Whatever Mr. AUBREY DE VERE sees, he picturesquely describes; and
so far as words can do so, he makes pictures of all the subjects he
writes upon; and had he painted as he has written, or used his pencil
equally well with his pen, two more delightful volumes, to any lover
of Greece, it would be difficult to name. With an evidently refined
taste, and a perfect acquaintance with the ancient history of the
country he traveled through, and the ever famous characters that
made its history what it is, his descriptions combine most pleasingly
together, the past with the present. He peoples the scenery with the
men whose deeds give to that scenery all its interest; and whether on
the plain of Marathon, or the site of Delphi or the Acropolis, he has
a store of things to say of their past glories, and links together,
with great artistic skill, that which is gone with that which remains.
[Footnote 2: Picturesque Sketches of Greece and Turkey. By Aubrey De
Vere, 2 vols. [Philadelphia: A. Hart.]]
By the scholar and the man of taste the volumes will be read with no
little delight, as they abound much more with reflections and sensible
observations, than with the commonplace incidents of travel. Indeed,
the author has left but small space for his accidents at sea and his
hardships on shore, since all the chapters but four are devoted to
Athens, Delphi, and Constantinople. The classical reader will prefer
the chapters on the two first-named places; the general reader will
find perhaps more interesting his sketches of the city of the Sultan,
and an anecdote which he gives of the present Sultan, and which
declares him to possess more of decision, and firmness of character,
and good sense, than the world gives him credit for. His description
of the Bosphorus will create in many a desire to see what he has seen,
and to look upon some, at least, of the fifty-seven palaces which the
sultans have raised upon its banks; and upon the hundreds of others,
which, while the Commander of the Faithful permits it, are the
property of his subjects.
It argued far more of a wild spirit of adventure than of a sober
understanding in Aubrey de Vere, to go with that clever Frenchman to
the Turk's house, and to play off all those tricks in the presence of
its master and his ten unvailed wives. Rarely indeed, if ever before,
has an Englishman passed an hour so comfortably with the whole of
a rich man's harem, and seen them as de Vere saw them in all their
artlessness and beauty. We live, indeed, in strange times, when the
once scorned and loathed Giaours contrive to possess themselves
of such extraordinary privileges, and to escape unharmed from such
hitherto unheard-of enjoyments.
Where one thought was given to Constantinople a hundred years since
from the west of the Dalmatian coast, ten thousand eyes are now
constantly directed to it, and with continually increasing anxiety.
The importance of that city is now understood by all the European
powers, and its future fate has become a subject of deep interest to
all the western states, in consequence of the determined set made upon
it by its powerful northern neighbor. With the Cossacks at Istamboul
instead of Turks, we should be very ill satisfied, and the whole charm
of this city on its seven hills would have departed: already is it on
the wane. Sultan Mahmoud's hostility to beards and to flowing robes,
to the turban and the jherid, has deprived his capital city of much
of its picturesqueness and peculiarity; but still enough remains of
eastern manners and costumes to make it one of the most interesting
cities in the world to visit and roam over. Such as, like ourselves,
may not hope to sport a caique on the Bosphorus, will do well to
acquaint themselves with the information Aubrey de Vere can give them,
and to suffer their imagination to transport them to scenes among
the fairest and the loveliest on the earth's surface, and which are
presented to them in these volumes as graphically as words can paint
them.
By the possessor of Wordsworth's Greece, where every spot almost, of
the slightest historical interest, is given in a picture on its
pages, these "Picturesque Sketches" will be read with the highest
gratification that scenes and descriptions together can supply.
There is so much of mind in them; so much of sound philosophy in
the observations; such beautiful thoughts; so well, so elegantly
expressed; so many allusions to the past, that are continually placing
before us Pericles, Themistocles, or Demosthenes, that we are improved
while amused, and feel at every page that we are reading a work far
above the general works on such subjects; a work of lasting interest,
that may be read and re-read, and still with delight and advantage.
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