The Press. — London, England, 1856-03-29 00:00:00

MARCH 29, 1856. on es " of the divine family of whom we are speaking, that man can enter into life ; that this humble faith works a c hange in the whole tenor of the life and habits, so that the believer is one who walks in a new world, encompassed by new objects, and seeing by new and gifted organs; t .at to the contemplation of such a one, all the boasted glories of this world of a few seasons are a withered and melan choly pomp, for to his vision—whether in prosperity or affliction, in business or retirement, in crowds or in soli tude—there is ever present a glory before which the loftiest mockery of greatness the earth ever offered is pale and colourless --even that glory which the dying martyr saw when he exclaimed, " Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing en the right hand of God !" (Acts vii. 56.) I cannot now pause to reason the matter more minutely. Do you believe—in spite of all the sneers of a Satan prompted world—that this is indeed the better course, to join yourselves in humility of faith to the little family of the children of God ? Why delay, then, an hour to resolve upon the change which is to change an eternity? Have you so little experience of the seductions of the world, that you think their weakness admits of delay? Or rather do'.you not know from old experience, that the terrible probabilities are, that many here, now moved, it may be, by the terrors of the warning, will not have passed from this church, and entered once more upon the world, for tone hour, when old habits will resume their course, old companions their power, this admonition vanish Ls a dream —or rather let me say, the severed dream of life will reunite again, the slumber recommence, and sink as deep as if it had never been broken? And must it indeed be so? Must eternal spirits be lost in the midst of all the richest graces of God—his word—his sacraments—his services—the prayers of his faithful people ? No—l will dare to hope for better results. I have told you of the character of the God who is to judge you and me,—how that He is revealed in the Gospel as one who waits for ru, who beseeches you, who wills not that the " little ones slianld perish ; " I have told you of the humble holiness iieh must form the character of a child of his family; I have implored of you to remember the awful necessity of this mighty change, and the still greater awf u lness of the 'short uncertain period allowed to effect it; and I will hope that all this is not in vain. It may be that another time may some when we shall rejoice over even t!iis morning's humble labour! Yes, it may be—and such hopes are among the few earthly consolations of the Chris tiau minister's course—that in that holier world where the _redeemed of Christ are hereafter to meet—where friend. ships more durable than this world's are united, and " the communion of saints" is complete—some one of those that are now before me may recur to this very occasion as one upon which for the first t.me the heart was, under the Spirit of the living God, touched for higher things, and from which it retained the impression until, after prayer slit anxiety, faith had at length effectively laid hold upon the incarnate God of Calvary, heaven became a known and felt reality, and the Christian's triumph was secured for eternity, Would to God it might be so ; deeply should I r piee at the message whichbrought me here this morning to invite my fellow-sinners to that God who will not have ese trusting believer disappointed of his hope of immortal blessedness. There is one class of readers to whom we specially recommend this volume. We allude to composers of sermons. Those who minister in the pulpit will find these discourses must fruitful in suggestion. This gifted author's " Lectures on Ancient Philosophy " have reached us at the same time, but we have placed it aside for a special .examination. In the meanwhile, we must heartily praise these discourses, and at a future time we shall have more to say upon their remarkable author. Syria, and the Syrians; or, Turkey in the Depen dencies. By Gregory 111. Wortabet. London : Madden. WE fear that the art of bookmaking has, with other vices. been imported from civilised Europe into primitive Lebanon. Mr. Wortabet is a native of Beyrout, and in these volumes professes to give us his impressions of travel through Syria. If he had confined himself s i m ply t o th a t p o int, and avoided all irrelevant matter, his two volumes, it is true, would would barely have made one, but it would have been a far more original book than those before us. These volumes, we are told, were not written for amusement —apiece of rather gratuitous information—but for in struction ; yet, beyond being useful as a species of Murray's handbook, giving the correct number of piastres to b e pa id f or eac h an d every serv i ce while en route, Mr. Wortabet's work does not present many new instructive features. As the first effort of an educated native Syrian, it should perhaps be regarded favorably; but when next Mn Wortabet writes a book, we hope he will take a little more time and care in correcting his proofs, and bear in mind Syd -,ney Smith's rule for young authors—viz., to "strike out every other word," and "particularly every fine Ts sage entire." The tour undertaken by Mr. Wortabet is supposed to have extend d from Beyrout to Baalbec and Damascus and back. and then again from Beyrout to Acre, Nazareth, Jerusalem, and Jaffa. The value of such a writer as Mr. Wortabet lies in his acquaintance , pith the peculiar customs of the people from his THE PRESS. facility in speaking their different dialects; but" though favored with these marked advantages, he adds but little to our knowledge of Syria and the Syrians. Here and there his characteristic de scriptions are good. At Beyiout, although most European commercial customs are in vogue, on all important matters the Oriental habit is still su preme : A shopkeeper comes to buy a bale of goods from the merchant ; he is accompanied by a broker. The mer• chant, understanding the object of their visit, invites them with all the compliments of the East to be seated, and despatches his servant to fetch them pipes and coffee from a neighbouring cafe (these are found in every street). See the broker now approach the merchant and whisper to him—they whisper—their faces serving as an index to what is going on between them. The broker now returns to the shopkeeper, and whispers to him, as he (lid to the merchant: he goes and conies between them till he has brought them near to each other's mark. All this time not an audible word is uttered, and looking upon the mer chant and the shopkeeper you would suppose they were bent upon out smoking each other. Having come near to the point, the broker drags the shopkeeper to the merchant, and, nolens volens, links their hands in each other's grasp ; he, at the same time, holding their hands within his own, lest they should be separated, in which case the sale is supposed not to be legal. He now calls upon the mer chant to make the sale, or, as in the Arabic, " to make the sale a blessing to the purchaser, at twenty piastres the piece." "No ! " grunts the merchant. He wants twenty one piastres, and draws his hand back in token that he will not sell at that price. The ever ready broker joins them again, whispers something to both, and finally screams aloud, " Cut the difference, and let the price be twenty piastres and a half." This being agreed to, the broker again calls upon the merchant to make the sale. This he does in this wise : while the hands of merchant and shopkeeper are grasped the broker utters the finale, " Ala una ;" here he stops to breathe. " Ala due ;" here he coughs. " Ala tre ;" here he stops, and the sale is made by a silent but hearty shake of the hand between merchant and shopkeeper, which means, " 1 have sold," and " I have bought." Mr. Wortabet, being the son of a missionary disciple and a prosperous Beyrout merchant, who when selling his goods " never failed to direct the " attention of his customers to the only Mediator " between God and man," makes, of course, frequent allusion to the natural advantages of Beyrout. In his rapture about Lebanon he has certainly forgotten that old maxim, "11 n'y a qu'un pas de sublime au ridicule." On the goodly mountains he tells us not only are turkeys and fowls to be found for six pence a pair, but game is plentiful, with herds of deer and wild boar ad libitum; while— To the lover of the beautiful and the picturesque Lebanon presents endless themes for an artist's pencil. Everywhere its romantic grandeur and wild beauty ; its sweet glens and gurgling streams, combined with the balmiest of atmospheres, invite the wanderer to a picnic, —and all this almost for nothing. This is the first time that we ever heard the advant age of a cheap picnic hold out as an inducement to emigration. But what follows is equally good, or bad, as the reader pleases =-• Speak of a watering-place at home, where on this earth can you find a better watering•place than Lebanon ? Are you in search of a cool and bracing atmosphere? Behold it in Lebanon. Bost thou seek the lovely and the sweet? See it here. Does your soul delight in the grand and in the romantic? Feast your eyes on the many features of this mount. Are you anything of a poet? Then sit you down by yonder murmuring brook and invoke your muse. Lovest thou to gaze on the sea? Behold the billows of the rolling Mediterranean, that classic sea of Fhcenician fame. float thou prefer the solitude of nature to the charms of a cold and hollow-hearted society Then—we are to go to Lebanon, with its glens and ravines, and many advantages. But Mr. Wortabet is not content with Lebanon, and its cheap and pri mitive picnics, its murmuring brooks and its natural solitudes ; his soul yearns for something more. Let us see what it is : _ . I love to, hear the voice of mirth resounding from its villages, and echoing through its hills and dales. I love to see gathering on his springs the beautiful and the lovely. And will this never be ? Shall Mount Lebanon — this natural site for the most fashionable and the most ad. mintageous of all watering places—be for ever forgotten? Ah ! what is it I see in the distance, like the first peep of a dawning star? Am I dreaming, or is real, that there is a day of glory still in store for Mount Lebanon? I think I see the time, and that ere long, when its attractions will be better known, and its lovely glens and green pas• tures appreciated. In one word, the time is not far distant when Lebanon will be the fashionable watering place between India and England. Here on this Mount friends long separated will Set meet—the mother will clasp to her bosom her long absent boy; and here the civilian and soldier brothers may greet each other after a long separation. Such is my private opinion of the destiny of Lebanon. This private opinion reminds us of a certain Bond strt et auctioneer's adverti'.ements, and savours very strongly of an eye to the benefit of that patrimonial store where goods were sold, with a recommendation of the right road to Heaven given in gratis to cus tomers. Two-thirds of these volumes are made up of similar raptural digressions, meagre descriptions of 307 the operations off the coast of Syria in 1840, and of the usual incidents connected with Eastern travel. One curious fact is related with reference to the war, as evincing the remarkable interest taken in it by distant Arab tribes : Immediately after supper the sheikh of the village and others came to see me. Even here the excitement of the war is not without its due influence. A man from an ad joining village had gone as a soldier, and was then on the banks of the Danube : he wrote home to say that he had been in so many engagements, and bad been wounded, and for which he was allowed to return home, and would 60011 be with them. He told them of the war and its progress. Now, this letter made as much excitement in these villages here as I have seen in England when a letter from an absent one would reach his home. This letter had not only been read by the parents and family of the soldier, but to all the inhabitants of the village where he resided. Every man, woman, and child heard it, and looked upon it with interest, as if its news were common property. But this was not all : the letter had been read in his village, and now was going the round of other villages, and this evening it had reached Azzoon, and as 1 was about the only person able to read in that place, the letter was brought to me to decipher—its caligraphy was not the most legible; nevertheless I managed to get through it, to the extreme pleasure of a score or more who heard me. I had hardly finished when they announced their intention to go down to Jaffa on the day the steamer would arrive, and conduct him home with drums. I was amused at the interest they took in him, and I do believe had he been among them now, I should have been forgotten, and he would have been received rejoicingly and feasted— in fact, his reception would equal, if not surpass, that of any European political agitator on landing on the shores of the United States. The description of the pilgrimage to the Jordan, and of the bathing there, is well given : I was up at two o'clock this morning, and partook of a warm cup of coffee ; at three I was in my saddle, en route to the Jordon. The pilgrims had gone ahead, and I rode with a party of forty-one Europeans ; it was a pleasant morning, and we enjoyed the ride. At a quarter after five we reached the verdant banks of the Jordan. Here we saw the pilgrims had arrived, and were bathing pell-mell. The sight was now far more exciting than ever ; hundreds of pilgrims, men, women, and children, dressed in long white gowns, were being immersed in the river. This white gown is afterwards reserved by them as their death• shroud. On gaining the water's edge, a strong man re ceived the people and dashed them under the water two or three times, till the poor creatures were quite suffocated ; but not content with those three dips, which are generally after the number of the Trinity, the pilgrim seeks again to dip himself in the water. They dipped themselves and rubbed themselves, as if they were enjoying a foretaste of paradise. Some who could swim were floating on the cur rent, others holding by some bush. I stood entranced ; the vociferations, the Babel of languages, and the pell-mell scene, was one of the most exciting of its nature. On coming out of the water, the pilgrims congratulated each other with these words—" An acceptable dip !" " May it be blest to you," which means, May God accept your pil grimage, and wash away your sins. Old and young, men and women, clergy and laity, rushed into the water, and buffetted with the rolling element. In his political views Mr. Wortabet is somewhat inconsistent. In his preface he tells us it is our duty, if we wish to stop the aggressions of Russia and preserve our Indian empire, to protect and sup port Syria in order to save Turkey ; but at p. 87, vol. ii., he brands this very protective system as "infamous," and as only a vital struggle between the European powers for political influence, at the expense of the Porte. Ott dram . DRURY LANE.—An English adaptation of the Tro vatore was brought out at this theatre on Monday, and, considering the means at the disposal of the house, the performance was as creditable as could have been expected; but after Jenny Ney's fine singing in Leonora, and Madame Viardot'a superb acting in Azucena, both so fresh on our minds, the performance of Monday night, though meritorious, was yet to a certain degree flat, and we fear will be unprofitable. Miss Lucy Escott, who possesses abundance of vigour and energy, and is well skilled in all the arts of bravura singing, lacked refinement as Leonora, while Miss Huddart as Azucena, pos sessing a really fine contralto voice, had none f the tragic fire so requisite to develop the fine points of that character. Mr. Drayton and Mr. Augustus Braham sustained the parts of the Conde di Luna and Manrico with respectable power, but Mr. Bra ham was evidently overtaxed in his part. The cho ruses were tolerably sung, but there was no little uncertainty now and then between chorus and orchestra. On the whole, the piece was received coldly by the audience, who did not understand au story, and hence had but little interest in tl e performance. HAYNARKET.—Mr. Buckstone continues the Evil Genius for his Easter piece, with the attractive addition of the Spanish dancers once more. Peres Nena looks better and more bewitching than ever, and the peculiar abandon of her style of dancing is given with greater perfection. The