Sidney's subsequent adventures in Syria were not very varied. He soon learned that he was extremely fortunate in not accompanying Ringlady and Campbell to Jerusalem. He now heard for the first time that they had been murdered in an excursion to the pools of Solomon, before it had been in their power to obtain a single dollar to transmit to Gaza. Sheikh Salem, too, was prevented from meeting him on the road by other cares; but he sent a messenger with a purse, and a handsome sabre, which now adorns Sidney's library in Hyde Park Place. The messenger recommended Hassan to turn back from Jamne to the desolate walls of Askalon, where a boat would be found to convey Sidney to Latakieh. At Latakieh accordingly he arrived, and immediately embarked on board the Austrian steamer.
As he was never one of the devoted admirers of the simplicity of the administrative forms in the Ottoman Empire, nor even very enthusiastic in praise of the simple virtues of the Arabic race, we presume that he does not consider either the social or political condition of a nation in any way dependent on its commercial policy; for surely, if he thought Free Trade was destined to produce in Britain the effects it has produced in Turkey, he would not have supported it. We have heard him observe of Turkey, that in order to derive all the advantages conferred on the Ottoman Empire by the freedom of commerce, it is necessary for a native to emigrate, and become a foreigner. It is to be hoped we are not to be compelled to pursue the same course, ere we can enjoy all the fruits of our own legislation.
BYWAYS OF HISTORY.[16]
We have sometimes been disposed to regard with extreme impatience the fragmentary manner in which history is now written amongst us. Lives of the Queens—Lives of the Kings—Lives of our Statesmen—Lives of our Chancellors—thus breaking up into detached and isolated figures the great and animated group which every age presents. If our writers cannot grapple—and it is indeed a herculean task—with the annals of a nation, why not give us at least some single period, a reign or epoch, in its unbroken entirety? If they cut up the old man of history into this multitude of pieces, into what kettle or cauldron will they throw him that will boil him into youth and unity again? The scattered members are all that will remain to us. But our impatience on this matter would be very fruitlessly expressed. Such is the mode, such the fashion in the gentle craft of authorship. It were better, perhaps, to submit at once with a good grace—take whatever is worth the having, come in what shape it will, and keep our own good-humour into the bargain.
Amongst these fragmentary sketches, few have pleased us more than the two small volumes that designate themselves as Byways of History. Indeed, without pretending to do so, and notwithstanding their desultory nature, they give a very fair picture of the great period of the middle ages of which they treat, in its darker as well as its brighter points of view. There is also more novelty in the anecdotes than could have been expected, considering how well gleaned a field the authoress has had to traverse; and there is a playfulness in the style which, to youthful readers especially, will be found very attractive, though it may not always be sufficiently pungent to stir the stiffer muscles that grow about the upper lip of a sexagenarian critic.
"Byways" in history there are, strictly speaking, none at all; least of all can the peasant war in Germany, the principal subject of these volumes, be thought to lie amongst the secondary and less important transactions of the past. Whatever facts throw light upon the temper and modes of thinking of a bygone age, are of the very essence of history, though they may not immediately relate to crowned heads or official dignitaries. Yet, adopting the latitude of common speech, the title is significant enough. It is not the actions of kings and emperors, or the fate of nations and dynasties, that the fair historian undertakes to record; and as such a narrative is generally looked upon as the highway of history, she who diverges from it may be said to be traversing its byways. Only the byways, be it understood, may be the very roads which a good traveller would first and most industriously explore.
Ladies are said to hold it as one of their prerogatives to be a little unreasonable in their exactions, and a little self-contradictory in their sentiments. Our authoress appears, in one point, disposed to assert this prerogative of her sex. In ordinary cases, we know of nothing more impertinent than to appeal to the common process of litigious argumentation against these fair despots of society; but we doubt whether we should be acting even in the true spirit of gallantry, if we recognised any such prerogative in the domain of literature. It is open to any writer who thinks fit so to do, to disparage the present age by comparing it with olden times. It is also open to him, if he should be so minded, to show that these olden times, so much vaunted, were in fact far more culpable than ourselves, even in those points where we are guilty. But to none is it open—in the same book—to do both the one and the other; to disparage the present by comparison with the past, and then prove the past to have been ten times worse than the present. This is more than can reasonably fall to the share of any one author, or authoress. He cannot have it both ways. He cannot have the pleasure of putting the present age to shame by a contrast with the past, and the pleasure, almost as great, of exposing in their true colours the vices of a past that has been too indulgently surveyed.
But something of this license Mrs Sinnett seems disposed to take. At p. 37 we have to submit, with the rest of our contemporaries, to the following rebuke:—"When we hear it publicly proclaimed that it is a great thing for a young nobleman to postpone 'his pleasures' for a week or two for the sake of performing a service to his country, we cannot but begin to doubt whether, in the education of our privileged classes, we have really improved much on the system of the 'dark ages.' Then, at least, it was not thought that any class had a right to make 'its pleasures' its chief consideration."