A Hundred Years Ago
" LIE SPECTATOR'," OCTOBER 3RD, 1835.
WITHIN the memory of the present generation a journey to the Holy Land was in reality a pilgrimage to be accomplished with nearly as much difficulty and privation as during the middle ages, HO far as regarded Palestine itself. The " march of intellect " in Turkey and in Egypt, the reforms effected both by Sultan and Pasha, and the influence upon Mahometan opinion which has been produced by the spread of European commerce; by the great events of the Napoleonic wars, and more lately by the successes the Russian invasions, have considerably lessened the risks of travel- ling. For some years past, Syria, Palestine, and Asia Minor, with the exception of Damascus,. have been accessible to any tourist who could submit to the exertions and inconveniences of travelling in a semi-barbarous country ; and many movement-loving. persons, both English and foreign, have extended their grand tour from Rome to Jerusalem and the Seven Churches. ThiS was all very well in itself, but, unluckily, they were determined to narrate their adventures to the world Without discriminating between the different positions of themselves and their predecessors. A person who tells us some- thing new is certain of attention ; and, if his information be incom- plete or superficial, his readers receive it with every allowance when it has boon snatched up at the peril, of his life and amidst the necessary hurry of a forced journey. But a man who travels rapidly over a beaten ground which is patent to the world at largo can see but lit tle which has not been seen already ; and his obser- vations not enly want the freshness of novelty, but this want is unredeemed in the reader's mind by the peculiar hazard or difficulty of making them.
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