The Sun.
London, England, 1849-08-07 00:00:00

to sell his horse, which he valued at 1,000 piastres, or
a little over forty dollars. But,
The course of true love did never yet run smooth;'
. .

and unfortunately his horse died, hich reduced Lica to
d( spair. Shortly after, the girl's uncle claimed her for
his son, then five years old, offering to give his daughter
to her brother. According to an immemorial custom of
the Arabs, such a claim took precedence of all others,
and the beautiful girl, just ripening into womanhood,
was betrothed to the child. With the philosophy of his
race, however, 'Awad subs( quently consoled himself with
a wife; but, true to his first love, never sees its object
without violent emotion." _

The above extracts form but an inadequate idea of the
' varied riches of this delightful work. It is illustrated
with numerous sketches of scenes and individuals
described in its pages, and contains also an elaborate
sketch map of the river Jordan and the Dead Sea.
Before taking leave of Captain Lynch, let us not
forget to mention the characteristic account
he has given of his interview with the
Sultan —an interview which had nearly never
taken place owing to the American's refusal to
give up his sword before entering the Royal presence.
This breach of etiquette was ultimately connived at,
and Captain Lynch retained his sword. During
his progress to the royal apartment he was disgusted
with the abject servility of the Sultan's attendants.
Speaking of the secretary, who conducted him to
the royal chamber, he says, " His countenance and
his manner exhibited more awe than I had ever seen
depicted in the human face. He seemed to hold his
breath, and his step was so soft and stealthy that once
or twice I stopped under the impression that I had
left him behind, but found him ever beside; me.
There were three of us in close proximity, and the
stair-way was lined with officers and attendants; but
such was the death-like stillness that I could dis-
tinctly hear my own footfall, which, unaccustomed to
palace regulations, fell with untutored republican
firmness upon the royal floor. If it had been a wild
beast in his lair that we were about to visit there
could not have been a silence more deeply hushed."
The Sultan received the American with great cor-
diality. He conversed with him through an inter-
preter. Some prints illustrative of the North Ame-
rican Indians (the work of American artists) were
presented to the Sultan. He looked at them, and
said he considered them evidences of the advance of
the United States in civilization, and be would trea-
sure them as a souvenir of the good feeling of its
Government towards himself. "At the word civili-
zation, pronounced in French," writes Captain
Lynch, " I started, for it seemed singular coming
from the lips of a Turk and applied to our country.
I have since learned that he is but a student of
French, and presume that by the word ' civilization'
he meant the arts and sciences." This little incident
is as natural as it is amusing. We can conceive the
indignation of the representative of Republican Ame-
rica on hearing his country's civilization patronisingly
commended by a Turk !

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE; a Manual of Sacred
Verse. By the Rev. Robert Montgomery.
[SECOND NOTICE.]
Twenty years have expired since the author of
this volume first published any of his efforts in versi-
fication—seven since his name last appeared from the
press, coupled with a new poetical composition.
Long as those intervals may seem to be, respectively,
Mr. Montgomery has, nevertheless, been evidently
endeavouring throughout to enhance and elevate his
reputation. His sedulous efforts have been thus
directed, to our thinking, for two paramount reasons
—first, with the intention of dissipating the ridicule
attached to his earlier productions by several in-
different, and by one remarkable and influential
reviewer; secondly, from a solicitude to justify the
generous and earnest encomiums which had been
(strangely enough) pronounced upon those very same
productions not merely by an extraordinary number
of persons known under the generic title of the
" reading public," but also, and in a particular
manner, by men whose works had acquired celebrity,
and whose genius has rendered them illustrious. For
it is a circumstance not aufficiently borne in remem-
brance with regard to Mr. Montgomery, that while he
has been derided by one man of distinguished eminence
in letters, he has been eulogised as emphatically by
many individuals of extraordinary capacities, both in
poetry, history, and criticism—authors whose virtues
are the honour and whose names are the glory of our
national literature. If the more crude effusions of
his imagination have been ridiculed in the pages of
the Edinburgh, they have received the most earnest
and cordial commendations in those of Blackwood.
If the "Omnipresence of the Deity" has been analyzed
in the language of scorn and derision by Mr. Ma-
caulay, it has elicited also the plaudits of Robert
Southey—the encouraging praise of George Crabbe
—the graceful approbation of Lisle Bowles—the
emphatic panegyrics of Professor Wilson—the un-
stinted applause of Archibald Alison—the elevating
approval of Sharon Turner—and the genial and heart-
born encouragement of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Is not that a wreath of bay-leaves for the young
aspirant for a poetical reputation ? Is not that a
chorus sufficient to show that the effort of
the stripling, although in several points weak
and ineffective, was not wholly futile, or wholly
contemptible ? When the author of the " Sybilline
Leaves can be moved to enthusiasm, would it have
been altogether irrational or hazardous to predict
better things from the object of that enthusiasm ?
When the creator of Christopher North, when the
historian of Europe, when the bard of Kehama, when
the annalist of England, and the commentator of the
" Dunciad," and the poet of rural simplicity, unite
in asserting the existence of merit in a " first volume,"
are those either rash or frivolous who presume to
admire its versification ? We leave the answer to
these questions to the candour of the unimpassioned.
Sufficient for us, and for Mr. Montgomery, is it to
couple his own acknowledgment, that " at the age of
eighteen or nineteen (the period in which his intro-
ductory work was penned) the mind is crude and
the taste imperfect," (p. vii.) with that energetic
and almost pathetic assertion of John Keats
(pathetic, as occurring in his introduction to
his " Endymion"), that " the imagination of
a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination
of a man is healthy; but there is," says Keats in a
tone of sombre self-consolation, " a space of life be-
tween, in which the soul is in a ferment, the charac-
ter undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition
thicksighted !" How true that is, we have most of
us felt by a bitter experience. Mr. Montgomery
confesses that he has so felt it by the declaration con•
tained in the preface of " The Christian Life," to the
effect that the " Omnipresence," ,as now published,
thiscom pfaacretdwwithitha
manlythe earlier
neadeint iuoonuss.
mßpeofesruerien,
" has been .corrected almost into a new poem when
"co g tht
e
author remarks; that the, sarcastic criticism" of .MV..
Macaulay " only serves to perpetuate verbal errors
and defective lines, which no longer exist, except in
his criticism." "Doubtless," he continues, in a dignified
tone of remonstrance," as one who professes, truth, can-
dour, and open manliness of disposition, that successful
writer will not republish his assault without some re-
ference to the circumstance here stated." For our-
selves we cannot say how immeasurably better that
gentle yet direct rebuke is, in our estimation, than the
peevish and spiteful vituperations which out of a
mistaken spirit of friendship were directed against
Mr. Macaulay in an essay penned some time back by
Mr. Archer Gurney. Mr. Gurney should have
known that a great writer, a writer illustrious by the
combination in himself of the qualities of a brilliant
rhetorician, a ripe scholar, an erudite historian, a
graceful essayist, a poet of no inconsiderable forceful-
ness, an orator of no narrow renown, a statesman
of no meagre reputation—is not exactly the fittest
mark for every paper pellet of every adventurous
apologist, in any moment of petulance and irritability.
Mr. Montgomery, in a very different mood, with
the dignity becoming a scholar, the self-pos-
session of a gentleman, and the suavity of a
Christian, remonstrates with Mr. Macaulay
in a manner such as, to the generous and enlarged
intellect of that eminent man, must, we are satisfied,
prove wholly irresistible; the more so as the remon-
strance is accompanied with a declaration that the
" verbal errors and defective lines," to which he ori-
ginally directed public attention, have by this time
been entirely expunged. One thing in regard to
Mr. Montgcmery—and it is an impression forced
upon our conviction by the very circumstance of his
having been simultaneously admired and ridiculed by
different sections of the community—appears to us to
be altogether incontestable. We allude to an opinion
which we have now for a considerable time enter-
tained, that Mr. Montgomery does anything but
justice to those intellectual faculties with which he is
unquestionably gifted, and some of them even to a
very remarkable extent—that, in short, he has written
too rapidly—that his verses have been rather too
" unpremeditated." His facility of composition has
been so exhilarating to his fancy, that it has tempted
him to throw the reins to his Pegasus, and to traverse
the realms of his imagination with what we cannot
but regard as a very reprehensible precipitation.
Endowed with a marvellous fund of language, he
has coined that bullion of the mind into thoughts of
every fantastic proportion; he has treated that intel-
lectual treasure as a spendthrift does his gold—
squandering it with a blind and lavish profusion upon
every subject that chanced for the moment to present
to him an aspect of fascination. Sometimes, indeed,
he has arrayed the veriest scarecrow of a conceit in
the gorgeous apparel of his peculiarly rich andornate
diction. At others, carried away by the cestrum, or
Eirityol2 of his meditations, be has uttered phrases
that might be stigmatised as plagiarisms but for the
distortion which proved them to be involuntary. In
proof of which, we might mention, in particular, se-
veral of the passages referred to by Mr. Macaulay,
and since erased from the " Omnipresence." While
these errors of judgment and violations of taste suffi-
ciently account for the unmitigated abuse showered,
by some critics upon the writings of Mr.
Montgomery, they are, nevertheless, blunders