Salamis, Ægina, and the other isles of the gulph, and to the mountains of the Peloponnesus in the remote distance.

'We descended from the pass of the Sacred Way into the plain, traversed the venerable wood of Olives which occupies its central part; crossed the small and divided stream of Cephissus, and at five o'clock entered the city by the gate, near to the temple of Theseus. The English, more than any other people, have cultivated the ancient, through the modern Athens, and one of the first persons we saw in approaching the place was an Englishman, looking over an excavation which had been made for the purposes of research.'

Peloponnesus.-Dr. H. was highly gratified with Athens, but declines to enter into any description of a city which has already occupied the pen of so many writers. He staid there several weeks, and made various excursions, particularly to Marathon; after which he proceeded on his return by Eleusis, Megara, and Corinth. In his farther progress, he admired greatly the situation of Mycenae, and the prospect over the fertile plains of Argos. At Tripolizza he passed a short time, and, the weather being now uncommonly cold, he had an uncomfortable journey of three days to Patras. The accommodation throughout was wretched, but his chief mortification arose from the disadvantages under which he saw this celebrated region, covered as it was with snow.

The exit from the lofty region, which forms all the interior of the Peloponnesus, affords one of the finest spectacles that can be conceived, in the suddenness with which a vast landscape is opened out in front. The fertile plains of Patras are immediately beneath, stretching to the shores of the gulph, which gradually expands from the Rhium and Anti-rhium, between the receding coasts of the Peloponnesus and Ætolia. The splendid promontories of Calydon and Taphiasus; the mouths of the Evenus and Achilous; the modern castle and city of Lepanto, representing the antient Naupactus; the expansion of the gulph of Corinth underneath the mountains of Locris Ozolia, with many other objects of classical note, are seen in front of the landscape: the mountains of Acarnania, of Cephalonia, and Ithaca appear in the more remote distance. Till descending to the plains of Patras, I had no sufficient idea of the great elevation on which we had been travelling for some days past. Our descent, which was very steep, occupied more than an hour, and on a moderate estimate could not have been less than 1500 feet, though we approached the edge of the declivity along a valley.'

The journey through the Peloponnesus, just related, was unfortunate beyond calculation in all the circumstances attending it. To a certain extent I afterwards retrieved this misfortune by an excursion I made in the month of May over the plains of the ancient Elis, and along the beautiful banks of the Alpheus, to the site of the celebrated Olympia. At this time the country was REV. JULY, 1816. glowing

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glowing with beauty; and though the severity of the winter still shewed itself in the snows covering the mountain-summits, all beneath was true Arcadian scenery, and might have been taken in its population, as well as natural features, to fill up the pictures which the fancy draws of this region.'

Having duly fulfilled his promise of a second visit to Ali Pasha, and passed some time with his princely invalid, the author directed his course to the northern part of Albania. When travelling in this quarter, and drawing to the close of his journey, he had the misfortune to lose a portmanteau, containing several of his papers and drawings for maps. The loss affected chiefly the journal of his second journey in Albania, and was much to be regretted as depriving us of an account of a part that has been comparatively little visited. Fortunately, however, his other papers were in safety, and enough appears in the present volume to prove him to be a faithful and minute journalist. One of his principal objects was to convey a clear idea of the scenery of the country, and of the remains of antiquities scattered over its surface: in pursuance of which plan, he has given us a dozen of elegant engravings, which, if they be not too flattering in the execu tion, will encourage the admirer of classic ground to an indignant contradiction of the attempts of those who would seek to reduce our estimate of this far-famed region. Another object was to ascertain the population of the different towns; a point in which he met with no little difficulty, from the general ignorance and indifference of the magistrates. - He complains (p. 198.) of the embarrassment attendant on the practice of his profession, when a physician is unacquainted with the language of the country, and obliged to receive his communications through an interpreter: but the medical is, in other respects, a very convenient character for securing the protection of such semi-barbarous governors as those of Albania and Greece. The assumption of it, as our readers well know, was of great use to Bruce in his adventurous peregrinations through Abyssinia.

Dr. H. describes (p. 307.) the scene of the battle of Pydna between the Roman consul Paulus Æmylius and Perseus of Macedon. He also delineates, and at greater length, (p.364.) the positions occupied by Pompey and Cæsar, previously to the decisive day of Pharsalia; when the confidence of the former induced his troops to quit their 'vantage ground, and meet their less numerous but better disciplined antagonists in the plain. To the east of Pharsalia, are the eminences of Cynocephale, the scene of a memorable battle between the Romans under Flaminius and the Macedonians under Philip.

The great objection to Dr. Holland's observations arises from the haste with which he found it necessary to proceed; and which obliged him to traverse, in the depth of winter, Phocis, Boeotia, Attica, and Arcadia, so that he saw only Albania and a part of Macedon in a favourable season. He was thus compelled to make but a short visit to spots on which he would have delighted to linger; and he was exposed, on more occasions than one, to considerable hazard. Of this nature was his passage from Salonica to the south of Thessaly in the beginning of December, and his nocturnal ride over Mount Othrys, on returning from his second visit to Larissa.

In point of style, Dr. H. trespasses not a little on the score of diffuseness, and sometimes on that of correctness *. Not contented with exhibiting an idea in its principal point of view, he introduces its minor relations with a pains-taking minuteness which materially injures the effect: so that many parts of his book would have read more fluently, and have left a stronger impression, had he omitted those auxiliary passages. On the whole, however, he must be deemed a candid, amusing, and enlightened traveller.

The volume is concluded by two specimens of Romaic, a list of plants, and a general (but insufficient) index.

ART. II. Mémoires sur la Guerre des Français, &c.; i. e. Memoirs relative to the French War in Spain. By M. de Rocca, Officer of Hussars, and Knight of the Order of the Legion of Honour. 8vo. pp. 426. 9s. 6d. Boards. London, Murray. 1815.

THOUGH the late war in Spain was never popular in France,

THOUGH

it was too long and too important not to excite a considerable share of public attention; or to fail to exercise, as in this country, the pens of several military men. A work on this subject by Bory de St. Vincent was announced at Paris about two years ago, and was expected to appear with all the advantage of the official information of Marshal Soult: but subsequent occurrences have delayed this important publication, and oblige us to be satisfied, for the present at least, with performances of minor, interest. One of the best of these is the volume now before us, the production of a young officer of good education and of considerable impartiality. His nar

* For example, p. 42., we find northerly for southerly;—p. 160., "the family would have eat,' for eaten ;-elsewhere, we had rode,' for ridden; &c. &c.

rative relates chiefly to the earlier part of the war, viz. the years 1808, 1809, and 1810; and it contains likewise a brief notice of Masséna's unsuccessful invasion of Portugal, but without any attempt at recording the operations subsequent to the spring of 1811. Several passages bear, as in the case of M. Labaume, the marks of amplification, received apparently from the hands of a Parisian editor: but the bulk of the volume is evidently the record of an eye-witness, and deserves confidence by its clearness and accuracy. It may be considered, therefore, as an useful accompaniment, in the study of the Spanish war, to the more comprehensive views exhibited by the dispatches of commanders in chief; which, while they display the general outline of operations, necessarily omit details of the proceedings of detachments, or of the conduct of the inhabitants in remote situations.

The narrative opens with a description of the very different kind of warfare sustained by the French in Germany and in Spain. In Austria and Prussia, the people have been accustomed for ages to obey in all things the executive power, and had no idea of war but through the medium of a regular force: the goverments were strong in revenue and in the number of soldiers, but weak in the means of exciting desultory resistance after their armies were driven from the field: -while the clergy, at least in the Protestant part of Germany, laid claim to no influence with their flocks beyond that of guiding them in the path of moral and religious duty. Spain, the case was completely reversed; the nation being weak in the means of regular warfare, and almost invincible in those of desultory annoyance: the country is thinly peopled and badly cultivated: but the great extent of mountainous tracts affords a refuge to smugglers in time of peace, and to predatory parties in the operations of war:- while the influence of the clergy was all-powerful, and the assassination of the invaders was deemed a merit by all classes of the people.

In

M. de Rocca marched from Germany into Spain with the numerous bodies of troops that were withdrawn by Bonaparte after his well-known interview with the Emperor Alexander at Erfurth; and which were of all nations, French, Italians, Poles, Germans, Swiss, and Dutch. They had scarcely passed the Bidassoa when they perceived a remarkable change in the people and in the aspect of the towns; the streets being narrow and crooked, and the gaiety of the French replaced by all the gravity and reserve of the Spaniards. It was not until they joined their comrades on the Ebro, that the French were made acquainted with the defeats

defeats of Dupont in Andalusia and of Junot in Portugal: all bad news had been industriously concealed from them; and they had been merely told that they were marching to give the coup de grace to the power of England. A few weeks sufficed to scatter the Spanish armies under Blake and Castanos; and the French advanced afterward with little opposition, but found the towns invariably deserted by the inhabitants. Burgos was a solitude; and, in entering most of the other places, no noise was to be heard but that of the town-clocks. The consequence of this abandonment, and of the want of magazines, was the delivery of most of these places to pillage, under the idea that the ingenuity of the soldier might discover those supplies which could not be regularly distributed to them. M. de Rocca thus describes the advance of the French into Spain:

The forced marches of our troops were often continued during a part of the night; and, on passing by the squadrons, we heard Italians, Germans, and French singing their national airs to beguile their fatigue, and recall in a distant and hostile land the remembrance of their native country. The army often halted late in the evening in the neighbourhood of deserted towns or villages, and we found ourselves on our arrival destitute of every necessary: but the soldiers were presently seen dispersing in all directions to forage, and, in less than an hour, conveyed to their bivouacs every thing that had been left in the neighbouring houses. Around the great fires lighted up at distances from each other, was seen all the apparatus of a military kitchen. On one side, were constructed temporary barracks of planks covered with leaves as a substitute for straw: on another, tents were erected, by stretching on four stakes the pieces of coarse cloth which had been found in the deserted houses. On the ground were scattered the skins of sheep which had just been slaughtered; also pitchers, flasks of wine, broken guitars, monks' gowns, and garments of every form and every colour: in one part, horsemen were seen sleeping beside their horses; at a distance, the foot-soldiers, some of them in the dress of women, formed grotesque dances, among heaps of arms, to the sound of discordant music.

On the departure of the army, the peasants descended from the neighbouring heights, and came forth in every direction from their hiding-places, as if they had sprung from the earth. Our soldiers could not straggle from the roads, nor remain behind the columns, without being exposed to assassination; and we could by no means venture, as in Germany, to form travelling hospitals wherever we went, or to send our sick separately to the medical depôt. The foot-soldiers who were unable to walk followed their respective divisions riding on asses; holding their musket in their left hand, and in the right their bayonet, which they used as a spur.

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