e
country he traveled through, and the ever famous characters that
made its history what it is, his descriptions combine most pleasingly
together, the past with the present. He peoples the scenery with the
men whose deeds give to that scenery all its interest; and whether on
the plain of Marathon, or the site of Delphi or the Acropolis, he has
a store of things to say of their past glories, and links together,
with great artistic skill, that which is gone with that which remains.

[Footnote 2: Picturesque Sketches of Greece and Turkey. By Aubrey De
Vere, 2 vols. [Philadelphia: A. Hart.]]

By the scholar and the man of taste the volumes will be read with no
little delight, as they abound much more with reflections and sensible
observations, than with the commonplace incidents of travel. Indeed,
the author has left but small space for his accidents at sea and his
hardships on shore, since all the chapters but four are devoted to
Athens, Delphi, and Constantinople. The classical reader will prefer
the chapters on the two first-named places; the general reader will
find perhaps more interesting his sketches of the city of the Sultan,
and an anecdote which he gives of the present Sultan, and which
declares him to possess more of decision, and firmness of character,
and good sense, than the world gives him credit for. His description
of the Bosphorus will create in many a desire to see what he has seen,
and to look upon some, at least, of the fifty-seven palaces which the
sultans have raised upon its banks; and upon the hundreds of others,
which, while the Commander of the Faithful permits it, are the
property of his subjects.

It argued far more of a wild spirit of adventure than of a sober
understanding in Aubrey de Vere, to go with that clever Frenchman to
the Turk's house, and to play off all those tricks in the presence of
its master and his ten unvailed wives. Rarely indeed, if ever before,
has an Englishman passed an hour so comfortably with the whole of
a rich man's harem, and seen them as de Vere saw them in all their
artlessness and beauty. We live, indeed, in strange times, when the
once scorned and loathed Giaours contrive to possess themselves
of such extraordinary privileges, and to escape unharmed from such
hitherto unheard-of enjoyments.

Where one thought was given to Constantinople a hundred years since
from the west of the Dalmatian coast, ten thousand eyes are now
constantly directed to it, and with c