom without subscribing to certain abstract principles and arbitrary tests, or as if the profession and subscription, nay, the technical observance of such tests and principles, were not, on the other hand, often compatible with practical oppression and tyranny."
Marie Antoinette is treated almost as badly as by Mr. Geffeson, who thought her a devil, far less tenderly than we should have expected. Her "amours" are spoken of, though with the limitation that "they were not numerous, scandalous, or degrading." We gather that Talleyrand believed her to have been guilty in a special instance named, and that Madame Champan had confessed it to him. At the same time her person is not very flatteringly described.
"As I was not presented at Court, I never saw the Queen but at the play-house. She was then in affliction, and her countenance was, no doubt, disfigured by long suffering and resentment. I should not, however, suppose that the habitual expression of it, even in happier seasons, had ever been very agreeable. Her beauty, however extolled, consisted, I suspect, exclusively in a fair skin, a straight person, and a stately air, which her admirers termed dignity, and her enemies pride and disdain. Her total want of judgment and temper no doubt contributed to the disasters of the Royal Family, but there was no member of it to whom the public was uniformly so harsh and unjust, and her trial and death were among the most revolting parts of the whole catastrophe. She was indeed insensible when led to the scaffold; but the previous persecution which she underwent was base, unmanly, cruel, and ungenerous to the last degree."
"As I was not presented at Court, I never saw the Queen but at the play-house. She was then in affliction, and her countenance was, no doubt, disfigured by long suffering and resentment. I should not, however, suppose that the habitual expression of it, even in happier seasons, had ever been very agreeable. Her beauty, however extolled, consisted, I suspect, exclusively in a fair skin, a straight person, and a stately air, which her admirers termed dignity, and her enemies pride and disdain. Her total want of judgment and temper no doubt contributed to the disasters of the Royal Family, but there was no member of it to whom the public was uniformly so harsh and unjust, and her trial and death were among the most revolting parts of the whole catastrophe. She was indeed insensible when led to the scaffold; but the previous persecution which she underwent was base, unmanly, cruel, and ungenerous to the last degree."
On the other hand, a better case is made out for Egalité than any writer has yet been bold enough, or informed enough, to attempt. His false position with the Court is shown not to have been of his own seeking, and to have ultimately driven him reluctantly into the ranks of the extreme party. His courage is vindicated successfully, his sincerity and truthfulness less so. Lord Holland retained his regard for the Orleans family to the close of his life. He was one of the warmest defenders of the late King of the French. There are some capital notices of Tallyrand.
"It was in this visit to Paris in 1791, that I first formed acquaintance with M. Talleyrand. I have seen him in most of his vicissitudes of fortune; from his conversation I have derived much of the little knowledge I possess of the leading characters in France before and during the Revolution. He was then still a bishop. He had, I believe, been originally forced into holy orders, in consequence of his lameness, by his family, who, on that account, treated him with an indifference and unkindness shameful and shocking. He was for some time aumonier to his uncle, the Archbishop of Rheims; and when Mr. Pitt went to that town to learn French, after the peace of 1782, he lodged him in an apartment in the abbey of St. Thierry, where he was then residing with his uncle, and constantly accompanied him for six weeks, a circumstance to which, as I have heard M. Talleyrand remark with some asperity, Mr. Pitt never had the grace to allude either during his embassy, or his emigration, or in 1794, when he refused to recall the cruel order by which he was sent away from England under the alien bill. Talleyrand was initiated into public affairs under M. de Calonne, and learnt from that lively minister the happy facility of transacting business without effort and without ceremony in the corner of a drawing-room, or in the recess of a window."
Againof Talleyrand's bon-mots. The bit at Chateaubriand is one of the happiest we can remember.
"'Il faut avoir aimé Mme. de Staël pour connaitre tout le bonheur d'aimer une bête,' was a saying of his much quoted at Paris at that time, in explanation of his passion for Mme. Grand, who certainly did not win him or any one else by the fascination of her wit or conversation. For thirty or forty years, the bon-mots of M. de Talleyrand were more frequently repeated and more generally admired than those of any living man. The reason was obvious. Few men uttered so many, and yet fewer any equally good. By a happy combination of neatness in language and ease and suavity of manner, with archness and sagacity of thought, his sarcasms assumed a garb at once so courtly and so careless, that they often diverted almost as much as they could mortify even their immediate objects. His humorous reproof to a gentleman vaunting with self-complacency the extreme beauty of his mother, and apparently implying that it might account for advantages in person in her descendants, is well known: 'Cétait donc,' said he, 'Monsieur votre père qui n'était pas si bien.' The following is more recent, but the humor of it hardly less arch or less refined. The celebrity of M. de Chateaubriand, the vainest of mortals, was on the wane. About the same time, it happened to be casually mentioned in conversation that Chateaubriand was affected with deafness, and complained bitterly of that infirmity. 'Je compends,' said Talleyrand; 'dequis qu'on a cessé de parler de lui, il se croit sourd.'"
We find a long portrait gallery of ministers, and princes, and princesses, one more imbecile, ignorant, and corrupt than another. One minister did not know the difference between Russia and Prussia; another always wrote Asiatic for Henseatic, and thought his correction necessary. Much light is thrown on the first quarrel between Ferdinand and his father; and the narrow escape of the Duke of Infantado is well told. Godoy, like all who had the honor of Lord Holland's acquaintance, was in some degree a favorite of his, his good qualities being brought out to neutralize his many bad ones. Jovellanos and Arguelles appear the only honest characters in the midst of such a mass of vice, and even they were pedantic, impracticable, and prejudiced. No history, narrative, or memoir can be so disgusting as those of Spain and its court under the dominion of the House of Bourbon. The imagination of no novelist has ever attained that acmè of duplicity, cruelty, villany, and cowardice, which made up the character of Ferdinand. The general opinion of Prince Metternich, since he has become familiar to London circles, has been rather to diminish former opinion of his superior wisdom. Lord Holland's early opinion of the prince is thus recorded:
"He seems hardly qualified by any superior genius to assume the ascendency in the councils of his own and neighboring nations, which common rumor has for some years attributed to him. He appeared to me, in the short intercourse I had with him, little superior to the common run of continental politicians and courtiers, and clearly inferior to the Emperor of Russia in those qualities which secure an influence in great affairs. Some who admit the degrading but too prevalent opinion that a disregard to truth is useful and necessary in the government of mankind, have on that score maintained the contrary proposition. His manners are reckoned insinuating. In my slight acquaintance with him in London I was not struck with them; they seemed such as might have been expected from a German who had studied French vivacity in the fashionable novels of the day. I saw little of a sagacious and observant statesman, or of a courtier accustomed to very refined and enlightened society."
But the statesman who sustained Austria and procured for it the alliance of France was not Metternich. Napoleon is known to have long wavered as to whether he would build his European system on a close alliance with Prussia or with Austria. Bignon we believe it is that gives the reasons in the imperial mind for and against. Prussia was the preferable ally, being a new country, untrammelled by aristocratic ideas, ambitious, military, and eager for domination. But Napoleon had humiliated Prussia too deeply to be forgiven. And then Napoleon had in those around him politicians who revered Austria for its antiquity and prestige, and who, like Lord Aberdeen, made the Cæsar of Vienna the pivot on which their ideas of policy turned. Talleyrand was one of them. He worshipped Austria, opposed all his master's plans for crushing her, and even dared to thwart those plans by revealing them to Alexander, and prompting him secretly to oppose them. Such treachery fully warrants all the suspicion and harshness with which Napoleon treated Talleyrand. The latter's conduct is fully revealed in this volume by Lord Holland. In fact, the way in which Napoleon found his policy most seriously counteracted, and his projects foiled, was his weakness in employing the men of the ancien regime, the nobles, whom he preferred for their pleasing and good manners, but who invariably betrayed the parvenu master, who employed and courted them. By an instance of this grievously misplaced confidence Napoleon lost his throne. In the last events and negotiations of 1814 Napoleon employed Caulaincourt, who, had he had full power, might have made an arrangement. Talleyrand and his party at the same time employed M. de Vitrolles, and sent him to the Emperor of Austria to learn on what terms he would be induced either to support Napoleon or abandon him. The Emperor of Austria was naturally most unwilling to proceed to the latter extreme. But M. Vitrolles, a secret agent of the Bourbons, so falsified and misrepresented everything to the Emperor that the sacrifice of Napoleon was assented to.