born, and have always lived, in India; that, besides those, there are other Christians residing in Bombay, who also were born, and have always lived, in India. That your Petitioners humbly represent that many Hindoos, Parsees, and Mohammedans, of the Island of Bombay, are at least equal to those Christians in opulence, intelligence, integrity, estimation in society, and in qualification to serve on Grand Juries. That it is not the intention of your Petitioners. to complain of the eligibility of those Christians to serve on Grand Juries on the contrary, they approve of and applaud it; but they humbly submit, that the wise policy that induced Parliament to enact the eligibility of those Christians to serve on Grand Juries, is equally applicable to many Hindoos, Parsees, and Mohammedans, his Majesty's subjects, inhabitants of the Island of Bombay.

Your Petitioners, therefore, most humbly pray that your Honourable House will take this subject into its consideration, and adopt such measures as to its wisdom may seem fit, to enable the principal Hindoos, Parsees, and Mohammedans, subjects of his Majesty, and inhabitants of the Island of Bombay, to serve on Grand Juries in Bombay. And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray, &c.

THE CASTILIAN BANDIT.

THE foaming charger doth cleave the air,
And sorely the rider doth strain;

For soon shall his visage be dark with despair,
If the speed of his courser prove vain.
He is laden with rare and costly spoils,
But death follows grim in the rear;

Should the bandit be caught in the huntsmen's toils,
He knows that his last hour is near.

But the courser was swift, the rider was strong,
And the free hills were their dwelling;

Like the glance of the lightning they swept along-
Now the rugged rocks are telling

That they near that wild and mighty domain,
Where the huntsmen should not find them.
The rider look'd down on the far-off plain-
They were lost in the distance behind them.

He curb'd the career of his panting steed,
And he gazed around in his pride,

Then he look'd on the spoil, no worthless meed,
That was slung by his courser's side.
'Thou hast served me nobly to-day, I confess,
My beautiful steed and my strong;'

Right proud was the horse of his lord's caress,
And he snorted loudly and long.

The churls are afraid of the mountain path,
O'er which their rich spoil has been borne;
And he whom they curse in their bootless wrath,
Is content to yield them his scorn:

Let the world, which cruelly spurn'd us forth,
Reap the fruit of our lasting hate :
They will bitterly learn what was our worth,
When we courted a nobler fate.'

So he gazed on the high, eternal bills,

And his spirit felt fearless and free,—

He loved their steep rocks and he loved their rills,

And he loved in their bosom to be:

For their stronghold was there-'twas the stern robbers'

tower,

And he loved the dark spirits that dwelt

Their recesses within,-such love hath a power

By the bandit alone to be felt.

L.

RECENT TRAVELS IN GREECE, ASIA MINOR, PALESTINE, and EGYPT.

[The following is the substance of a Report made to the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, by Count Alexander de la Borde, and read at the sitting of the French Institute, on the 24th April, 1828.]

IN requiring from me an account of my travels, you cause me to experience the regret of not having rendered them more worthy of your interest; but, to obtain, at least, your indulgence, I will let you know the motives that induced me to undertake them; this will plead as an excuse for me.

Principally occupied in the education of my son, and wishing most ardently to render him, at a future period, worthy of your esteem, I deemed it necessary to make him follow a new system of education, more extensive, more laborious, but which I conceive to be necessary, in order to harmonise with the enlightened ideas of the present age.

This system, which would employ too much time to develop in this place, consists, in its first part, in joining to classical studies, and to a knowledge of several modern languages, a voyage of application in the most celebrated countries of antiquity, or, in other words, a tour of the Mediterranean: this undertaking does not, as you perceive, exclude discoveries, but it does not form the principal motive. For the purpose of carrying my plans into execution, and, at the same time, rendering our journey more agreeable and less expensive, I endeavoured to procure for my son some young travelling companions who might wish to partake of this kind of study, and I was fortunate enough to meet with such as I could desire one of them is Mr. Becker, the son of the brave General of that name, and himself a staff-officer, filled with talent and zeal; the second, Mr. Hall, a young English gentleman, and, the third, the Duke of Richelieu, who quitted us too soon, in order to repair to Odessa, whither duty called him.

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After pursuing our studies for some length of time in Italy, and having made a short stay in the Ionian Islands, we arrived on the classic ground of Greece, which so many motives induced us to visit. But the political condition of the country compelled us to change the order of our route, and commence our Travels in other parts of the Ottoman empire. It is, therefore, from Smyrna, where we arrived on the 15th July, 1826, that the researches which possess any interest are to be dated.

Asia Minor, as you are aware, is not, even now, well known; yet, what land contains more recollections and interesting monu Oriental Herald, Vol. 18.

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ments? Almost all the travellers who preceded us in this country, arrived from the shores, and seldom penetrated more than twenty or thirty leagues into the interior. We attempted to render their labours more complete by proceeding from the interior, and reaching the points where they had stopped. Our first excursion was from Smyrna to Constantinople, passing through Sardis. This town, the most interesting on the whole road, is built upon an elevation which commands the plain of Shermus: the ruins of its walls are prolonged on both sides of the Pactolus, a small stream which, even in the time of Strabo, no longer contained in its bed grains of gold. Two Ionic columns, sustaining an entablature, are the only remains of the temple of Cybele. Nothing exceeds the elegance of their capitals, the volutes of which are ornamented with palmleaves. The columns are broken across; but by their diameter it may be calculated that they were fifty feet high. Upon the declivity of the hill, on the other side, is a theatre and a stadium. No inhabitants are to be met with in this celebrated town. A few tents only of Urucks, a wandering tribe, are to be seen on the banks of the Pactolus; and from the top of the citadel of Croesus you perceive, scattered over the plains, the tombs of the kings of Lydia. They are large mounds (tumuli), about sixty in number, among which one distinguishes the tomb of Alyattes, the father of Croesus, of which Herodotus speaks as the most extensive monument he had seen, excepting the Pyramids, and which indeed resembles a natural mountain. As the historian adds, that this tomb was constructed at the expense of the courtesans of Sardis, we may infer, from its magnitude, that the morals of the people of this town were not remarkably austere.

Leaving Sardis, you cross the Hermus, the plain of Hircania, and enter the chain of mountains known by the name of SoassoufDagh, which extends from Mount Olympus to Mount Ida, and forms the separation of the waters of the sea of Marmora from those of the Archipelago.

At certain distances, the whole length of this road, are to be seen fountains erected by beneficent persons, whose names are engraved upon the stone, and generally a verse from the Koran. We saw upon one of them this passage: The best man is he who is the most useful to his brethren.'

I will not speak to you about Constantinople: every one has heard of the beauty of its situation, and how few splendid edifices are to be met with. We witnessed in this city three events which particularly characterised our séjour,-a revolution, the plague, and a conflagration. After spending six weeks in the house of the Countess Guilleminot, who evinced much interest towards us, we determined to proceed to Cairo through the interior of Asia. The success of this journey depended upon the manner in which we should undertake it, and we therefore avoided the plan followed by

the travellers, Seetzen, and Colonel Boutin, who fell victims in the 51 journey. We determined upon purchasing horses and arms at Constantinople, to put on the Turkish costume, procure a very explicit firman, which the French ambassador obtained for us, and take with us, besides, a Tartar of the Porte, and a Dragoman, with a certain number of experienced servants. In this manner we composed a troop of twelve men on horseback, having each a doublebarrelled gun, and stronger, as to fire-arms, than the inhabitants of almost all the places where we stopped. A few paras, distributed in a proper manner, added kindness to respect; and, in the same places where, had we been alone, it would have been difficult to take a few notes, we quietly established ourselves, measuring and drawing the monuments without troubling the inhabitants, or meeting, on their part, with any interference. The low price of provisions in the Levant, renders this mode of travelling but little expensive; and in this way we passed through the interior of Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine. As it is impossible to give you a full account of the whole of our journey, and the observations to which it has led, I will only indicate to you the principal discoveries and researches that we have been able to make. of Nicomedia and of Niceas, where considerable ruins are still to On leaving the towns be seen, we proceeded towards the west, and to the banks of Sangarius; and scarcely had we arrived near the Lake Sabanja, the ancient Sophon, when we discovered a Roman monument of the largest size: it is a bridge composed of six arches, at the beginning of which is a triumphal arch, and at the extremity a sort of repetition of the arch built against the mountain, and open on both sides for the passage of a Roman road. Cutahia, the extreme point of this part of Asia, we arrived at a Roman Ten leagues south-west from town which no traveller had visited, and which ancient itineraries do not even notice. a stadium, several porticos in a high state of preservation, and, Its principal edifices consist of a large theatre, upon the summit of a small hill, an Ionic temple of the most elegant architecture: the columns are of a single block of marble, thirty feet high; they are fluted, and sustain an elegantly ornamented entablature of the most tasteful chasteness. From the fragments of an inscription which belonged to the pediment, it is seen that this temple was repaired in the time of Adrian, and consecrated to Apollo. This place is called by the Turks, Chapder, and is watered by a stream, which is passed over a Roman bridge of five arches, in as good a state of preservation as the Roman arch which it joins. From Chapder we proceeded to the Phrygian monument described by Colonel Leake: we had the satisfaction of discovering, in the same valley, another similar monument, and, six leagues further, a third much more considerable, bearing an inscription in the same characters. But what afforded us the greatest interest, and occupied two months of our time, was the country comprised between Affrom Karahissar, Denislu, and Isparta, which we visited to de

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