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treaties recalled from exile a tyrant proscribed by the general voice of Europe and placed at his disposal the resources of one of the mightiest monarchies in the world. There were not wanting among ourselves individuals perverse and wicked enough to vindicate this atrocious breach of national faith, and to support with all their powers of argument and rhetoric the dæmon who came like another Pandora to let loose all sorts of calamities upon mankind, to subject the finest portion of Europe to the miseries of war and to deluge its plains with native gore. Fortunately for the human race Providence has decreed that principles so monstrous should not prevail. The sovereigns whose united strength but lately hurled Napoleon from the throne of France, true to their engagements to one another and to the injured house of Bourbon, armed without delay to chastise the perfidy of their old enemy and of France. Britain, the soul of that illustrious eoalition, poured forth anew her warriors and her treasures, and for her was reserved the glory of striking the first blow, of sustaining almost ingly the shock of the whole force of the foe, of achieving a victory which will be the astonishment of her contemporaries a the admiration of posterity-a victory that has shaken the power of the usurper to its base, and left him no alternative but abdication or death. Notwithstanding the painful sacrifice with which this victory was accomplished, we cannot but congratuJate our country in the opportunity thus afforded her to crown all her former splendid achievements and to raise her character to the highest pinnacle of glory. It attests that she is not less capable of commanding respect by her valour than gratitude by her generosity.

Reverting from a theme which must fill every truly British bosom with exultation, we once more present our unfeigned thanks to all those who have lent us the support either of their pens or their recommendation. We assure them and our readers in general that nothing shall induce us to remit our efforts in the cause in which we are embarked, and with confidence offer the present volume as a pledge of our determination to neglect none of the means in our power to improve our work, to heighten its interest, to enlarge the sphere of its utility and to render it worthy of the distinguished encouragement which it has received.

London, June 29, 1815.

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THE

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

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MONTHLY MAGAZINES have opened a way for every kind of inquiry and information. The intelligence and discussion contained in them are very extensive and various; and they have been the means of diffusing a general habit of reading through the nation, which in a certain degree hath enlarged the public understanding. HERE, too, are preserved a multitude of useful hints, observations, and facts, which otherwise might have never appeared-Dr. Kippis.

Every Art is improved by the emulation of Competitors.--Dr. Johnson.

ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS.

For the New Monthly Magazine.
SKETCH of the TRAVELS of ALI BEY in
AFRICA and ASIA.

ALI BEY began at an early age to apply himself to the study of those sciences which are cultivated in Europe. After visiting France and England, he resolved to proceed to Tangier, in the kingdom of Morocco, and to perform a pilgrimage to Mecca. He was acknowledged as the son of Prince Othman Bey el Abbassi, and is at present known in the East by no other name.

He reached Tangier on the 23d of June, 1803. His name, as well as his attainments, soon gained him the esteem of the Mussulmans, and his manners and address were so insinuating that a few days after his arrival, he was seen to as sociate with the most distinguished people of the country, and to obtain no inconsiderable influence over them. As he had studied in Europe, and also acquired a knowledge of astronomy, he was enabled, during his stay at Tangier, to predict an eclipse of the sun, which actually happened not long before his departure. He had previously described all the circumstances attending this phenomenon, and made drawings connected with the subject; and, as all his predictions were completely verified, he was regarded by the Mussulmans as a supernatural being.

Muley Suliman, Emperor of Morocco, happened just at this time to visit Tangier. He conceived an attachment for our traveller, whom he invited to accompany him to Mequinz and Fez. Here Ali Bey observed two great eclipses of the sun and inoon, The sultan then proceeded to Morocco, where Ali Bey soon afterwards met with him again. He made the stranger considerable presents, and issued orders that the great honours, as they are termed, should be paid to him. Ali Bey next travelled to Mogador, and returned to Morocco, where he was attacked with a severe illness. The sultan, who bad meauwhile been to Fez, NEW MONTHLY MAG.-No. 13,

Bey now informed him of his approachlikewise came back to Morocco, and Ali ing departure for Mecca. The sultan longer, and made him the most brilliant was extremely anxious to detain him still offers in order to accomplish his purpose, but our traveller was inflexible; he suffered neither ambition nor pleasure to divert him from his resolution, took leave of the sultan, returned to Fez, and soon afterwards set out for the Levant. A revolution, which had just then broken desert of Angad, where, though surout at Algiers, obliged him to halt in the rounded by various tribes of Arabs at necessity of encamping for two whole war with each other, he was under the months. The emperor then sent him a body of troops to escort him through Láraisch, and embarked on the 13th Oct. the desert; after which he repaired to 1805, in a Tripolitan frigate for Tripoli.

resident in towns, Ali Bey made astroDuring all his journeys, and whilst nomical observations with excellent instruments executed under his own direction by the best artists in London; he likewise collected information respecting all the places with which he was not acquainted; so that he is able to furnish a map of the kingdom of Morocco, compiled from nine surveys taken in his different tours. He made also meteorological mined the country with the eye of a observations, and at the same time exageologist. He has, moreover, formed very considerable collections of subjects yond all doubt the existence of a lake, in natural history; and has placed besimilar to the Caspian Sea, in the heart of Africa; a position confirmed five years afterwards by Mr. Jackson, the English consul at Mogador. The Atlantis of the ancients he considers as nothing more than the chain of Mount Atlas, surfully as such an hypothesis can be derounded with water, and proves this as monstrated. In the passage from Laraisch to Tripoli a singular atmospheric phenomenon, which Ali Bey ascribes to VOL. III.

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Travels of Ali Bey in Africa and Asia.

electricity, appeared about the vessel. A few days afterwards our traveller had nearly perished in a tremendous storm. At Tripoli he acquired the friendship of Yussuf Pacha, and there kept his Ramadan. Of this country also a description will be given in his work. At Tripoli he observed a great eclipse of the moon, drew a plan and a view of the great mosque, and collected a variety of subjects in natural history and medals.

[Feb. 1,

where he arrived on the 13th January. After he had geographically determined the situation of this place, and made other important observations, he set out for Mecca, and reached that capital of the Mahometan faith in the night of Jan 22.

At Mecca he remained 38 days, during which time he determined the geographical situation of that city by numerous astronomical observations. He made a plan of it, another of the temple there, of which he also took a view. He likewise made a drawing, of the natural size, of the famous Black Stone, Khagerael-Assuad, which forms a chief object of the veneration of the faithful at the Kaaba, or House of God, and others of the sacred places Saffa, Meroua, and Mount Arafat. All these, and many other delineations will be accompanied with particular descriptions. During his

On the 26th Jan. 1806, Ali Bey embarked in a large Turkish vessel for Alexandria, but he was compelled by storms t land, first at Modon, on the coast of the Morea, of which he took a view, and afterwards in the island of Cyprus, where he resided two months. He visited those classic spots, Paphos, Amathos, Idalia, and Cytheræ; ascertained their geographical positions; made various collections and observations; and formed a friendship with the Greek arch-residence at Mecca, Ali Bey enjoyed the bishop, Chrysanthos, Prince of Cyprus. Embarking again in a Greek brigantine, he sailed for Alexandria, where he ar rived on the 21st May. Here he remained five months and a half, living on very intimate terms with Moussa Pacha and the Capitan Pacha of the Ottoman Porte. During his residence in Alexandria he considerably augmented his different collections, and made several drawings, among others, a very complete general view of Alexandria.

Towards the end of October, Ali Bey pursued his route up the Nile to Cairo, where he kept his Ramadan, and enjoyed the particular regard of the highest persons in that city, and especially of Mehemed Ali Pacha. On the 15th Dec. he set out with a numerous caravan for Suez, where he embarked on the 26th in an Arabian vessel for Gedda. The singular construction of these ships, and their mode of navigating the Red Sea, which is studded all over with rocks, are minutely described by the traveller. As these vessels always keep very close to the coast of Arabia, and lie-to every night, he availed himself of these opportunities to prosecute his observations, and to enrich his collections with new subjects. In the night of the 6th Jan. 1807, the ship parted all her cables in a furious tempest, and was dashed with extreme violence against a rock. Ali Bey, with fourteen men, jumped into a boat, and landed on the desert island El Okadi; but as the vessel meanwhile obtained assistance from another ship, he was enabled to go on board again, and to pursue his voyage to Gedda,

very intimate friendship of the Sultan Scherif Ghaled, who gave him letters to the French emperor. He assisted the sultan to wash and fumigate the interior of the Kaaba, which is opened only once a-year for the performance of this ceremony before the period of the arrival of pilgrims. He received in consequence permission to assume the title of "Khaddem-Beit-Allah-el-Hiram, that is, Servant of the House of God, the Forbidden. In order to obtain this title every new Grand Signor sends the Pacha of Damascus, as his proxy, to sweep and cleanse the sacred temple. Before Ali Bey's departure from Mecca, Saaoud, Sultan of the Wehhabis, and his two sons, with an ariny of 45,000 men, made themselves masters of that city. At the same time a still more numerous army of those people on the frontiers of Syria, prevented the Pacha of Damascus from proceeding on his pilgrimage with a large caravan from Turkey. Of these reformers, and the customs connected with the pilgrimages to Mecca, Ali Bey gives a circumstantial account.

The city of Mocca is large and handsome, but situate in a desert, and has not a drop of water, except what is procured from very deep wells, and is both warm and brackish. The place owes its existence entirely to superstition; even anterior to Mahomet it was the focus of superstition, and, through the same cause, it became the mart of a prodigious trade, to say nothing of the profit which it derived from the gifts of the devout. This portion of Ali Bey's travels will be peculiarly interesting to Eu

1815.J

Travels of Ali Bey in Africa and Asia.

ropeans, as, in consequence of an express prohibition of the prophet, no Christian up to the present time has been allowed access to these sanctuaries, and the Musulmans who have seen them are not capable of giving any satisfactory description of them. On this account they are enveloped for Europeans in a kind of mystery which Ali Bey endeavours to remove. Three years after his visit, indeed, a learned German, M. Seetzen, after he had turned Mussulman, performed the pilgrimage enjoined by his new religion to Mecca, and some extracts from his travels have already been printed. In these, however, all the Arabian names mentioned by him are either disfigured or mutilated, which may perhaps he owing to this circumstance, that the traveller in collecting information always applied to Turks, who not only speak a detestable Arábic, but are in all respects more ignorant than the Arabs. A small pamphlet intituled-Travels to Mecca, is of no value whatever, and all that is there said of the city amounts to nothing. Upon the whole all the descriptions of the place extant are founded on the extremely deficient, and partly erroneous, reports of Turkish pilgrims.

On the 2d March, 1807, Ali Bey set out from Mecca for Gedda, and thence pursued his route to Jemboa. The Wehhabis had forbidden all external marks of respect to the Prophet, and the pilgrims were of course prohibited from visiting his tomb at Medina. In spite of this interdict, Ali Bey resolved to visit that city, but was taken prisoner by those reformers at Gideide, in the desert of Medina. He was thereupon transported, together with the Turkish chiefs and civil officers, from the temple of Medina, and they were not permitted to tarry on this sacred spot. On this occasion Ali Bey remarks, that the Prophet never had a tomb, properly so called, as his remains were simply deposited in the earth; and that it is to Jerusalem and Mecca alone that pilgrimages are performed, whereas Medina, on the contrary, is only a place of devotion, which most of the pilgrims dispense with visiting.

On his return from Jemboa Ali Bey sailed with a numerous convoy of Arab ships for Suez. Of this trip he gives highly amusing particulars. After a voyage of a month, during which all sorts of disasters befel the travellers, they landed at Gadahia, a road-stead on the Arabian

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coast, situated 30 leagues south-southwest of Mount Sinai. From that place Ali Bey proceeded through the desert of El Ssaddor to Suez; on the way he ob served an eclipse of the moon at Wadi Corondel. In all these journeys he encreased his store of useful observations and collections. His chart of Arabia and the Red Sea, drawn up from his own astronomical observations, and his remarks on the petrifactions, and on the inequality in the level of the surface of the same sea, are peculiarly interesting. Having rested 20 days at Suez, he joined one of the great caravans and returned to Cairo, where he was joyfully received by the most distinguished persons of that city, into which he made his public entry on the 14th June, 1807.

On the 3d July he again departed with a caravan, traversed the desert to Gaza, and thence went to Jerusalem, where he was astonished at the magnificence of the temple erected by the Mussulmans on the ruins of the ancient structure of Solomon. Of this temple he took a plan and view, and his description must be the more gratifying, as we yet know little or nothing respecting it. This temple is called Beit-el-Mokkadese-Scherif, or the Chief Holy House, and it is a place of pilgrimage for the Mussulmans, who believe it to have been hallowed by all the prophets ever since the creation of the world. At Jerusalem Ali Bey visited all the holy places of the Christians, which also are deemed sacred by the Mahometans. Close to Bethlehem he saw in broad day-light a luminous meteor of extraordinary beauty. He visited the graves of David, Abraham, and his family, and the tomb of Christ, where the Mussulmans do not perform any devotion, because the Koran says that "Christ is not dead."

At St. Jean d'Acre he made a drawing of Mount Carmel. He next proceeded to Nazareth, pursued his route over Mount Tabor, and upon the sea of Galilee, crossed the Jordan over Jacob's Bridge, of which he took a view, and arrived on the 22d August at the city of Damascus, whose important manufactures and commerce engaged no small portion of his attention. He then passed not far from Palmyra, through the town of Homs and Hama, on the banks of the Orontes, in the interior of Syria. This country is extremely rich and populous.

On the 3d Sept. he reached Aleppo. Leaving that place with a company of Tartars, he directed his course over

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Popular Superstitions.

Mount Taurus, through the centre of Asia Minor, across the chain of Olympus and the Bosphorus to Constantinople, where he arrived on the 21st Oct. 1807. A map of the route from Cairo to Constantinople, with many other drawings and important observations, are the result of this journey.

At Constantinople our traveller drew the plan of the temple, or mosque, of Eyub, where the Grand Signor on his accession, is girt with the sabre, a solemn ceremony, equivalent in effect to the coronation of European monarchs. No Christian has ever yet penetrated into the place where this ceremony is performed, and the Picture of the Ottoman Empire, by M. d'Ohsson, is the only book that contains any, and that an imperfect description of this edifice.

On the 7th Dec. Ali Bey quitted Constantinople, crossed Mount Hamus and the Danube, and arrived on the 13th of the same month at Bucharest, in Wallachia.

MR, EDITOR,

HAVING recently observed in some of the public prints a revival of the wellknown story of Lord Lyttelton's apparition, with the additional circumstance of the late Mr. M. P. Andrews having received a similar supernatural impression at the time of his friend Lord L.'s death, I should be obliged to you to permit me to call the attention of some of your intelligent correspondents to an investigation of the origin and source of the superstitious credulity now so lamentably prevalent in this country. It is a well-known fact, scarcely as it may seem credible in the nineteenth century, that, among other widely circulated stories of this description, the famous Blomberg vision (as it is generally called) is to this day seriously accredited even in the highest circles. In close connexion too with visionary im pressions of this stamp, we may reckon the po ular belief of second sight in Scotland; that “vision'd future," as Mr. Scott so elegantly designates it in bis beautiful poem of the Lady of the Lake, (Canto I. st. 23.) In his note on the subject even this accomplished writer observes, that if force of evidence could authorize us to believe facts in* In this note Mr. Scott gives a detailed account of the nature of this strange belief, and of its manner of operation on the Gaehe seers, extracted at length from "Martin's Description of the Western Isles."

[Feb. 1,

consistent with the general laws of nature, enough might be produced in favour of the existence of second sight."

To these more celebrated instances, leaving the credulous victims of poor Joanna Southcott's insane imposture out of the question, I must also add the case of the late absurdities practised in Somersetshire; "a county which," it has been justly remarked, "has of late been the scene of the grossest superstitions that ever debased the human mind." I cite this last case in particular, as it has led to a laudable attempt to counteract the growing influence of superstition on the popular feeling, in a very judicious discourse delivered on the spot, and since published by its author, Mr.Vowles, of Tiverton. In this discourse the author has very ably displayed the lamentable folly of such superstitions, and most clearly shewn the futility of the arguments which are supposed to counte nance the belief of preternatural visitations.

But, satisfactory as this gentleman's view of the subject is, as far as the absurdity of the thing, and its melancholy consequences, are concerned, it still seems to require a closer investigation by tracing it to its origin, and to the causes that first produced it. As a decided enemy to every species of credulity and imposture, I should feel, therefore, particularly gratified if I could excite the attention of your readers to the subject. Some amongst them, with leisure and resources to pursue the inquiry, would do an acceptable service to the cause of reason, so degraded by such senseless visions, by undertaking, in a concise sketch of the origin and history of popular superstition, exemplified in some of the more memorable instances of its influence, to account for the real cause of that extraordinary credulity which seems still to retain such unabated power, not merely over the minds of the weak and illiterate, but, in a great measure, even over the understandings of the rational and reflecting.

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