SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

Mamas, Wayfaring Sketches among the Greeks and Turks, and on the Shores etas Danube. By a Seven-Yeara Resident in Greece Chapman and Hell.

A Narrative of a Recent Journey of Six Weeks in Ireland, in connexion with the subject of Supplying small Seed to 801110 of the remoter Districts ; with current Observations on the depressed Circumstances of the People, and the Means pre- sented for the permanent Improvement of their Social Condition. By William Bennett. Gilpin; Curry junior, Datin.

BIOGRAPHY,

Jacques Coeur, the French Argonaut, and his Times. By Louisa Stuart Costello. Author of "Memoirs of Eminent Englishwomen," 'The Rose Garden of Persia," Re Bentley.

FICTION,

Gisella. By the Author of " Second Love." In three volumes Beralky• WAYFARING SKETCHES.

Tan authoress of this volume is a lady whose family appear to have settled in Greece in 1838; passing the winter at Athens and the hot weather at a place in the mountains. In 1845 they departed from "the city," and returned homeward by way of Smyrna, Constantinople, the Black Sea, and the Danube. The volume consists of the narrative of this tour, and of some reminiscences of the people, climate, and customs of Greece.

There is not sufficient novelty of subject to make the matter interest- ing for itself alone; as Athens, Smyrna, Constantinople, and the Danube, have all been pretty frequently visited of late years, though they are not quite so lia.eknied as Egypt and Syria. Novelty, however, is given to the book by the more thorough information which residence and a know- ledge of the Romaic impart. But the personal character and literary ability of the fair writer are the chief attraction. Wayfartng Sketches are what the term indicates; not the narrative of a tour, so much as a full and rather graphic description of persons and incidents, mingled with true tales of the striking and romantic cast, which make the every-day truth of despotic and Oriental countries stranger than fiction. To some extent the tourist seems to partake of the social at. mosphere • and has a pleasant frankness and sociability, which is not al- ways found in Englishmen, or for that matter in any Western Europeans: she was also lucky in her companions, and in the useful literary art of turning them to account. The sketches of the Frenchmen, the Turks, and other persons who formed the motley crowd on board the steamer, and in their brief tarrying-places, are by far the most amusing reading in the book. Some of the little scenes and incidents have all the effect of a comedy, from the force and nature with which they are presented. The young Frenchman who had gained the college prize for German, but could not make himself understood by waiters, &c., with the good-natured astonishment of his uncle at the successive failures—the ill-disguised contempt of many of the Turkish passengers for a female, till • mollified by some act of civility—the sketches of the Mahometan women with whom the writer came in contact, as well as the females of the Au- strian provinces who took passage in the steamer—are always amusing, and very often instructive. The breadth of the handling, and the slightly dramatic form in which the matter is presented, give more power to it than is often found in mere sketches from nature.

The descriptions of scenery are not equal to those of manners and cos- tumes. The writer holds that the beauties of nature cannot be truly de. scribed. Perhaps not ; the distinguishing traits are only successfully in- dicated by the terseness of poetry : but a thing which cannot be done should not be attempted ; still less should words of vague panegyric or a mere impression of pleasure be substituted for graphic distinctness. The rhetorician predominates too much both in the descriptions and the nu- merous reflections.

The tales in the book are striking from the variety of fortune Which they present; but perhaps they wear an air of invention from the man- ner in which they are told. The conclusions of the writer upon national character are opposed to the general opinion. She praises the Greeks, and falls heavily upon the Turks : but neither facts nor her logic are of the kind to command conviction. Stripped of rhetoric, her praise of the Greeks amounts to little more than that they are an impressible people, good-tempered when pleased, acting from impulse, and, like all such people, with little reason in their conduct. Murders are as rife in Greece as they are in Ireland ; but the sentimental Greeks are adverse to death. punishments, and, by way of stopping them, assassinate the public exe- cutioner. So systematically was this done, that the Government had to procure a Frenchman, who stipulated for the concealment of his office, even from his wife and family. This was promised; and he was to live out of the way, in the island of Egina. There is some inconsistency in the open manner in which his vocation was announced to the islanders when he was sent for to discharge his function ; but the denouement is clear enough.

"His task performed, Carripiae returned to Egina, to his home. The sante powerful guard was in requisition to conduct him to his house; and for greater se- curity they lauded at night, for they knew that henceforward the life of Carripeze must hang upon a thread, unless he could shield himself from the certain ven- geance of the people of Egina. "When he arrived at the door of his house—his only refuge—the miserable man found it closed against him. Within, there was a sound of weeping and pray- ing; but the wife he had deceived so long, whose love seems to have turned to loathing, persisted in shutting him out from her house, as utterly as he had driven him from her heart! It was in vain be expostulated; but the. fact of his arrival had become known, and already the infuriated population might be seen rushing towards him in resistless numbers. Lie called out to his wife, that his life's blood was about to stain her very threshold; and then her heart melted to the father of her children! She opened the door, and he darted in; whilst the multi- tude raged round his stronghold, which they were only prevented from burning .to the ground by the wish to spare his innocent family. "To what a home had he returned, poor unhappy man! His wife and children shrunk from his presence as from a baneful thing; whatever room he entered, they abandoned; and though he heard their voices, and saw them close at baud, he WM yet more utterly alone than the loneliest prisoner in his dungeon. "One moonless night, when it was very dark, he stole out of his once dear home, where his presence was a curse, and went to breathe the fresh air on the beach. He had not advanced a hundred yards, when he fell prostrate to the ground, shot right through the beak, with so sure an aim that he was dead be- fore the shout of exultation which followed his sudden fall had burst from the lips of his avengers. The people had taken it in turns to lie in wait for him behind a certain lofty cypress tree, close to his house; and the two young men beneath whose bullets he fell considered themselves most fortunate in having been the chosen of destiny for the execution of their purpose."

The fair writer maintains that Greece, according to the statistics ex- hibits less crime at Athens than in any other city of the same population. With such a summary way of disposing of the officers of justice, however, it is probable that many crimes may not find their way into the tables.

The writer's judgment of the Turks is of the harshest kind. We do not dispute its truth ; but it is obviously that of a Greek partisan and a religious enthusiast, who jumps at once from creed to conduct, and, with- out adducing any particular facts beyond their indifference to human life, condemns the Mussulmans by deduction from the Koran. She throws some new light upon the character of' the women ; although she may have looked at them from the female point of view, and judged of their wretchedness by her own European feelings. The following occurred on board the Danube steamer ; and the ladies belonged to a Bulgarian who was going on a mission of some kind.

"We had abandoned the ladies' cabin to his family; for there is a greater de- ficiency even in a reasonable degree of refinement in the Bulgarian women than I have witnessed among the natives of any other country, and it was really im- possible to remain with them. • * • We were much startled in the course of the morning by the most terrific screams, which were suddenly heard to issue from the cabin, and made us all fly to the rescue under the belief that the Bulgarian la- dies had somehow sustained some frightful injury: but we found that the whole dis- thrbance had been produced by the entrance of a waiter amongst them when they were all unveiled; and when he was questioned as to the cause of his intrusion, the Origin of this tremendous uproar proved to have been rather amusing.

"They had turned the cock which let off the water, and had seemingly been much amused at seeing it flow in consequence; so much so that they let it run till it had positively flooded the whole cabin, and the streams of water passing under the door had shown the waiter in the passage what was going on. He called, shouted, and remonstrated in vain from the outside, and finally in despair had "burst in upon them to rectify their imprudence.

"I paid these poor women a visit this morning; and I was much struck, amidst all the untutored savageness of their nature, with the refinement of tenderness which they displayed towards their children: but this is indeed the only channel in which all the deepest and purest feelings of human nature can flow for them. They are prisoners and slaves, debarred from society, from knowledge, almost from the light and air; they know nothing of the world without; and this is the only one of earth's kindly ties from which they are not altogether cut off: from their pa- rents they are generally separated young, their brothers they never know, their sieters are sent to another harem. Occupations they have none beyond dyeing of their nails and the painting of their eyebrows; and the excitement attendant on the difficulty of making the fierce black lines meet precisely at the proper place is, I presume, their greatest amusement. • "It is, therefore, in the exercise of their maternal affections alone that they can lavish all that has been given in all lands to a woman's heart of devotedness and energetic love. The care and sympathy for others, which form her chief enjoy- ment of life, and those powers of endurance which snake her, weak by nature, yet so strong when called upon to suffer for another, would be all vain and useless for the harem slave, were it not for the poor little helpless being, who clinging un- conscious to her breast, prevents the blessed well of tenderness within from closing altogether."

- Their lord and master, though an odd-looking person, seems to have been tolerably well-natured at bottom.

- "We were ninth amused at the dignified manner in which the father of Osman, who it seems is going on a mission to Belgrade, had installed himself on a sofa at the top of the room, allowing no one to approach him but the pipe-bearer. This poor wild Bulgarian is becoming more and more bewildered with all he sees Mid hears. I made him today quite happy by giving him a little box of gilt wafers,. to which he had taken a.prodigious fancy; but he has evidently. not the most distant idea what they are intended for, and seems to intend adorning him- self with them in some ingenious manner. "In the evening when candles were brought in, Monsieur Ernest proposed to me to play at chess; and we were just sitting down, when the haughty Turk, who seemed rather tired of his solitary grandeur on the state canopy, from which he had driven all others by his surly looks, suddenly shuffled down, and, coming towards us, very coolly set Monsieur Ernest aside, and intimated that he himself would do me the honour to play with me. There was something rather comical in the idea of playing chess with a Turk; and although the technical terms of that game in the Turkish language had certainly formed no part of my education, I thought with the help of a few of the wonted exclamations it might be managed; so we sat down with all due solemnity. His head with the turban and long beard certainly did look uncommonly fierce over the chess-board; but we found no difficulty as to the science of the game; for the word check,' or echec,' seemed to have been converted into Turkish as chok,' and the king he called pasha; and as he was a first-rate player, he beat me in about ten moves, repeating chok pasha ' pertinaciously till he checkmated me outright."

The writer represents the personal appearance and bearing of the Asiatic Jews as more dignified and noble than the estimate in which they are held by the Turks and the manner in which they are treated would lead one to have supposed possible.

"In none have I seen these distinctive features of the Syrian Jews so strongly displayed as in the Rabbi whom I visited today. He met us at the door of his house, which is quite in the Oriental style, and singularly picturesque; and bid us welcome in Romaic which he spoke with great fluency. I do not think I ever saw a person more strikingly prepossessing. He was tall, noble, and dignified in appearance, and wore the black cap and ample robe of the Jewish priest, with an Inner garment of .purple silk. There is nothing more attractive than a solemn, thoughful expression on a youthful face; and whilst his fair complexion and long golden hair, so unlike the generality of his race, gave him an appearance of ex- treme youth, there was the record of much deep thought in the lines that marked 60 strongly his lofty forehead, and an impressive seriousness in his mild eye and grave sweet smile. It was impossible not to be much struck with him. • • * The Rabbi begged us to recline on the low divans placed near the open win- dow, while his wile prepared coffee. The invariable inferiority of all women to their husbands in the East was strikingly developed in the young Jewess; who, though beautiful, was altogether devoid of the intellectual expression which so strongly characterized the Rabbi. She had quite the countenance of a Rebecca; and her light green turban gave great effect to her jet black hair and eyes. The Rabbi offered us all the refreshments himself, with a sort of dignified courtesy: but he seemed little disposed to converse, and, unlike my last reverend and loquacious host, asked no questions whatever; nor did his wife, which was still more extraordinary."