ON HORSEBACK THROUGH ASIA MINOR.* THE second book which Captain

Burnaby has contributed to the

still accumulating mass of transient and valueless literature to which the Russo-Turkish war has given existence, is less deserving of serious consideration than was his first. As a story of an exploit, it has not the freshness which made the author's

Ride to Khiva an attractive record of a brisk and adven- turous feat, accomplished by a young man with plenty of health, strength, money, and self-esteem, The Ride to Khiva

made us aware that Captain Burnaby knows a great deal about horses, rides well, has animal courage such as is required by War Correspondents, and a cheerful confidence in himself which occasionally leads him into unpleasant positions ; as, for instance, when he makes wildly erroneous geographical and other statements respecting places over which ho has scampered, ignorant or oblivious of the fact that they have been closely studied by scientific men of established reputation.

The book, though not in any serious sense valuable, was readable, and though the author's style left much to be desired from the literary point of view, still we were not disposed to be too critical about an ephemeral book, like so many others of the

day, merely de circonstance, and written with rapidity as remark- able as that of the journey which it described. Captain Burnaby's

second book has both from a literary and a political point of view much more serious faults. It has been outrageously puffed by party writers, and absurdly praised by people in "society," who would have been perfectly alive to its slipshod English and its tiresome

jocularity, to the wearisome iteration of anecdotes of horses and of the British prejudices of a favourite groom, if it had not been an indictment of Russia and a panegyric upon the Pashas in general.

Of course, Captain Burnaby encountered everywhere on his second journey, as on his first, exactly the right people to toll him precisely what he wanted to hear ; indeed, the number of com- panion pictures which he supplies to that of the felicitous railway journey in the interior of Russia, in which all the politics of the

Empire were talked from all sides, are so numerous, that he must be either a remarkably imaginative, or a singularly lucky traveller. In his first chapter, an a propos resident in Constantinople turns up, who is " a perfect master of Turkish "—a language, by the

way, which Captain Burnaby seems to have acquired with a readi- ness that puts to shame the "French in six lessons" professors, for we find him holding political disquisitions with Pashas in their own tongue three weeks after he arrives in Turkey. This gentle- man's statements respecting the Turkish Press are truly surprising,

They contrast oddly with Mr. Gladstone's speech at Hawarden the other day ; but there are, no doubt, people who would say, 6' so much the worse for Mr. Gladstone's speech." Captain Burnaby inquires of the old resident :...••• g Are there many secret pollee ?'—' No, there is, if anything, too much liberty at Constantinople. The papers write what they like, and abuse the Government freely, hardly any of them being suppressed in consequence, whilst some English newspapers which are more bitter against Turkey than even the Russian journals are sold at every book- stall.'—' Do you think there is any chance of another massacre of Christians?' I remarked. [The italics aro ours.]—' Not the slightest, that is to say, if Ignatieff does not arrange one for some political pur- pose. The Turks and Christians get on very well together here, what- ever they may do in other parts of the country. However, there is one thing which would be very popular with all classes, and that is, an English army of occupation at Constantinople.'"

This, which is a typical passage, is quite enough to prove the value of the book in any serious respect. This horrible accusation, brought by Captain Burnaby's anonymous friend, an accusation which we have been assured of late " every one now knows to be the truth," but which we beg leave to doubt that any one, even Captain Burnaby, believes, is one which may per- naps be pardonable when made by a partisan journal as a far- fetched speculation ; recorded in the revised pages of a printed book, it is incredibly foolish. We forgave Mr, Urquhart for pro- claiming that Lord Palmerston was a traitor in the pay of the Emperor Nicholas, because, apart from this absurdity and others, his writings were brilliant and interesting. The mantle of Mr.

Urquhart has not touched in its fall the shoulders Of Captain Burnaby. Another typical passage occurs in the second chapter, in which the author remarks upon the dread which seems to be entertained by the Armenian priests of being seen speaking to any European, whereupon he adds :—" Whether this arises from the fact that they are afraid of being suspected of conspiring against the Turkish Government, or it is the result of a guilty conscience, I cannot say." The author cannot understand Christian priests

• On Horseback through Asia Minor. By Captain Bred, Burnaby, Author of "A Ride to Iihiva." London; Sampson Low and Co.

being timid under a Government which does not suppress inimical newspapers,—a difficulty of apprehension, it strikes us, which constitutes a disability on the part of the writer to form a judg- ment on the relations of the Christian subjects of Turkey to their rulers.

When Captain Burnaby tells us about the purchase of horses, the hiring of servants, the meals and amusements at hotels, the singing of singing-girls, the dancing of dancing-girls, terrible histories of upsets in the mud and the sand, difficulties with mules, the ways of his horses, and the remarks of Radford (though he gives us a great deal too much of the two latter), he is a toler-

ably amusing writer, of not very refined or strictly gram- matical English ; but when he parades his Pashas, he

becomes ridiculous, and his book a bore. A man's mind must be crude indeed when he gravely gives as impressive truth such utter- ances as the following, by one of these wonderfully opportune Pashas, who seem to have been painfully bottling-up their poli- tical convictions and their social confidences until they got the happy chance of pouring them into the sympathetic bosom and note-book of Captain Burnaby :—

", Why is it that the people in England hate us so much ?' inquired the Pasha.--' Partly on account of the excesses of your irregular soldiers

in Bulgaria, but partly because you repudiated your debt. How should

you like to have lent money, and thou to receive no interest?' The Pasha laughed.' Yes, you are right. It was a groat mistake. But

that is all Russia's fault. Her agents brought about the revolution in

the Herzegovina. Her functionaries encouraged Sultan Abdul Aziz in his extravagance, and were the main cause of the debt being repudiated.

They thought that this would make us unpopular with England, and

they were very right in their conjectures. If it were not for the im- pending war, we could pay some part of our interest now ; but Russia will not let us be quiet. Sho compels us to keep up a large army. Her agents bring about massacres of Christians, and sot the whole world against us.'" If the opportune Pasha recognised the traveller as a 44 chiel among them takin' notes," who, "faith, would prent them," how

he must have chuckled over the success of his observations ! To minds who really entertain the belief that the squandering of money by Abdul Aziz was prompted. by Russia with ulterior views upon England, the "Corsican Ogre" craze must seem a reasonable frame of the public mind, Mr. George Cruikshank's caricatures mere matter-of-fact pencil records of current events, and " Who filled our butchers' shops with large blue flies ?" a question proper to bo put upon the Orders of the Day. Cer- tain chapters devoted to the incidents of the journey are amusing, though disfigured by repetition,—for instance, we

hear about a certain Caimacan's " fur-lined dressing-gown " three times over—and badly punctuated. Occasionally we

find entertaining anecdotes, and what may be fairly called " humours " of the road, but the misunderstandings be- tween the Mahommedan Osman and the Protestant Radford,

who regards " flopping" as Jerry, in Dickens's Tale of Two Cities,

regarded that practice, as unreasonable and unlucky, are over- done, and become as wearisomely monotonous as the three- cornered conversations between Mr. Merriman and his colleagues in the Ring. A serious description of Angora, though terrible, is a relief to the prolonged levity of the first part of this book, which would have been improved by reduction to one volume.

The author makes, with reference to Angora, during the famine of 1873-4, a statement similar to that made by Captain Marsh about certain districts in Persia,—that instances of children

having been eaten by their parents were brought to light ? Tie gives a dismal description of the hovels and the habits of the

Anatoliaus, which contrast so strongly with the natural resources of the country ; with the pure marble in its quarries, and the rich waste lands, which " could supply the whole of great Britain with corn." In Anatolia, Captain Burnaby acknowledges that he had at first seine little difficulty in making himself understood, not, however, because he was not a proficient in Turkish, but because the Anatolians' Turkish is not quite pure. "A man must be a polyglot," he says, with an odd misuse of a naturalised adjective, " to know all the languages spoken in Anatolia." He is

very denunciatory about the dissensions among the Armenian Christians, at which " the Turks laugh in their sleeves." One of the unpleasant features of this book, to our mind, is in irreligious- ness which it reveals, and which comes out n many ways, notwithstanding the author's stereotyped religious phrases. An opportunity is never missed of exposing the faults and the weaknesses of the professors of Christianity of all de- nominations, and dwelling upon inconsistency which is

of its imperfection upon the human, and reflects nothing divine revelation. Russian atrocities, horrible episodes of the Russo-Persian war and unnecessary digressions into un-

pleasant topics, which are treated with a coarseness which did not mark Captain Burnaby's first book, render a portion of this one anything but attractive reading ; but while the author con- fines himself to his march, with its interesting incidents, its occa- sional dangers, and its undoubted pluck, vigour, and endurance, one follows him with pleasure. When, after a thousand-miles march from Constantinople, he crosses the Euphrates, and arrives at Erzingan, the narrative becomes very interesting, until the Ignatieff bogey and the Indian scare turn up again. Captain Burnaby warns his readers against believing in the stories which have been written about " sport " in Anatolia. He saw only a few snipe, partridges, and hares, and never heard of deer in any of the markets. The five days' climb of the mountains between Erzingan and Erzeroum was very hard work for the travellers ; the chapters which the author devotes to Erzeroum and Bayazid are very hard work for his readers, unless they can find a cynical pleasure in contemplating the self-contradictory nature of human credulity. Certainly, if the Russians be anything like so clever in the enormous wickedness with which they are credited as Captain Burnaby's friends make them out, it would be impossi- ble not to regard them with somewhat of the admiration which Milton's Satan inspires. Even when the author visits a Yezeed village, or, as the humorous Radford observes, when "here they are with the worshippers of Old Scratch," and on leaving it, cross the border-line and enter the territories of the Shah, the Russian bogey starts up as fresh as ever. "They want to conquer the Shah," observes the opportune talker, in this case the chief pro- prietor of a frontier village called Kelise Kandy. "They will make use of us as a stepping-stone to Van and Bagdad, after which they will annex their catepaw." And this is the beginning of a conversation which ends in the inevitable Russian malpractices about Shere Ali and Afghanistan. Captain Burnaby has a great contempt for the Persians, whose cruelty and ignorance lie fully admits, though of course he rates them as venial sins in comparison with the habitual practices of the Russians. Captain Burnaby's judgment upon persons of any race is, how- ever, likely to be estimated at its true value by English readers, who find him describing Canon Liddon and Mr. MacColl as secretly hankering after the superstitions attached to the Greek faith, as parties to the corruption of women and children by the counsels of The Priest in Absolution, and as priests who would gladly re-establish the Inquisition "in our midst,"—where, by the way, it never existed. The context makes his meaning perfectly plain, though he does not indeed, in this very offensive passage, mention Canon Liddon and Mr. MacColl by name, as he had done in an earlier and also offensive passage, which meant that those gentle- men made a false statement, but that if the matter of it had been true, they had no business, as "Christian priests," to "meddle in politics " by making the fact public. We should have thought that any cruelty was the business of Christian priests. The author's coarse and violent attack on Mr. Gladstone, whom he impudently assails as "the author of the Bulgarian horrors," is further characterised by an unfeeling reference to the terrible fate of certain English officers during the Crimean war, which, if the facts are true at all, of -which we have no knowledge, should never have been made in print, to harrow the feelings of surviving friends uselessly and afresh. What are we to think of the humanity of a writer who says, "A number of families in Great Britain were in mourning after Inkerman. Many old fathers and mothers thought that their sons had fallen in fair fight. They have been deceived." An extract from the speech of the Duke of Newcastle, in the House of Lords on December 12, 1854, is given in a sensational style, more fitted for an advertisement on a hoarding than for a well turned-out book, with all the vulgarity of the largest type, and four notes of admiration. All this clap-trap will affect people's minds about Mr. Gladstone as much as the stupid squib in the Turkish comic paper of a few weeks ago affected them, but it is highly unbecoming on the part of a man who evidently wishes to be considered a serious controversialist. Captain Burnaby relates with much elation that he is regarded as a dangerous enemy by the Russian Government, and that orders were issued to prevent his entering Russian territory. Such a step on the part of the Russian Government shows how extremely weak it is in judging the effectiveness of its critics.