REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.

Notes of a Tour through Turkey, Greece, Egypt, Arabia Petræa, to the Holy Land; including a Visit to Athens, Sparta, Delhi, Cairo, Thebes, Mount Sinai, Petræa, &c. By E. Joy Morris. Two vols. 12 mo. pp. 550. Philadelphia, Carey & Hart: 1842.

Were we disposed to be hypercritical, we should begin by finding some fault with the title of these volumes. It is quite too long, besides being tautological. Why speak of a tour through Egypt, and a visit to Thebes! Or of a tour through Greece and a visit to Athens? It would be as proper to announce a journey through England, including a visit to London. He who travels over a country of course visits its capital. If he supposes the readers of his journal do not know what city enjoys that distinction, it is even then better to let them acquire this geographical information by degrees. Too great and sudden developments may defeat his object; a man’s vision is sometimes obscured by excess of light.

Of the improbabilities which are scattered throughout the work we have space only to notice one or two. Mr. Morris informs us that the harem of the Governor of Smyrna, which he encountered on board a steamer, “consisted of some half-dozen ladies, (wives,) and, with attendants, amounted to near thirty persons.” Rather too many wives for the simple Aga of Smyrna, and more than the Koran allows. The holy book of the Mahommedan permits no one, save the Grand Sultan—the representative of the prophet—to have more than two; and that highest of dignitaries, and hereditary favorite of the immortals, has but four. The Governor of Smyrna, we are assured by a competent authority, has but one wife, and she is of Turkish descent, and not, as our author avers, a Circassian. Had she been of Circassia she would have been a concubine, not a wife, or, as the author blunderingly calls her, a Sultana. That title belongs only to the favorite wife of the Sultan. Our traveller tells us that he offered to this lady some sweet-meats, although her husband and the keeper of his harem were both present! An averment which we would be as chary of believing as if it were that the “light” of the Grand Seigneur’s palace had accepted an invitation to swim with him in the Bosphorus!

Mr. Morris tells us that he found in the slave market of Constantinople two beautiful Georgian girls, “destined for the harems of the rich,” in cages, but that he was “only indulged with a glance at them through the bars!” Now a cage, or such a place as he intended to describe by that word, even for the ugliest Numidian, would not be tolerated in Constantinople for an hour; nor has there been for many years a Georgian girl publicly exhibited in the markets of that city. When a writer, sensible of the dulness of his performance, seeks to impart to it some interest by weaving into its chapters romantic fictions, he should be careful to give them an air of probability. We have not time nor inclination to point out other “attractions” in these volumes of a similar description.

While writing of Athens and Constantinople, Mr. Morris doubtless had by his side Mr. Colton’s “Visit” to those places; and in his notices of Arabia Petræa and Egypt he has availed himself of the information acquired by Mr. Stevens and Professor Robinson. He has made what, in the language of the trade, is called a readable book; but it possesses neither originality, vigor, nor freshness; and his delineations, besides lacking these qualities, are often tediously long and needlessly particular. He does not pretend to give any new topographical information, and his work contains none. It was probably written out from slight notes taken during his tour, and the more elaborate descriptions of other travellers. It evinces some taste and judgment in the selection of themes, and is now and then graced by a classical allusion or quotation, gleaned, perhaps, from the guide-books, which make authorship so easy to the tourist.