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Untitled Article
Lamartine is not that man , and assuredly we are toot the critics who would wish that he were . The Eastern countries inherit and transmit ' a glory indtestructible ; ' they possess an empire in the mind ; their ruins savour of a new creation , the fresh growth of the elder world , or rather an immortality of desolation . Their spirit is identified with our imaginations of all that is most sacred and sublime , most
gorgeous and beautiful , most magnitudinal in antique days or in present ruin , most despotic , abject , remorseless , and devastating . The predominating idea , however , is that of power , —and this , again , will be found to consist of mixed impressions of the sacred dr the preternatural ; overwhelming reason with the awful , the vast , the terrible , and the grotesque—and of the utmost realizations of earthly splendour and magnificence . These impressions and associations are derived from biblical narrations , from that
magazine of wonders , the Arabian Nights ( which , with similar works , are placed too early in the hands of children ) , and from the multiplied and varied account of travellers . Our present business , however , is solely with the latter , and the different eyes with which deferent individuals see the same things , has seldom been better exemplified than in the two works now before us .
Ibrahim Pasha had j * ust taken and destroyed Acre at the time of Dr . Hogg ' s visit , and Damascus , Aleppo , and all the principal cities of Syria , had , in consequence , submitted to him . M . de Lamartine ' s tour took place at nearly the same period . Both travellers appear to be impressed with the opinion , that the splendid dominion thus acquired by Egypt , is never destined to return to Turkey . Dr . Hogg is earnest in his endeavours to impress on the British Government the probability that this
opinion is correct . ' Would that the sober voice of reason could make its way to those who rule the destinies of England !—that her statesmen could be aroused from their perilous apathy , and that their vigilant attention to her future interests could be awakened ere the war-trump shall proclaim that a new irruption from the foreign regions of the north has again obtained possession of the garden of the world ! Then would they feel the necessity
of changing , without delay , their feeble policy , and perceive the wisdom of aiding , with the whole weight of British influence , the extensive , but hitherto ill-directed efforts of the ruler of Egypt for the improvement . of bis states . We can now no longer be deceived by the shallow fallacy that the semblance of independence secured to the Turkish empire by
her potent neighbour is intended to be permanent . Either the boundaries that confine the great northern leviathan must be enlarged , and thai in a direction hazardous to the stability of our own oriental ppaaeasions , or the new empire which haa so suddenly grown up , and is * q rapidly advancing in Kgypt , must , by close . alliance , and elfiqitJiU tupport / be rendered an effectual barrier against future enoro % clun * nt ,. . 4 new and valuable territory which the Pasha of Egypt has lately acquired , and the additional resources which have bean thus added to a
Untitled Article
Travei * in the Ea * i . 783
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1835, page 783, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2652/page/27/
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