James Augustus St. John

“ Choiseul-Gouffier was an impassioned admirer of Homer. No other poet, in fact, ever possesses so firm a hold upon the youthful mind as this ancient bard, because no one paints so truly those boiling passions which prevail in youth, and with which all men sympathize, until age or some other cause damps their energy, and makes them, as Shakspeare expresses it, “babble of green fields,” and tranquillity, and security, and civilization.
For the admirers of Homer, our traveller’s researches in the ancient empire of Priam must possess more than ordinary charms. ”

“ Heber was now arrived in the most extraordinary region, Greece and Egypt perhaps excepted, which has ever been inhabited by mankind. And he was well calculated by his high enthusiasm, extensive learning, and remarkable freedom from prejudice, to conceive all the splendour of the scene before him, to enter profoundly into the spirit of its institutions, and to describe with graceful and simple eloquence the picturesque variety of manners which the natives of this vast empire present to the contemplation of a stranger. ”

“ Should the curious traveller then climb these summits which bound his view, the wide extended place which he discovers becomes a fresh subject of admiration; but completely to enjoy this majestic scene, he must ascend the very point of Lebanon, or the Sannia. There on every side he will view a horizon without bounds; while in clear weather the sight is lost over the desert, which extends to the Persian Gulf, and over the sea, which bathes the coasts of Europe. ”

“ I still imagine myself in the midst of my camp, surrounded by my people and my animals; an agreeable site, a mountain, a tree,—nay, even a plant, a flower, or a fragment of rock scattered here and there,—nothing escapes from my memory; and this spectacle, which daily grows more and more affecting, amuses me, follows me into all places, and has often made me forget what I have suffered from men who call themselves civilized. ”

“ I am no longer to lament the voyage I lost with Lord Berwick; because it is exactly that which a man should see last in his travels. It is even with joy I consider it is perhaps the end of all my admiration. We are lucky in the time of our being here. The popularity of the English name gives us access to many things which strangers before were prohibited from visiting, and the great excavations that are going on discover daily some hidden treasures. Rome is almost as insignificant in comparison with Athens as London with Rome ”

“ The style of Le Vaillant, though regarded by many as declamatory and negligent, is in fact so graceful, natural, and full of vivacity,—his sentiments are so warm,—his ideas, whether right or wrong, so peculiarly his own, that, whether he desires to interest you in the fate of his friends or of his cattle, of his collections or of his cocks and hens, the result is invariably the same: he irresistibly inspires you with feelings like his own, and for the moment compels you, in spite of yourself, to adopt his views and opinions. ”

“ At intervals, dispersed over craggy, desolate heaths, immense numbers of cairns and Runic columns were discovered,—which, with pine forests of sombre hue, large bays of the sea nearly land-locked, and appearing like so many lakes; cascades, rocks, cloud-capped mountains,—produced a series of impressions upon the mind, characterized by so high a degree of solemn grandeur, that even the vast solitudes of the Brenner Alps or Wetterhorn could scarcely inspire a deeper sense of sublimity. Amid those wild landscapes the natives amused themselves with wolf-hunting on sledges, during the winter ”

“ I accordingly led my horse cautiously towards the light, and heard by the lowing of the cattle, and the clamorous tongues of the herdsmen, that it was a watering-place, and most likely belonged to the Moors. Delightful as the sound of the human voice was to me, I resolved once more to strike into the woods, and rather run the risk of perishing with hunger, than trust myself again in their hands; but being still thirsty, and dreading the approach of the burning day, I thought it prudent to search for the wells, which I expected to find at no great distance. ”

“ And here a striking manifestation of the daring intrepidity of the English occurred: for not only Clarke himself, part of whose business as a traveller it was to familiarize himself with danger, but numbers of other English gentlemen, and even ladies, ascended to the mouth of the burning crater and the sources of lava-streams in an active state for mere amusement; where, on one occasion, a lady narrowly escaped death from a large stone from the volcano, which flew by her like a wheel. ”

“ Thirst, that most maddening of human privations, was now felt once more, and the parched herbage afforded neither nourishment nor cooling juices to the cattle. All their hopes now centred in those thunderstorms which, at certain seasons of the year, are common in southern Africa, and the jocular extravagance of Aristophanes, who represents men as cloud-worshippers, was now scarcely an exaggeration: for both our traveller and his followers almost bowed down in religious adoration to every cloud that sailed aloft in the blue firmament, and seemed to announce a tempest. ”

“ This miserable dogma, the offspring of insane reasoning, and a distrust in the power or goodness of the Divinity, was at that period in dispute among the sophists of Europe; but I pity the man who could make so bestial a creed the companion of his soul amid the vast solitudes of the desert, where we might expect that the very winds of heaven would have winnowed away so vile a chaff, and rendered back its native whiteness and purity to the mind. ”

“ Nevertheless, from a passion for vain paradox, which has of late been but too common both in France and Germany among persons who would be thought to be philosophers, he unfortunately exhibited in his historical researches a degree of skepticism highly absurd. He had perhaps read and admired the startling proposition of Aristotle, that doubt is the foundation of all science; but if doubt eternally generate doubt, upon what basis are the sciences to be erected? The Greek philosopher, I conceive, merely intends to say, that without doubt there can be no inquiry, and without inquiry no science. ”

“ No person can be more desirous than myself to enhance the just praises of Volney, who has exhibited, in his description of Syria and Egypt, remarkable force and depth of thinking, and powers of delineation of no ordinary class. But in Herodotus we have a picture of the whole world, as far, at least, as it was known in his time, sketched with inimitable truth and brevity, and adorned with a splendour of colouring which with matchless skill he has known how to unite with the severest accuracy. ”

“ He seems to command the whole world, while the wandering eye, now surveying the successive chains of mountains, transports the imagination in an instant from Antioch to Jerusalem, and now approaching the surrounding objects, observes the distant profundity of the coast, till the attention, at length, fixed by distinctive objects, more minutely examines the rocks, woods, torrents, hillsides, villages, and towns; and the mind secretly exults at the diminution of things which before appeared so great. He contemplates the valley obscured by stormy clouds with a novel delight ”

“ Niebuhr had now a definite object. The East, with all its barbaric pomp and historical glory, which in preceding and succeeding days have kindled enthusiasm in so many bosoms, appeared to court his examination; and, like a lover who appreciates at their highest value the accomplishments of his mistress, and is bent on rendering himself worthy of her, he thenceforward studied, with vehement earnestness, all those branches of knowledge which he regarded as necessary to a traveller in the East ”

“ Every limb was plied, every nerve strained, to force a way through the impetuous current; every man exerted himself to the utmost; but the river rushed along with irresistible violence, and instead of making way towards the shore, they saw themselves hurried down by the stream towards the sea, where inevitable death awaited them. Meanwhile Le Vaillant perceived with dismay that their strength began to fail them. ”

“ The distant view of the smaller pyramids on the south marked the extension of that vast capital; while the solemn endless spectacle of the desert, on the west, inspired us with reverence for the all-powerful Creator. The fertile lands on the north, with the serpentine course of the Nile, descending towards the sea; the rich appearance of Cairo, and its minarets, at the foot of the Mokatam mountain, on the east; the beautiful plain which extends from the Pyramids to that city; the Nile, which flows magnificently through the centre of the Sacred Valley ”

“ Thus we can account for the little interest with which the sight of the Sneuw Bergen inspired Le Vaillant, who would otherwise appear to have been constitutionally deprived of that masculine energy which impels us rather to rejoice than be depressed at the sight of steril and desolate mountains, seldom trodden but by the brave, and seeming to have been expressly thrown up by nature as a rampart upon which freedom might successfully struggle against the oppressors of mankind. ”

“ The governor, a ferocious black, received him in a hut, furiously intoxicated, and surrounded by numerous followers in the same condition. In the midst of their drunken mirth they called for their muskets, and amused themselves with firing in the hut. Burckhardt every moment expected that a random ball would put an end to his travels; but the palm wine at length extended the whole of this atrocious rabble upon the ground, and next morning, when sleep had somewhat restored the tone of the governor’s senses, he found time to question our traveller respecting the motives of his visit. ”

“ The little voyage from Cape Sunium to Athens is one of the most interesting I ever made. The height of the mountains brings the most distant objects into the view, and you are surrounded by beauty and grandeur. The sailors and pilots still give to every thing its ancient name, with only a little difference in the pronunciation. They show you as you sail along, Ægina and Salamis, Mount Hymettus and Athens, and Megara, and the mountains of Corinth. The picture is the same as it was in the earliest ages of Greece. ”

“ The indolent inactivity which had marked his school studies did not desert him at college. He seems, in fact, to have been disgusted with the system of education pursued at Cambridge, caring nothing for mathematics, which were there regarded as all in all, and finding among the other mental pursuits of the place nothing whatever to kindle the ardour of his ambitious mind. Still the desire of fame, without which man never performed any thing great, began gradually to manifest itself in his character both to himself and others. ”

“ No man, I suppose, who has passed beyond the frontiers of his own country, can fail to have experienced frequent depressions of spirit, during which he has probably repented him of his wandering habits. But Clarke was like a weathercock, now pointing to the east, now to the west. In the island of Zea, off the promontory of Sunium, he repented heartily of having undertaken the voyage to Greece. “Danger, fatigue, disease, filth, treachery, thirst, hunger, storms, rocks, assassins,—these,” he exclaims, “are the realities which a traveller in Greece meets with!” ”

“ I am surprised that, in the tremendous extremities to which our traveller and his followers were reduced by want of water, they never had recourse to a method which, disgusting and terrible as it may seem, has, I believe, been successfully tried for quenching thirst by other travellers, as well as by certain tribes of savages; I mean, to drink the blood of the animals they slaughtered. Man has no doubt a natural repugnance to such expedients, but may yield, under the pressure of imperious necessity, to whatever means, short of injustice, Providence may afford him of preserving life. ”

“ In this city our traveller enjoyed an opportunity of observing the manners of the Kirghees. These people purchased annually from the Russians a number of golden eagles, used by their hunters in the chase of the wolf, the fox, and the gazelle, and would sometimes give a horse in exchange for one of these birds, while others were hardly valued at a sheep, or even a small piece of money. During his stay at Orenburg he visited the great salt-mines of Hetzkain, and learned the laborious and ingenious methods by which the fossil salt is extracted from the bowels of the earth. ”

“ Moreover, in the “Law of Nature,” man is considered too much in a material, and too little in a spiritual light; which, though it may be a merit in the eyes of such a writer as M. Durozoir, must to a person of a different creed appear to be a very remarkable defect. Considering the question merely in a philosophical point of view, it can, I think, admit of no dispute that the incentives to good actions can never be too numerous; but Volney, from his peculiar notions, could only speak of morals as of physical science, which, taken as a whole, it certainly is not. ”