furnishes the key to his conduct and policy in after life, that we cannot refrain from referring to some of them. His descriptions are always singularly picturesque, and although he saw what he describes and what particularly appealed to his fancy and imagination with the eyes of a poet, and depicted them with the licence of a novelist, they are always life-like, bringing the scenes he had witnessed, or the principal features of the country in which he was travelling, and the appearance and customs of the inhabitants, vividly before us. Thus of Gibraltar he writes to his father: This rock is a wonderful place, with a population infinitely diversified. Moors with costumes radiant as a rainbow, or an Eastern melodrama; Jews with gaberdines and skull-caps; Genoese, Highlanders, and Spaniards, whose dress is as picturesque as that of the sons of Ivor.' And to Mr. Austen: 'I never saw anything more sublime than the Straits, with Europe and Africa frowning on each other; but our sultry sister has the advantage in picturesque beauty, though both are very fine.'

The letters are equally characteristic of the man. n. The almost puerile vanity and affectation which distinguished him in youth, if not through life, appear in almost every line of them. But they furnish at the same time ample proofs of that kindness of heart and playfulness which were pleasing features in his disposition. If their tone is occasionally caustic and cynical, it has been assumed more in the way of frolic and banter than in sober earnestness. That love of flashy and fantastic dress which he always possessed—and which is not rare in his race, although he may have indulged in it partly in imitation of Byron-is constantly peeping out. At Gibraltar he excites the admiration of the dandies by wearing some studs which his mother had given him, and by possessing two canes-it was then the fashion for fine gentlemen to carry a cane at all times-one of which he used in the morning, exchanging it for another at gun-fire; and he heard with dismay of the King's death, as it was the destruction of two richly embroidered dresswaistcoats which he could no longer wear!

He was enchanted with the beauty of the Spanish cities, their sunny warmth, the calm voluptuousness of life which accorded so well with his disposition,' their 'white walls and verdant jalousies sparkling in the sun,' the romantic nature of the life of their inhabitants, Figaro in every street; Rosina in every balcony.' He expressed the most unbounded admiration for Murillo, whom he places at the head of the Spanish school, ‘if not of all schools of painting.' This painter appears to him the most original of artists. No man has painted more or oftener

6

oftener reached the ideal. He never fails.* He is convinced that, after all, these Spaniards are at the top of the tree,' an opinion which, we conceive, he must subsequently have found reason to modify. He travels in a district 'peopled by brigands and smugglers,' and narrowly escapes falling into the hands of the celebrated robber-chief José Maria, who, it will be remembered, on a general invitation to dinner at Seville from Richard Ford, appeared to accept it at the house of his quondam friend, when he was entertaining the Governor and authorities of the city.

He had, at length, found a country where adventure is the common course of existence, and from necessity must be so,' he told Mr. Austen. The life that he was leading, his wanderings on horseback by day and by night through the plains and sierras of Andalusia, with their exhilarating air, and the novelty and romance of the scenes which he was daily witnessing, had a most favourable effect upon his health. He described himself, however, as occasionally suffering from the distressing symptoms connected with his head and heart, which had so much disturbed him in England, had alarmed his friends, and had baffled the skill of the physicians. I thought,' he wrote to his sister, that enthusiasm was dead within me, and nothing could be new. I have hit perhaps upon the only country which could have upset my theory."

He visited Cadiz, Seville, Cordova, and Granada, among many other cities which must not be named with these romantic towns; sailed upon the Guadalquivir; cheered at the bullfights, lived for a week among brigands, and wandered in the fantastic halls of the delicate Alhambra.' Nothing could be more graphic than his description of travelling in Spain before the introduction of diligences and railways:

All travel by night and in armed companies. A moon so brilliant that you might see for miles lights up a country alternately formed of sierras, or mountain passes, and immense plains. Merchants in armed bands, muleteers defiling, a couple of friars secure in the sanctity of their character and of their poverty, some lords and ladies of high degree with a military escort which always scampers off at the first shot, with a few adventurous travellers like ourselves, form the interesting and constant groups. In the cities, the church is

Letter to his father, July 26. One of his letters contains a curious dissertation upon Saracenic architecture, which he appears to have preferred to all others. It shows that his artistic taste was at that time but imperfectly formed. and that his judgment was warped by his too lively imagination. What would Mr. Ruskin have said if told that the Ducal Palace at Venice was 'a barbarous though picturesque building,' greatly inferior in every respect to the painted stuccoed walls of the Alhambra?-Letter to his father from Malta, Aug. 25th.

C 2

still

still the Royal Exchange of assignations, and through the whole warm night the castanet reminds you of the fascinating fandango.'

At the end of August he arrived at Malta, where he was joined by Mr. James Clay, afterwards well known in the House of Commons as Member for Hull. He gives a sketch of the many and various acquirements of this gentleman in a letter to his father, which would serve for the hero of one of his own romances, and concludes by these characteristic sentiments :-'To govern men you must excel them in their accomplishments or despise them—a maxim upon which he seems to have acted throughout his career; and adds, Clay does one, I do the other, and we are both equally popular. Affectation tells here even better than wit.' Of affectation,' indeed, he had a large stock. We have heard it said that the cards, which he left upon the authorities and his acquaintances in the island, had simply inscribed on them 'Vivian Grey.' He tells how he dined at the mess of the 73rd, when leaving for the Ægean, in an Andalusian dress, which he exchanged for the theatrical costume of a Greek pirate, a blood-red shirt, with silver studs as big as shillings, an immense scarf for girdle, full of pistols and daggers, red cap, red slippers, broad blue-striped jacket and trousers.' He relates with puerile vaunt how he sits upon an easy divan, puffing from a Turkish pipe seven feet long with an amber mouthpiece and a porcelain bowl; and boasts of a meerschaum, and one of Dresden china, set in silver.' Smoking, he found, relieved his head.

A violent outbreak of small-pox, which had placed Malta in quarantine, prevented him from visiting Sicily. When about to leave the former island, he had written to Mr. Austen:—

'With regard to myself I have certainly made great progress, but not enough. I have still illness enough to make my life a burthen, and as my great friend, the sun, is daily becoming less powerful, I daily grow more dispirited, and resume my old style of despair. Had I been cured by this time I had made up my mind to join you in Italy-as it is, I go I know not where, but do not be surprised if you hear something very strange indeed.'

He accordingly informed his correspondent from Corfu, where he had gone in a yacht hired by Mr. Clay, instead of proceeding direct to Egypt, as it had been his original intention, that his object in visiting the island was to arrange for putting into execution a resolve he had made to join the Turkish army as a volunteer, in the warlike operations then being carried on by

Letter to Mrs. Austen. For another spirited and picturesque description of travelling in Spain, see a letter to his sister of August 9, from Gibraltar.

the

the Grand Vizir Reschid Pasha, in person, to suppress a formidable rebellion against the authority of the Sultan in Albania.* He again appears to have wished to imitate, if not to rival, in romantic adventure, Lord Byron, whose well-known portrait by Phillips, in the Albanian costume which he adopted, he may have seen. During his travels he provided himself with a singular variety of costumes. In one of his letters to Mr. Austen, whilst protesting that he was travelling with the greatest economy, he says that his only serious expense was caused by the many costly dresses that he considered it necessary to furnish himself with.

On arriving at Corfu he learnt that the Porte had proceeded with such surprising energy, that the war in Albania which had been begun so magnificently had already dwindled into an insurrection.' He determined, therefore, to turn his intended campaign into a visit of congratulation to the Grand Vizir. Provided with letters from Sir Frederick Adam, the Lord High Commissioner, he accordingly crossed with Mr. Clay and Mr. Meredith to Prevesa, whence he could most easily reach Janina, where Reschid Pasha had his head-quarters. His first experience of what was then considered the East exceeded all his expectations, and all that his exuberant fancy had imagined.

'I can give you no idea in a letter,' he wrote to Mr. Austen,' of all the Pashas, and all the Silictars, and all the Agas that I have visited, and who have visited me; all the pipes I smoked, all the coffee I sipped, all the sweetmeats I devoured. . . . For a week I was in a scene equal to anything in the "Arabian Nights." Such processions, such dresses, such corteges of horsemen, such caravans of camels! Then the delight of being made much of by a man who was daily decapitating half the Province! Every morning we paid visits, attended reviews, and crammed ourselves with sweetmeats; every evening dancers and singers were sent to our quarters by the Vizir or some Pasha.'

He may have contributed to the strangeness of the scene by his own fantastic and gorgeous garments. He tells his father how he produced a most extraordinary effect on that costumeloving people,' the Albanians, by making up a dress with the united assistance of his English, Spanish, and fancy wardrobe.' 'Many Turks,' he says, called upon me expressly to see it. But I was aptly asked by a Greek doctor, who had been at Pisa, whether "questo vestito era Inglese o di fantasia," to which I oracularly replied, "Inglese e fantastico!"'

His

* He also mentioned the intention he had formed, to join the Turkish army as a volunteer, in the letter to Edward Bulwer to which we have already referred. description

description of his journey through Albania to Janina, and of the scene at headquarters, is very picturesque and vivid, although no doubt considerably over-coloured, according to his wont. The pomp and display which even in recent times marked the progress of a high Turkish functionary; the troops, chiefly irregulars, consisting of men from every part of the vast Ottoman dominions in their varied costumes; the strings of high-bred Arab steeds and stately camels; the wild martial music; the ceremonies attending an audience of the great man; the mob of secretaries, pipe-bearers, and armed attendants in his ante-chambers; the tumult and disorder of a Turkish camp, are all sketched with a master hand.

At the end of November he reached Athens, after sailing for a fortnight on the Ægean sea, with a cloudless sky, a summer atmosphere, and sunsets like the neck of a dove,' and after visiting Navarino, the scene of Codrington's bloody blunder, which had become quite a little French town-the French having covered the scene of Spartan suffering with cafés and billiard tables'-Argos, Mycena, and Corinth. The city was still in the possession of the Turks, but was about to be handed over to the Greek Commission appointed to receive it. The Greeks, who were seeking for a King, were so 'utterly astounded' by the magnificence and strangeness of his whimsical costume, and so much impressed by his general appearance, that he 'gathered a regular crowd round his quarters, and had to come forward and bow, like Don Miguel and Donna Maria.' 'Had he 25,000%. to throw away he might, he really believed, increase his headaches by wearing a crown!' The Acropolis, which had been closed for nine years, was for the first time opened to the English travellers. The war of independence, which had only recently been brought to a close, had left the city in ruins, but the ancient remains had been respected, and the injury to the Parthenon and the other temples in the Acropolis was but slight, whilst that of Theseus looked at a short distance as if it were just finished by Pericles.' Disraeli and his companions made an excursion to Marathon, and 'lived for a week,' he wrote, ' on the wild boar of Pentelicus, and the honey of Hymettus -a slight stretch of the imagination, we presume.

Of Athens he wrote little; but, in a letter to Mrs. Austen, he remarked that of all he had visited in his travels nothing had more completely realized all that he had imagined and all that he could have wished. Independent of associations, it is the most beautiful assemblage of all that is interesting in art and nature.' All his enthusiasm was, however, reserved for Constantinople. When, in December, he saw the cupolas and

minarets