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some of these topics; for the probability of a second volume, composed of unpublished materials still in the hands of General· Kirkpatrick, is adverted to, provided the reception of this by the public, and the health of the editor should be such as to render an extension of the work expedient. We earnestly hope that both these contingencies will prove auspicious.

ART. XXI.-Voyages and Travels in the Years 1809, 1810, 1811; containing Statistical, Commercial, and Miscellaneous Observations on Gibraltar, Sardinia, Sicily, Malta, Serigo, and Turkey. By John Galt. London: Cadell and Davies.

1812.

SHUT out from the continent as we have been for several years past, the researches of our travellers have been almost exclusively directed to the countries situated near the Mediterranean. This field is without doubt one of the most interesting on the face of the globe, affording to the inquisitive observer ample matter as well political and commercial, as historical and classical. Our naval superiority over the enemy has hitherto opposed to him an insuperable barrier to his ambitious views in that quarter; and has afforded to us every facility in the acquisition of information.

Mr. Galt has been early in submitting his observations to the press; and we cannot feel surprised at his promptitude in coming before the public, when we consider in the first place the unexampled celerity with which the remarks of travellers are at this period both read and sold; and, in the second place, the lively interest which the British nation has taken, as weli in the fate of Sicily as in the termination of the sanguinary contest between Russia and Turkey. It is our task to give an unbiassed view of the opinions which this gentleman has published, and from our own slender stock of information to correct such errors as he appears to us to have committed either through prejudice or inadvertence. And here we must beg leave to premise, that it is principally the interest which at this juncture every Englishman must feel in the scenes described by Mr. Galt which has induced us to take critical notice of the work. Many of his observations are certainly valuable; particularly those which relate to commerce. His political views are however developed with a want of diffidence, which we might little have expected in a writer, whose habits and pursuits ought to have convinced

him of his great and manifest unfitness for political discussions. His style also is loaded with affectations, and is altogether very unlike that of a man of scholastic education and habits. The ignorance displayed in many of his allusions to antiquity is disgraceful in one who aspires to the dignity of authorship; and it was probably a sense of his imperfections in this department that induced him on one occasion to rank antiquaries with vermin.

After a few preliminary observations on the Mediterranean, such as are to be found in the ordinary geographical books, Mr. Galt transports his readers to Gibraltar: there we are favoured with a few superficial observations on the port, which he concludes with an expression of surprise, that the British government have not imposed a toll on the passage of all vessels to and from the Mediterranean.

His description of the island of Sardinia is rather interesting, as to its matter, however much we may disapprove of the manner: we lay the following extract before our readers.

"The state of society in Sardinia is probably not unlike what existed in Scotland about a hundred and fifty years ago. Family pride, a species of political scrophula, is in Sardinia particularly inveterate. But the exclusive spirit of the nobles begins to be counteracted by the natural disposition of the sovereign to extend his own authority. Many parts of the country are in what a politician considers only as an unsatisfactory state. In the district of Tempio this is greatly the case; the mountains are infested with banditti, and the villages are often at war with one another. A feudal animosity of this kind, which had lasted upwards of half a century, was lately pacified by the interference of a monk. The armies of the two villages, amounting each to about four hundred men, were on an appointed day drawn out in order of battle, front to front, and musquets loaded. Not far from the spot the monk had a third host prepared, consisting of his own brethren, with all the crucifixes and images that they could muster. He addressed the belligerents, stating the various sins and wrongs that they had respectively committed, and shewing that the period had arrived when their disputes should cease, the account current of aggressions being then balanced. The stratagem had the desired effect, and a general reconciliation took place. The Sardinians have yet much to learn, not only in civil intercourse, but in the delicacies that should attend it.

"The country is divided into prefectures. The prefect is a lawyer, and is assisted by a military commandant, who furnishes the forces required to carry his warrants into effect. This regulation has been made in the course of the present reign, and may be regarded as an important step towards the establishment of a public and regal authority over the baronial privileges. In the provinces justice is distributed by the prefects, whose functions seem to cor

respond in many respects with those of the Scottish sheriffs. When any particular case occurs in which the king considers it expedient to appoint a judge of the supreme court in the capital, on purpose to try the cause on the spot, wherever this extraordinary justiciary passes, the provincial courts of justice are silent, and superseded by his presence. There are no periodical circuits of the justices.

"The judges receive a small stipend from the king, upon which they cannot subsist. They are allowed also a certain sum for each award that they deliver, which has the effect of making them greedy of jurisdiction, and interested in promoting revisions. The administration of justice is in consequence precarious, and gifts to the judges are of powerful advocacy.

"In a country where the government has so little power in the detail of ruling, and where the rectitude of the laws is so enfeebled by the chicane of the courts, it is natural that the people should often surrender themselves to their bad passions. The Sards possess, to an eminent degree, the venerable savage virtue of hospitality. They are courageous, and think and act with a bold and military arrogance; but the impunity with which they may offend, fosters their natural asperity. They are jealous of the Piedmontese; and on this account the king has not encouraged emigration from his late continental dominions to settle in Sardinia. In their political revolutions they have sometimes acted with an admirable concert and spirit. Not many years before the arrival of the Royal Family they had some reason to be discontented with the conduct of the viceroy and his ministers; and, in consequence, with one accord, they seized, at the same time, both on him and on all Piedmontese officers, and sent them home without turbulence or the shedding of any blood.

"In a country where the inhabitants still wear skins, and titles remain in a great degree territorial, it is not to be expected that learning and the arts of polished life can have made any interesting degree of progress. There is, however, an institution in Cagliari worthy of being particularly noticed. It is formed for the purpose, as it were, of affording an opportunity to humble-born genius to expand and acquire distinction. The children of the peasants are invited to come into the city, where they serve in families for their food and lodging, on condition of being allowed to attend the schools of the institution.

"They are called majoli, and wear a kind of uniform, with which they are provided by their friends. Some of the majoli rise to high situations: the greater number, however, return back to the provinces, and relapse into their hereditary rusticity; but the effects of their previous instruction remain; and sometimes, in remote and obscure valleys, the traveller meets with a peasant who in the uncouth and savage garb of the country, shews a tincture of the polish and intelligence of the town."

His other observations on this island are characterized with no small degree of presumption; and it might have been as well if, instead of confining himself to such general and petulant remarks on the conduct of our government in its relations with the court of Cagliari, he had specified some particular ground for his invectives. We should be gladly informed in what manner any thing" public can be done to encourage the British merchants to explore the abundant commercial resources of Sardinia." This island is freely open to the enterprize and speculations of our merchants. Their interests are under the safeguard of a minister to whose exertions in favour of trade Mr. Galt himself bears ample testimony. As to his assertion that "in every thing that relates to mercantile concerns all our treaties have hitherto been singular monuments of official ignorance and presumption," he should be reminded that such assertion can make no way among his readers without the evidence of facts, which he seems too magnificent to impart to us; and when he tells us that these treaties are drawn up by men "" I only versed in files and precedents," it may not have occurred to him, that all our treaties of commerce are drawn up by the committee of council for the affairs of trade, from a great body of information laid before them by the principal and leading merchants of the country, which may even put them upon a level with Mr. Galt; and no better proof can be given of the advantages which have resulted from their exertions than the progressively increasing state of the trade.

Leaving Sardinia in a Maltese packet, our traveller is landed at Girgenti, in Sicily. The extent of the ruins of Agrigentum undoubtedly tend in every way to corroborate the accounts handed down to us by Polybius, Diodorus, and other of the ancients concerning its wealth, power, and population, by which it so frequently opposed the immense armies of the Carthaginians, and of the Romans. Mr. Galt nevertheless very deliberately tells us, that "he can never now believe that it was really any thing but a Sicilian town, when the island was probably a little more prosperous than at present." (P. 17.) Nor has he been fortunate in his remarks on the magnificent ruins of the temples of Juno and of Concord, of which he observes with true homebred simplicity, " "that the church of St. Martin's in the Fields, London, is larger than both of them put together, and infinitely more magnificent"!!! The fact is, that each of these splendid ruins is above 126 feet long, and above 53 feet wide; and his comparison of them with his parish church in London, reminds us of the countryman, who when the great

lion in the Tower was shewn to him exclaimed, that it was nothing in point of size to "our big ox at home."

The temple of Concord (designated by Mr. Galt, in true jockey-like language, to be " in fine condition," (p. 17.), in the early times of Christianity was converted into a church, and subsequently dedicated to St. Gregory de la Rape, a canonized bishop of that city. To this circumstance we are probably indebted for the preservation* of this beautiful edifice. Who but Mr. Galt could ever have dreamt, that "the parts had been collected and replaced on each other?" A task nearly as arduous as the building of a new temple. The king new pointed it-secured some of the loose stones by iron, and disfigured it by an immense inscription, recording at once his munificence and want of taste. Luckily for the admirers of ancient architecture, Mr. Galt is not the only English author on whom we have to depend for an account of these remains. In the correct and scientific publication of Mr. Wilkins, on the Antiquities of Magna Græcia, is preserved a specimen of the magnificence and elegance of these venerable monuments of art.

Mr. Galt is of opinion that the population of Sicily is gradually increasing, and says, that "the fact," as he is pleased to call it," is incontrovertibly established by recent extracts from the parochial registers." We have, in a previous number, given our decided opinion on this subject, formed, as our readers may have observed, from some acquaintance with the country. Mr. Galt's observations relative to Sicily were made a twelvemonth previous to our own. At that period no publication had appeared, as far as we know, from which we could obtain this fact: and we have much to regret that Mr. Galt has not favoured us with the exposition of his authorities. Without such documents we must beg leave still to differ from his opinion, which we do with the less difficulty, as we find in his observations on the estimate of the population of Palermo, that he is ignorant of the fact, that the numbers contained in the district belonging to each Sicilian town are always included in the nominal amount of the population of the town itself. He seems to suppose the number to exist actually within the walls. Neither is this the only point in which we are at variance with our author. We cannot, for example, agree, "that Sicily has, within the last 10 years, exhibited decided symptoms of improvement." We are told, "that this fact" also "is confirmed by

Christianity has also preserved the temple of Theseus, at Athens; which is now the church of St. George.

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