On the 21st of April, 1815, Burckhardt quitted Medina with a small caravan bound for Yembo, on the seacoast. His mind was still exceedingly depressed by the weak state of his body; and his gayety and animal spirits, with the energy which accompanies them in ardent minds, having deserted him, the world assumed in his eyes a sombre aspect, which rendered travelling and every other pleasure insipid. All he now sighed for was rest. This mental condition seems strongly to have affected even his opinions. His views both of men and things became cynical. Vice seemed to have spread like a deluge over the eastern world, leaving no single spot whereon Virtue might rest the sole of her foot. “For my own part,” says he, “a long residence among Turks, Syrians, and Egyptians justifies me in declaring that they are wholly deficient in virtue, honour, and justice; that they have little true piety, and still less charity or forbearance; and that honesty is only to be found in their paupers or idiots.” His mind was certainly labouring under the effects of his Medina fever when he wrote this passage, and it would therefore be lost labour to analyze or confute it minutely. That people who are “wholly deficient in virtue, honour, and justice” should be destitute of honesty, is no more to be wondered at than that a black camel should not be half-white; but if “true piety” be, as most moralists will admit, to be numbered among the virtues, then the orientals are not, as Mr. Burckhardt asserts, “wholly deficient in virtue,” &c., since he allows that they have some, though but little, “true piety.” Again, either the majority of the orientals are rich, or the majority of them are honest; for if the majority of them are poor, or paupers, then the majority of them are honest; for honesty, we are told, is only to be found among paupers and idiots. It would be easy to expose and refute our traveller’s assertion by the direct testimony of persons still more competent than he to decide on such points; but his opinion is palpably absurd, like most others formed by sick or gloomy individuals, since no society could subsist if formed entirely of vicious members. Had Burckhardt himself lived to see his works through the press, such passages as the above would, I am persuaded, have been expunged or modified; for he was much too judicious deliberately to have hazarded so monstrous an assertion.
Upon his arrival at Yembo, dejected and melancholy, to add to his despondency, he found the plague raging in the city. The air, night and day, was filled with the piercing cries of those who had been bereaved of the objects of their affection; yet, as no vessel was ready to sail for Egypt, he was constrained to remain during eighteen days in the midst of the dying and the dead, continually exposed to infection through the heedlessness and the imprudence of his slave. At length, however, he procured a passage in an open boat bound for Cosseir, many of the passengers in which were sick of a disease which appeared to be the plague, though only two of them died. After remaining twenty days on board, he was, at his own request, put on shore in the harbour of Sherin, at the entrance of the Gulf of Akaba, where he agreed with some Bedouins to transport him and his slave to Tor and Suez. Learning on the way, however, that the plague was at Suez, he remained at a village in the vicinity of the former place, where the enjoyment of tranquillity and a bracing mountain air soon restored his strength, and enabled him, though still convalescent, to pursue his journey to Cairo, where he arrived on the 24th of June, after an absence of nearly two years and a half. As his health was not yet completely recovered, he undertook a journey into Lower Egypt during the following winter, which, as he seems to have believed, restored his constitution to its former tone.
His time was now entirely occupied in writing the journal of his Nubian and Arabian travels, and in the necessary care of his health, which, notwithstanding his sanguine expectation to the contrary, was still in a somewhat equivocal state. In the spring of 1816 the plague again broke out at Cairo, and our traveller, to avoid the infection, undertook a journey to Mount Sinai, intending to remain, until the pestilence should be over, among the Bedouins, who are never visited by this scourge. During this excursion he traced the course of the eastern branch of the Red Sea to within sight of Akaba, the ancient Ælanas, which he was prevented by circumstances from visiting. On his return to Cairo, he united with Mr. Salt in furnishing Belzoni with money for transporting the head of Memnon from Gournou to Alexandria. The scheme, it would seem, originated with Burckhardt and Salt, to whom, therefore, we are chiefly indebted for the possession of that extraordinary specimen of ancient art.
On the 4th of October, 1817, Burckhardt, who had so long waited in vain for an opportunity of penetrating with a Moggrebin caravan into Africa, was attacked with violent dysentery. The best medical advice which an eminent English physician (Doctor Richardson), then at Cairo, could afford was found unavailing. The disease prevailed, and on the 15th of the same month our able, adventurous, and lamented traveller breathed his last. As he had lived while in the East as a Mussulman, the Turks, he foresaw, would claim his body, “and perhaps,” said he to Mr. Salt, who was present at his death-bed, “you had better let them.”—“The funeral, as he desired,” says this gentleman, “was Mohammedan, conducted with all proper regard to the respectable rank which he had held in the eyes of the natives.” This was honourable to his Cairo friends; and to those who are interested in the history of his manly career it is gratifying to discover how highly he was valued. I have closed the lives of few travellers with more regret. It would have given me extreme pleasure to have followed him through those undiscovered regions whither his ardent imagination so anxiously tended; and, instead of thus recording his untimely death, to have beheld him enjoying in the first capital of the world the reward of his courage and enterprise. That I cannot enter into all Mr. Burckhardt’s views, either of men or things, is no reason why I should not be sensible of his extraordinary merit. His character, upon the whole, admirably fitted him to be a great traveller. He was bold, patient, persevering, judicious. He penetrated with admirable tact into the designs of his enemies, and not only knew how to prevent them, but, what was more difficult, to turn them to the confusion of their inventors. Upon this very excellence, however, was based one of his principal defects; he interpreted men in too refined and systematical a manner, and often saw in their actions more contrivance than ever existed. He was too hasty, moreover, in believing evil of mankind, which, with too many other able speculators, he supposed to be the necessary consequence of a philosophical spirit. But he was a young man. His mind, had he lived, would unquestionably have purified itself from this stain, as truth, which he possessed the courage and the ability to search for with success, was his only object. The works which he has left behind him, exceedingly numerous considering his brief career, are an imperishable monument of his genius and enterprise, and, when the fate of the writer is reflected on, can never be read without a feeling of deep interest almost amounting to emotion. Fortunately for his fame, their publication has been superintended by editors every way qualified for the task, who, without in the least dissipating their originality, must in very many instances have infinitely improved their style and arrangement. A popular edition of the whole would at once be a benefit to the public and an additional honour to the memory of Burckhardt.
CONSTANTIN FRANCOIS CHASSEBŒUF DE VOLNEY.
Born 1757.—Died 1820.
This traveller, who is very justly enumerated among the most distinguished which France has produced, was born on the 3d of February, 1757, at Craon, in Anjou. His father, an able provincial barrister, was unwilling that he should bear the name of Chassebœuf (ox or bull hunter), which in his own case had been, though we are not told how, a source of a thousand uneasinesses, and therefore gave his son the name of Boisgirais, under which appellation our traveller studied at the colleges of Ancenis and Angers, and was at first known in the world. At a later period, just as he was about to depart for the East, he quitted the name of Boisgirais, and assumed that of Volney, which he was shortly after to render so celebrated.
Becoming his own master at the age of seventeen, with a small independence bequeathed him by his mother, he quitted the country for Paris, where he applied himself to the study of the severer sciences. Volney felt no inclination for the profession of a barrister, which it was his father’s desire he should follow; physic appeared to have greater charms for him, and he at first seemed disposed to adopt this as his profession; but his speculative turn of mind soon led him to look with disdain on its practical part. Scarcely had he reached his twentieth year when he entered with enthusiasm into the study of the science of nature, delighting to discover the relations which subsist between the moral and the physical world. He moreover devoted a portion of his time to the study of the history and languages of antiquity.
When he had made these preparations, apparently without foreseeing to what use he should apply them, a small inheritance which fell to him put him in possession of two hundred and forty pounds. “The difficulty was,” he observes, “how to employ it. Some of my friends advised me to enjoy the capital, others to purchase an annuity; but, on reflection, I thought the sum too inconsiderable to make any sensible addition to my income, and too great to be dissipated in frivolous expenses. Some fortunate circumstances had habituated me to study; I had acquired a taste, and even a passion, for knowledge; and this accession of fortune appeared to me a fresh means of gratifying my inclination, and opening a new way to improvement. I had read, and frequently heard repeated, that of all the methods of adorning the mind and forming the judgment, travelling is the most efficacious. I determined, therefore, on a plan of travelling; but to what part of the world I should direct my course remained still to be chosen. I wished the scene of my observations to be new, or at least brilliant. My own country and the neighbouring nations seemed to me either too well known or too easy of access; the rising States of America and the savages were not without their temptations; but other considerations determined me in favour of Asia. Syria especially, and Egypt, both with a view of what they once have been, and what they now are, appeared to me a field equally adapted to those political and moral observations with which I wished to occupy my mind.”
Foreseeing the fatigues and dangers of such a journey, he occupied a whole year in preparing himself to undertake it, by accustoming his body to the most violent exercises and the most painful privations. At length, all his preparatory arrangements being completed, he commenced his journey on foot, with a knapsack on his back, a musket on his shoulder, and two hundred and forty pounds in gold concealed in his girdle. “When I set out from Marseilles in 1783,” says he, “it was with all my heart; with that alacrity, that confidence in others and in myself which youth inspires. I gayly quitted a country of peace and abundance to live in a country of barbarism and misery, from no other motive than to employ the active and restless moments of youth, to acquire a new kind of knowledge, which might procure for the remainder of my days a certain portion of reputation and honour.”