The Press.
London, England, 1854-05-20 00:00:00

city.

from Bronsa to Adrianople, caused Gallipoli to be re•
paired in 1391, strengthening it with a huge tower, and
made a good port for his galleys. On the S. side of the
city are some tumuli, said to be the sepulchres of the
ancient Thracian kings; and N. of the town are some
undefined ruins, supposed to be the remains of the linden

The following is a description of the cheer-
ful route by which Prince liortschakoff ialeact.
ing the pilgrim army of the most pious Pao'
to Jerusalem :

The district of the Dobrudscha is, at most seasons, a
wilderness, partly owing to its having been deprived of its
Tatar inhabitants, after 1829, by the Russians, but chiefly
owing to its subsoil, which, excepting to the N. extremity,
where rise the hills of klatschiu (? granite), consists of
porous limestone, which retains no water and funiishes no
springs on the surface. Population is scanty ; the villages
are wide scattered, and drinking-water is obtained only
through a few deep wells. Corn is scarcely cultivated at
all ; hay and fodder are very scarce ; the scanty herbage
dries up early in the summer; said the flocks of sheep and
herds of buffaloes repair to the borders of the I hinube for
pasture. This desert extends, S. of the Wall of Trajan,
nearly as far as liasarjik and Varna. It is not tenable by
troops, unless they carry food, forage, and water with
them.

. .

The work is brought down to the latest
period, and contains references to Omer
Pacha's operations. It has several maps. To
young officers attached to the army of the East,
and commanding detachments, foraging par-
ties, etc., this work would be invaluable, as
they may acquire 'considerable knowledge of
localities l)y inspecting it. The next steamer
to the Dardanelles should take out a supply.

Leaves from my Journal during the Summer of 1851.
By Lord Robert Grosvenor. London: Murray.
This little book was originally printed for private
circulation, and, inquiries having been roads for it
when it was out of print, the noble author has pub-
lished the present edition, "in hopes" of "being
" thereby able to realise something for the budding
" fund of a church in a district much requiring one."
The work describes a tour from London vih ham-
burg to Carlsbad, and thence through Frankfort and
Belgium back again, and is more amusing than the
generality of books printed for private circulation, or
to furnish a contribution for pious purposes. Lord
Robert views all things with a disposition to be
pleased, and describes them naturally. On the day
of the eclipse of the sun he was travelling from
Zwickau, in Saxony, to Carlsbad, in Bohemia :

" From Wildenthal the ascent to the summit of the pass
is very gentle, and thence you descend the whole way to
Carlsbad. The Austrian custom•house made no examina-
tion of my goods; the porters took a trunk down and put
it up, and asked for a trinkgelii for their trouble. The
tongue of my Saxon driver began now to untie itself, and
be became quite eloquent in jeering his Austrian Roman
Catholic neighbours. He declared that the Government
and the priests bad ordered all the people to abstain from
their usual avocations, and to pray that the world might
not be destroyed on account of the eclipse; he also called
my attention to what he said was a fact, that, since we had
entered Bohemia, we had met neither carriages nor carts.
When I ventured to observe that we had, not long before,
met a diligence and a malle poste, he seemed confused for
a moment, but at length satisfied himself with the assur-
ance that they might have been permitted to set out very
early in the morning, and would be out of the kingdom
before the eclipse took place. That a fraud was attempted
on the peasants, in a parish very near Carlsbad, by certain
priests, I know from most unimpeachable testimony; but
I am not aware that the Government had any share in the
proceeding. They said it was revealed to them that the
Almighty had determined to destroy the world, and that,
although the Blessed Virgin had interceded, her mediation
had not then been accepted, because the people bad
countenanced liberal opinions, and had not been obedient
to the Emperor,—that, on the 28th, a great sign would
appear on the sun,—and that, unless they abstained from
work and came to church, and promised to do better, the
light of the sun would certainly be extinguished."
We think we have occasionally read an indignant
letter in the Times from some outraged railway tra-
veller contrasting the excellent management of the
German lines with our own. Here is a fact for those
con espondents. There was only one first class car-
riage, and in it three gentlemen were puffing forth
volumes of rolling smoke, when Lord Roberts
" stomach having still some unpleasant marine recollec-
tions, this incense incensed me not a little, and I asked
the superintendent, in a stern voice, whether smoking was
permitted in first-class carriages. He replied, at once,
that it was not. And when I pointed to these shameless
offenders against law and order, he, in the most depre-
cating tone, begged my patience till we crossed the Elbe,
when he promised I should have a compartment to myself.
He excused himself from interfering with the new comers
because, I thought be was going to say, they were princes
of the blood royal. Oh, dear, no I—the chairman and
vice-chairman of the railway company, who had signed
the regulations against smoking in first-class carriages."
Towards its close the work falls off: instead of
amusing descriptions we have dull dissertations on
the regeneration of Ireland and the future of the