early part of the thirteenth century, so as to rival that of Rome itself. This advancement was owing, as we are told, to the genius and labours of Friar Simon Taylor, who, it is said, was as skilful in the science as the great Guido of Arezzo himself. This Simon, it is alleged, wrote a variety of learned treatises-De Canto Ecclesiastico corrigendo-De Tenore Musicali-De Tetrachordis, and De Pentrachordis—all of which treatises are said to have perished-they in sober truth, having never been in existence.

There can however be no doubt that in some shape or other, both vocal and instrumental music were cultivated in Scotland with some assiduity as far back as the reign of James the First, in the beginning of the fifteenth century. The monarchs of the house of Stewart, up till the time that they left Scotland, were far before their age in accomplishments, as well as in liberality of sentiment. The musical acquirements of James the First are celebrated by Major, (writing about 1521,) and Boethius, (writing about 1527,) both within a century of the death of the king; in terms so very specific as leaves no doubt that this accomplished prince was highly skilled both in vocal and instrumental performance, as well as he was in the art of poesy. Buchanan also, a man of a less genial soul than his predecessors in Scottish history, and having in his mind at the time, we believe, the elegant phraseology in which Sallust has reproved the dancing of Sempronia, tells us that James was more curiously instructed in musical matters than became or was expedient for a king. James the Third was a distinguished patron of the arts, and of music amongst the rest. The fourth and fifth Jameses had similar tastes. The nonsense about David Rizzio, Mary's Secretary being the improver of our Scottish melodies, has been sufficiently refuted, and is so well handled in the notes with which Mr. Grahame has accompanied Mr. Wood's Songs, that nothing need be added to what he has said. It may, however, be remarked, that the unfortunate Italian has had something like poetical justice done him by having had a most undeserved honour forced on his memory by Scotsmen, two centuries after his death, as a requital for his cowardly and cruel murder by the ruffian barons, by whom his royal patroness was surrounded and beleagured.

Of the real antiquity of our Scottish airs, that is, of those that with the best reason, from internal evidence we acknowledge as ancient, it is extremely difficult to form even a conjecture. No manuscript Scottish music older than the seventeenth century is known to be in existence but it is highly improbable that the seventeenth century was the era in which our melodies were composed. And it is obvious enough, that the melodies then collected might be handed down from several past generations, as musical airs are every day imparted by thousands to thousands, without any recourse being had to musical notation. It is this circumstance that makes the question of the antiquity of such melodies as the airs of The Broom of the Cowden Knowes, She's Fair and Fause, Poortith Cauld, My Nanny oh, and such like, so very unsolvable. One man may believe that they are not older than the seventeenth century, but if another man shall choose to declare

them to be as old as the thirteenth, who shall confute him? The man who will make them most ancient will be sure to have most hearers and believers. If James Macpherson had thought proper to have ininsisted on it, that these sweet airs were sung by Fingal and his heroes, on the hills of Morven or by the streams that roar through echoing Cona, about the opening of the third century of the Christian era, he would have got plenty of followers to confirm his assertion-and with Scottish antiquaries bold assertion goes a greater length than reasonable argument on any subject.

EASTERN TRAVELS.

The spirit of the old Crusaders yet lingers amongst us in our reverence for the East. That spirit has been kept alive in our literature by the wild romance of the Entertainments of Arabian Nights-by the picturesque piquancy of Anastasius-the sombre and majestic wisdom of Rasselas, and the sublimity and magnificence of Vathek. Many a deathless page of Byron, Southey, Moore, and Scott, is illu minated with brilliance borrowed from "the land of the sun." The Bride of Abydos-Thalaba-Lalla Rookh, and the Tales of the Crusaders, owe much of their potent fascination to the gorgeous oriental drapery that floats in flolds about them. Nor has the spirit of the olden time been permitted to droop or die by the living successors of these " serene creators of immortal things." For the truth of this assertion Warburton's "Crescent and the Cross," D'Israeli's Tancred, and Eothen, superior to both in rich and rare originality-are sufficient vouchers. It is not wonderful, indeed, that these Eastern scenes, worthily visited by men of genius, should produce such books, for there, says D'Israeli eloquently, "not a spot is visible that is not heroic or sacred, consecrated or memorable; not a rock that is not the cave of prophets: not a valley that is not the valley of heaven-anointed kings not a mountain that is not the mountain of God."

It is the practice of some indefatigable wayfarers to furnish their empty heads with choice particulars from various authorities-antiquarian, historical, and poetical-regarding the round towers and ruinous castles, or the beautiful scenery and legendary tales of the localities they intend to visit. Their antiquarian authority assures them that there are still the remains in the round tower of a certain staircase, leading to a bed-room, where the blood of heirs had been spilt. There historical authority declares, that within a bow-shot of the castle window-in that fine meadow down there-a dreadfully decisive drubbing was inflicted on the English three centuries ago. Their poetical and scenical authority affirms of the river which flows by the base of the crumbling old fortalice, that it is a stream "beautiful exceedingly" to look upon-that it is embosomed in tufted trees, relieved by picturesque rocks and waterfalls, and bedizened by Nature's lavish

hand with the delicate tracery of shrubs and wild-flowers of every hue that now it sparkles and flashes in the sun-light, anon is darkened by the shadow of primeval pines and perilous precipices which, at intervals, overbank its path. And accordingly our wayfarers, as in duty bound, endeavour to decypher these features in the scene before them. To be sure there don't appear any indications of the anticipated staircase, nor of the bloody bed-room it led to, but there are oblong chiselled stones lying about, which must have figured in a staircase and now, upon narrower inspection, there do seem to be faint and broken lines on the wall, where the connecting partitions of the bed-room must have terminated. The meadow, seen from the windows or turrets of the castle, is also a delightful subject of contemplation; and the smitten soldiers of England, scampering and scouring along the plain, with as many bare-legged Scotchmen after them, pleasingly fill the imagination, and afford, upon the whole, an agreeable prospect. The river, it is true, is rather tame and common-place; but then the day is dull-the imagination needs to be stimulated a little-and, at length, the rocks and the pomp of forests, the shrubbery and the wild flowers, the alternation of light and shadow, gradually make their appearance, and the panorama is complete. Thus, with imagination previously surcharged, the traveller can see in such scenes nought he didn't see before, and he leaves them no one whit a wiser man, but rather complacently congratulating himself upon the amount of information they have recalled to his remembrance.

Not such is the mode of procedure of the author of Eothen. He makes no inventory of works on the scenes and cities he passes through. He does not revise his old Latinity before journeying eastward, nor compel reluctant quotations from the Greek to befriend him in his hour of need. From these and all such petty artifices of ordinary authorship our traveller is free. With a cultivated, unbiassed, and manly mind, he journeys onward; and with a bold pen and independent purpose, records in his pages the real impressions conveyed to his mind by what he heard and saw-very little careful what authority he contradicts-what object of interest to others he slights—or what opportunity he pretermits of illustrating his theme by pat quotation. And hence the raciness, buoyancy and vigour of this book of: travel. Thus it is easy in gait, uncramped by precedent opinions, unshackled by authority, and unweighed down by the heavy ballast of pedantry. While sufficiently marked by beauties peculiarly its own, the style, with some slight inaccuracies, has much of the copiousness of South, the felicitous ease and grace of Charles Lamb, and the boissterous spirit and bold originality of Wilson and De Quincey. This is high praise, but not more, we honestly believe, than truth demands. These unusual characteristics of thought and style in a book of travel procured for Eothen a rapid circulation, and, though quite recently published, it has already passed through several editions.

After a manly preface, addressed to a young friend, in which the author states that his MS. lay unfinished for a considerable time

that the diffidence he felt in laying it before the public was only overcome by supposing himself talking to his friend-and that his travels were preparatory to the life of toil and conflict he now leads-the book thus bravely begins :

"At Semlin, I still was encompassed by the scenes and the sounds of familiar life; the din of a busy world still vexed and cheered me: the unveiled faces of women still shone in the light of day. Yet, whenever I chose to look southward, 1 saw the Ottoman's fortress-austere, and darkly impending high over the vale of the Danube-historic Belgrade. I had come, as it were, to the end of this wheel-going Europe, and now my eyes would see the splendour and havoc of the East."

Having got "over the border" from Simlin to Belgrade, our traveller-his carpet-bags being besieged by importunate Mussulman porters-thus graphically describes these porters :

"Whether the fellows who now surrounded us were soldiers, or peaceful inhabitants, I did not understand they wore the old Turkish costume: vests and jackets of many and brilliant colours, divided from the loose petticoat-trousers by heavy volumes of shawl, so thickly folded around their waists as to give the meagre wearers something of the dignity of true corpulence. This cincture enclosed a whole bundle of weapons; no man were less than one brace of immensely long pistols, and a yataghan (or cutlass), with a dagger or two, of various shapes and sizes; most of these arms were inlaid with silver, and highly burnished, so that they contrasted shiningly with the decayed grandeur of the garments to which they were attached; (this carefulness of his arms is a point of honour with the Osmanlee, who never allows his bright yataghan to suffer from his own adversity); then the long drooping mustachios, and the ample folds of the once while turbans, that lowered over the piercing eyes, and the haggard features of the men, gave them an air of gloomy pride, and that appearance of trying to be disdainful under difficulties, which I have since so often seen in those of the Ottoman people who live, and remember old times; they seemed as if they were thinking that they would have been more usefully, more honourably, and more piously employed, in cutting our throats, than in carrying our portmanteus."

Passing over a very picturesque sketch of the Moslem quarter of the city of Belgrade, and a chapter on Turkish travelling-descriptive and experimental, we then come in sight of Constantinople. Much in praise of this renowned city has been penned by poet, traveller, and historian-but surely nothing superior to this:

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'Even if we don't take a part in the chaunt about Mosques and Minarets' we can still yield praises to Stamboul. We can chaunt about the harbour; we can say, and sing, that nowhere else does the sea come so home to a city; there are no pebbly shores-no sand bars- no slimy riverbeds-no black canals-no locks nor docks to divide the very heart of the place from the deep waters; if, being in the noisiest mart of Stamboul, you would stroll to the quiet side of the way amidst those cypresses opposite, you will cross the fathomless Bosphorus; if you would go from your hotel to the bazaars, you must go by the bright blue pathway of the Golden Horn-that can carry a thousand sail of the line. You are accustomed to the Gondolas that glide among the palaces of St. Mark, but here, at

Stamboul, it is a hundred-and-twenty-gun-ship that meets you in the street. Venice strains out from the steadfast land, and, in olden times would send forth the chief of the State to woo and wed the reluctant sea; but the stormy bride of the Doge is the bowing slave of the Sultan-she comes to his feet with the treasures of the world-she bears him from palace to palace-by some enticing witchcraft she entices the breezes to follow her,* and fan the pale cheek of her lord-she lifts his armed navies to the very gates of his gardens-she watches the walls of his Serail-she stifles the intrigues of his ministers-she quiets the scandal of his courts-she extinguishes his rivals, and hushes his naughty wives, all one by one. So vast are the wonders of the deep!"

We had marked for quotation a life-large portraiture of an Ottoman lady-and a page or two illustrative of Homer's minute accuracy, in the chapter on the Troad-but these, and some fine sketchings of Greek mariners, we must omit, to make room for the following passage of transcendent beauty, from the chapter on Cyprus. The ruins of Paphos are the theme :

"This just then was my Pagan soul's desire-that (not forfeiting my inheritance for the life to come,) it had yet been given to me to live through this world-to live a favoured mortal under the old Olympian dispensation to speak out my resolves to the listening Jove, and hear him answer with approving thunder-to be blessed with divine counsels from the lips of Pallas Athenie-to believe-aye only to believe—to believe for one rapturous moment, that in the gloomy depths of the grove, by the mountain's side, there were some leafy pathway that crisped beneath the glowing sandal of Aphrodetie-Aphrodetie, not cordially disdainful of even a mortal's love! And this vain, heathenish longing of mine, was father to the thought of visiting the scene of the ancient worship.

"The isle is beautiful; from the edge of the rich, flowery fields on which I trod, to the midway sides of the snowy Olympus, the ground could only here and there show an abrupt crag, or a high straggling ridge, that upshouldered itself from out of the wilderness of myrtles, and of the thousand bright-leaved shrubs that twined their arms together in lovesome tangles. The air that came to my lips was warm, and fragrant as the ambrosial breath of the goddess, infecting me-not (of course,) with a faith in the old religion of the isle, but with a sense and apprehension of its mystic power a power that was still to be obeyed-obeyed by me, for why otherwise did I toil on with sorry horses to where, for HER, the hundred altars glowed with Arabian incense, and breathed with the fragrance of garlands ever fresh?""

After some details concerning the island, come a long and interesting chapter on that very eccentric personage, Lady Hester Stanhope. Those who wish to know something, in brief compass, of her habits and mode of life, should read this part of the book. Our traveller at length enters the Holy Land, but as he is not quite at home there, we shall not record any of his doings till he reaches the Dead Sea, in which, like most travellers, he bathed, and thus records his experience:

"I bathed in the Dead Sea. The ground covered by the water slopped

There is almost always a breeze either from the Marmora, or from the Black Sea, that passes along the course of the Bosphorus.-Author's Note.