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of her old friends. Her first place of residence on the Continent was Venice, from whence she made an excursion to Rome and Naples, and, returning to Brescia, took up her abode in one of the palaces of that city. She likewise visited the south of France and Switzerland. The summer months she usually spent at Louverre, on the lake of Isis, in the territories of Venice, where gardening, silk-worms, and books appear to have afforded her considerable amusement. In 1758 she removed to Venice, and, her husband dying in 1761, she was prevailed upon by her daughter, the Countess of Bute, to return to England. However, she survived Mr. Montague but a single year; for, whether the sudden transition to a northern climate was too violent a shock for her frame, or that a gradual decay had been going on, and was now naturally approaching its termination, she breathed her last on the 21st of August, 1762, in the seventy-third year of her age.

Her letters have been compared with those of Madame de Sevigné, but they do not at all resemble them. The latter have a calm, quiet interest, a sweetness, an ingenuous tenderness, a natural simplicity, which powerfully recommend them to us in those moments when we ourselves are calm or melancholy. Lady Montague's have infinitely more nerve and vigour, excite a far deeper interest, but of an equivocal and painful cast, and while, in a certain sense, they amuse and gratify, inspire aversion for their writer. On the other hand, Madame de Sevigne is a person whom one would like to have known. She is garrulous, she frequently repeats herself; but it is maternal love which causes the error. In one word, we admire the talents of Lady Montague, but we love the character of Madame de Sevigné.

RICHARD POCOCKE.

Born 1704-Died 1765.

THIS distinguished traveller was born at Southampton, in the year 1704. The scope of his education, which, besides those classical acquirements that usually constitute the learning of a gentleman, embraced an extensive knowledge of the principal oriental languages, admirably fitted him for travelling with advantage in the East. But previously to undertaking that longer and more important journey upon the history of which he was to rest all his hopes of fame, he resolved to visit some of the more remarkable countries of Europe; and accordingly, on the 30th of August, 1733, he departed from London, and proceeded by the usual route to Paris. The curiosities of this accessible country, France, of which we often remain in utter ignorance, because they are near, and may be easily visited, appeared highly worthy of attention to Pococke. He attentively examined the palaces and gardens of Versailles, St. Germain, and Fontainebleau; the remains of antiquity at Avignon, Nismes, and Arles; and the architectural and picturesque beauties of Montpellier, Toulon, and Marseilles.

From France he proceeded into Italy, by the way of Piedmont; and having traversed the territories of Genoa, Tuscany, the territories of the church, of Venice, and of Milan, he returned through Piedmont, Savoy, and France, and arrived in London on the 1st of July, 1734.

This tour only serving to increase his passion for travelling, he, on the 20th of May, 1736, set out from

London on his long-projected journey into the East. He now directed his course through Flanders, Brabant, and Holland, into Germany, which he traversed in all directions, from the shores of the Baltic to Hungary and Illyria. He then passed into Italy, and proceeding to Leghorn, embarked at that port, on the 7th of September, 1737, for Alexandria in Egypt, where he arrived on the 29th of the same month.

It is a remark which I have frequently made during the composition of these Lives, that when an original-minded traveller directs his course through a well known but interesting country, we follow his track and peruse his observations with perhaps still greater pleasure than we should feel had he journeyed through an entirely new region. In the former case we in some measure consider ourselves competent to decide upon the accuracy of his descriptions and the justness of his views; while in the latter, delivered up wholly to his guidance, and having no other testimony to corroborate or oppose to his, we experience an involuntary timidity, and hesitate to believe, lest our confidence should lead us into error. Besides, in no country can the man of genius fail to find matter for original remark. No man can forestall him, because such a person discovers things literally invisible to others; though, when once pointed out, they immediately cease to be so. His acquirements, the peculiar frame of his mind, in one word, his individuality, is to him as an additional sense, which no other person does or can possess; and this circumstance, which is not one of the least fortunate in the intellectual economy, delivers us from all solicitude respecting that lack of materials for original composition about which grovelling and barren speculators have in all ages clamoured; while the consciousness of mental poverty has generated in their imaginations an apprehension that every one who approached them had a

design upon their little pedler's pack of ideas, and driven them into anxious and unhappy solitude, that, like so many spiders, they might preserve their flimsy originality from the rough collision of more robust minds.

The feeling which leads learned and scientific men one after another to Egypt is the same with that which, after long years of absence, induces us to visit the place of our birth. Philosophy, according to popular tradition, had its birthplace on the banks of the Nile-though those of the Ganges appear to possess a better claim to the honour; and it is to examine the material traces of early footsteps, urged by some obscure secret persuasion that momentous revelations respecting the history of man might be made, could we, if I may hazard the expression, reanimate the sacred language of the Egyptians, who, as Shelley phrases it,

Hung their mute thoughts on the mute walls around,

that traveller after traveller paces around the mysterious obelisks, columns, and sarcophagi of Karnac and Edfu. Countries which have never, so far as we know, been inhabited by any but savage tribes, however magnificent may be their scenery, however fertile their soil, can never, in the estimation of the philosophical traveller, possess equal attractions with India, Persia, Egypt, or Greece: they resemble so many theatrical scenes without actors; and after amusing the eye or the imagination for a brief space of time, excite a mortal ennui which nothing can ward off. The world itself would be a dull panorama without man. It is only as the scene of his actions, passions, sufferings, glory, or shame, that its various regions possess any lasting interest for us. Where great men have lived or died, there are poetry, romance, every thing that can excite the feelings or elevate the mind. "Gray Marathon,"

Thermopyla, Troy, Mantinea, Agincourt, Waterloo, are more sublime names than Mont Blanc or the Himalaya. On the former we are lifted up by the remembrance of human energy; the latter present themselves to us as prodigious masses of brute matter, sublime undoubtedly, but linked by no glorious associations with the triumphs or the fall of great or brave men.

The above remarks appeared necessary to explain why we are never weary of accompanying travellers through Egypt, Palestine, and the other celebrated lands which border the Mediterranean: I now proceed with the adventures and researches of Pococke. On arriving at Alexandria, a city which, when taken by the Arabs, contained four thousand palaces, as many baths, four hundred public places or squares, and forty thousand Jews who paid tribute, he immediately exerted himself to gratify his curiosity, and this so imprudently, that he led several soldiers into a breach of duty, in showing him the ruins of the ancient Pharos without permission, for which they were afterward punished. Several travellers have pretended that the coffin of Alexander the Great is still preserved in a Mohammedan mosque in this city, and we find Bruce, thirty years after Pococke, making very diligent inquiry among the inhabitants respecting it. It is certain that the remains of the Macedonian king were deposited in a golden coffin in the royal tombs of Alexandria; but in the age of Augustus his bones had already been transferred from their gorgeous lodgings to humbler ones of glass, in which they were brought forth from their narrow house for the inspection of the tyrant, who threw flowers and placed a golden crown upon the coffin. However, when we reflect that even in so peaceful a city as Caen, the remains of William the Conqueror could not be preserved a few hundred years from popular insult, it seems extremely improbable that those of Alexander should have been

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