The preliminary portion of their studies being over, Clarke and his pupil began to prepare for their travels. Two other individuals were at first associated with them, Professor Malthus, author of the celebrated treatise on population, and the Rev. Mr. Otter, afterward the biographer of our traveller. The party set out from Cambridge on the 20th May, 1799, and arrived at Hamburgh on the 25th. Here they made but a short stay before they set out for Copenhagen, and from thence, by way of Stockholm, across the whole of Sweden to Tornea, on the Gulf of Bothnia. Malthus and Otter left them at the Wener Lake. Clarke, with all the enthusiasm of a genuine traveller, could never imagine he had carried his researches sufficiently far; but, having reached the 66th degree of northern latitude, declared he would not return until he should have snuffed the polar air. His pupil, Cripps, seems to have shared largely in his locomotive propensity, and in the courage which prompts to indulge it. They therefore proceeded towards the polar regions together; but having reached Enontakis, in latitude 68° 30´ 30´´ north, our traveller, who had previously been seized by a severe fit of illness, was constrained to abandon the polar expedition and shape his course towards the south. Writing from Enontakis to his mother, “We have found,” says he, “the cottage of a priest in this remote corner of the world, and have been snug with him a few days. Yesterday I launched a balloon eighteen feet in height, which I had made to attract the natives. You may guess their astonishment when they saw it rise from the earth.
“Is it not famous to be here within the frigid zone, more than two degrees within the arctic, and nearer to the pole than the most northern shores of Iceland? For a long time darkness has been a stranger to us. The sun, as yet, passes not below the horizon, but he dips his crimson visage behind a mountain to the north. This mountain we ascended, and had the satisfaction to see him make his courtesy without setting. At midnight the priest of this place lights his pipe during three weeks in the year by means of a burning-glass from the sun’s rays.”
Having, for the reason above stated, given up the design of visiting the polar regions, they returned to Tornea, and thence proceeded through Sweden and Norway; which latter country (probably for the same reason which made Pope of the opinion of the last author he read) he preferred for sublimity of scenery to Switzerland. They then entered Russia, and arrived at Petersburg on the 26th of January, 1800. Clarke, it is well known, entertained a very mean opinion of the Russians; but, judging from the testimony of Bishop Heber—a calmer and more dispassionate man—as well as from that of many other travellers, it would appear that his judgment was neither rash nor ill founded. “We have been here five days,” says he. “Our servants were taken from us at the frontiers, and much difficulty had we with the Russian thieves as we came along. Long accustomed to Swedish honesty it is difficult for us to assume all at once a system of suspicion and caution: the consequence of this is that they remove all the moveables out of their way. I wish much to like the Russians, but those who govern them will take care I never shall. This place, were it not for its magnificence, would be insufferable. We silently mourn when we remember Sweden. As for our harps there are no trees to hang them upon; nevertheless we sit down by the waters of Babylon and weep. They open all the letters, and therefore there is something for them to chew upon. More I dare not add; perhaps your experience will supply the rest.”
To this, if we add his picture of the execrable despot who then governed Russia, enough will have been said of his experience at Petersburg. “It is impossible,” he writes, “to say what will be the end of things here, or whether the emperor is more of a madman, a fool, a knave, or a tyrant. If I were to relate the ravings, the follies, the villanies, the cruelties of that detestable beast, I should never reach the end of my letter. Certainly things cannot long go on as they do now. The other day the soldiers by his order cudgelled a gentleman in the street because the cock of his hat was not in a line with his nose. He has sent the Prince of Condé’s army to the right-about, which is hushed up, and it is to appear that they are ceded to Great Britain. He refuses passports even to ambassadors for their couriers. One is not safe a moment. It is not enough to act by rule, you must regulate your features to the whims of a police officer. If you frown in the street you will be taken up.”
From Petersburg they proceeded in sledges to Moscow, which, like most oriental cities, seemed all splendour from a distant view, but shrunk upon their entering it into a miserable collection of hovels, interspersed with a few grotesque churches and tawdry palaces. This place, which is too well known to require me to dwell much upon its appearance, they quitted to proceed to the Crimea. Arriving at Taganrog, on the Sea of Azov, Clarke amused himself with swimming in the Don, the ancient Tanais, between Europe and Asia, and in thinking of the vast extent of country over which his good fortune had already carried him, and of the far more glorious scenes—Palestine—Egypt—Greece—which yet lay in his route. “Do, for God’s sake imagine,” says he in a letter to a friend, “what I must feel in the prospect of treading the plains of Troy!—Tears of joy stream from my eyes while I write.” To a person of such a frame of mind—and no others should ever leave their firesides—travelling, next to the performance of virtuous actions, affords the most exquisite pleasure upon earth. The imagination, impregnated by a classical education with glowing ideas of what certain scenes once were, invests them with unearthly splendour, of which no experience can ever afterward divest them.
Upon their arriving at Achmedshid in the Crimea, they remained some time in the house of Professor Pallas, who entertained them in so hospitable a manner that Clarke, who spoke of men as he found them, could not forbear imparting to his friends at home the warm gratitude of his heart. “It is with him we now live,” says he, “till the vessel is ready to sail for Constantinople; and how can I express his kindness to me? He has all the tenderness of a father to us both. Every thing in his house he makes our own. He received me worn down with fatigue and ill of a tertian fever. Mrs. Pallas nursed me, and he cured me, and then loaded me with all sorts of presents; books, drawings, insects, plants, minerals, &c. The advantage of conversing with such a man is worth the whole journey from England, not considering the excellent qualities of his heart. Here we are in quite an elegant English house; and if you knew the comfort of lying down in a clean bed after passing months without taking off your clothes in deserts and among savages, you would know the comfort we feel. The vessel is at Kosloff, distant forty miles; and when we leave the Crimea Mr. and Mrs. Pallas and their daughter, who has been married since we were in the house to a general officer, go with us to Kosloff; and will dine with us on board the day we sail. They prepare all our provisions for the voyage.”
The whole of their stay in Russia was rendered so exceedingly disagreeable—first by the savage tyranny of the emperor, and secondly by the evil character of his subjects, which, as being everywhere felt, was infinitely more annoying—that our traveller regarded himself among a civilized and hospitable people when he reached Constantinople. In fact, he found himself in a sort of English society which, congregating together at the palace of the embassy, engaged in the same round of amusements which would have occupied them in London. The time which these agreeable occupations left him was employed in searching for and examining Greek medals, and in viewing such curiosities as were to be found in Constantinople; among other things the interior of the seraglio, where no Frank, he says, had before set his foot. He moreover found time to peruse many of the various publications called forth by the Bryant controversy respecting the existence of Troy; and so unsteady was his faith on this point, that, after dipping a little into the subject, he began to imagine something like a new theory to explain the manner in which we are required to believe Homer might have invented the whole groundwork of the Iliad! However, upon shortly afterward arriving on the spot, this flimsy vagary vanished. Jacob Bryant and his followers were found to be the pettifogging skeptics which they have always been considered by sensible men. “The Plain of Troy now,” exclaims our traveller, “offers every fact you want; there is nothing doubtful. No argument will stand an instant[3] in opposition to the test of inquiry upon the spot; penetrating into the mountains behind the Acropolis the proofs grow more numerous as you advance, till at length the discussion becomes absurd, and the nonsense of Bryantism so ridiculous that his warmest partisans would be ashamed to acknowledge they had ever assented for an instant to such contemptible blasphemy upon the most sacred records of history.”
[3] An intaglio purchased by Clarke at Constantinople is exceedingly remarkable, as throwing light upon the original story of Æneas, before it had been deformed by Virgil or Ovid. “There are poor Turks at Constantinople, whose business it is to wash the mud of the common sewers of the city, and the sand of the shore. These people found a small onyx, with an antique intaglio of most excellent workmanship, representing Æneas flying from the city, leading his boy by the hand, and bearing on his shoulders (who do you suppose?)—not his father—for in that case the subject might have been borrowed from Virgil or Ovid—but—his wife, with the Penates in her lap; and so wonderfully wrought that these three figures are brought into a gem of the smallest size, and wings are added to the feet of Æneas,
‘Pedibus timor addidit alas!’
to express by symbols of the most explicit nature the story and the situation of the hero. Thus it is proved that a tradition, founded neither on the works of Homer nor the Greek historians (and perhaps unknown to Virgil and the Roman poets, who always borrowed their stories from such records as were afforded by the works of ancient artists), existed among the ancients in the remotest periods, respecting the war of Troy. The authenticity of this invaluable little relic, the light it strews on ancient history, its beauty, and the remarkable coincidence of the spot on which it was found, with the locality of the subject it illustrates, interested so much the late Swedish minister, Mr. Heidensham, and other antiquarians of the first talents in this part of the world, that I have given it a very considerable part of this letter, hoping it will not be indifferent to you.”