The Express.
London, England, 1853-08-16 00:00:00

LfI'ERATU.RB.

The Greek and the Turk ; or, Powers and Proverts of the
Levant. By ETal EVANS CROWE. London : Richard
Bentley. 1853.
This book bears everywhere marks of having been
hastily put out of hand. The author has • rare
talent of lucid and distinct expression: his ideas and
opinions are always placed clearly and comprehen-
sively before us. He is endowed with a strong,
healthy, practical, judgment, that enables him to de-
tect fallacies, however popular. He has a deli-
cate and cultivated taste. But he does not appear
in the volume now before us to have taken the
trouble to master his subject as • whole, or even to
compare the impressions which ho has received at one
time, and expressed in one place, with those which
he has received at and express, din others. Hence
with much acuteness, much real sagacity, his book is
inconclusive, and often to a startling extent @elf-
oon!radictory.
As an illustration of the author's self-contradic-
tions we may adduce the following. At the outset
he lays down the law that the day of small states is
passed. Further on, he points out that the principle
of seeming indestructibility which has hitherto kept
alive the Austrian and Ottoman states is the isola-
tion and independence of their component parts, and
the concentration of authority in the government
resident in the capital. And yet, in utter disregard
of these his own principles we find him recommend-
ing as one means of preventing the absorption of
the Sclavonic provinces now subject to Ottoman rule
by Russia, the erection of Moldavia, Wallachia, Bul-
garia, &c., into independent states. Why, accord-
ing to his own showing, and to tru'h, this parcellin
out of the great Ottoman empire into a number of
petty states would only be cutting up the joint
whose bigness defies the masticating power of Russia
into manageable mouthfuls that Russi• could easily
swallow in succession.

Two things appear to have led the experienced,
well-informed, and highly-talented author of " Tile
Greek and the Turk" into the self-contradictions

of which the above is but a sample. In the
first place, his book is apparently a compound
of personal observations made during a brief and
hurried visit to Greece, Constantinople, and the
lonian Islands, and of impressions respecting these
regions and their politics derived f, oris a multiplicity
of sources. Sufficient care has not been taken to
compare and assimilate these heterogeneous mate-
rials. At times we have Mr. Crowe giving utter-
ance to his own thoughts; at others to what has
appeared to him meet plausible in the communica-
tions of Lord Stratford, Mr. Wise, Sir H. Ward, or
others; and again, to the preconceived opinions he
had derived from reading before visiting the East.
The other cause of incongruity to which we have
alluded is the habit of writing for the periodical
press. The contradictions which, when spread over
the review and newspaper articles of a year, are un-
detected by the public (or by the writer himself),
whose views have been changing with changing
circumstances; become painfully apparent when
ranked cheek by jowl in the close-pressed chapters of
a small volume.

We have not hesitated to point out these essen-
tial defects in a work by one who more
intuitive sagacity and tact than mal any other
English writer on foreign affairs of the day, because
they neutralise the good services a volume from him
might have effected at the present moment.
Throughout the book we meet with constant
indications of a sound and just view of the great
Eastern question, but the vacillating and contradio-
tory opinions interspersed deprive those of the influ-
ence they deserve to have over the readers. What
conviction can be wrought by Mr. Crowe's declare-
tions of the vital importance of maintaining the
Ottoman empire in its integrity, as a bulwark
against Russia, when we find him advocating the
parcelling it out into small states P And how is
confidence in his conviction of the importance of
implicit trust and sympathy between the French
and English nations compatible with the sug-
gestion, that if Russia does persevere, Eng-
land and France may take part in a
virtual partition of Turkey, the latter assuming the
protectorate of Asia Minor, the former of Egypt and
Syria ? A moment's reflection ought to have shown
Mr. Crowe that the mere mooting of such a partition
would as surely put an end to any entente cordial*
between the French and English governments, as
the throwing of a bag of nuts on the stage did to
the histrionic efforts of a band of monkeys trained to
perform a pantomime. Both the French and
English governments would insist upon having
Egypt, and would stir up the interests and vanities
of their respective nations to go to buffets for its
possession.
With all these drawbacks, however, the volume
will be found to repay perusal. There are vivid and
lifelike portraitures of external objects, and frequent
remarks characterised by a superiority to conven-
tional cant that is apt from honest contempt of that
weakness to run into paradox. Altogether the work
is full of stimulants to thought, and materials for
thought to work upon.