Every thing seems to be in proportion; the principal streets do not appear to exceed 16 feet in width, with side pavements of about 3 feet; some of the subordinate streets are from 6 to 10 feet wide, with side pavements in proportion; these are occasionally high, and are reached by steps. The walls of the houses are often painted red, and some of them have borders and antique ornaments, masks and imitations of marble, but in general poorly executed. I have observed, on the walls of an eating room,various kinds of food and game tolerably represented; one woman's apartment was adorned with subjects relative to love; and a man's with pictures of a martial character. Considering that the whole has been under ground upwards of seventeen centuries, it is certainly surprising that they should be as fresh as at the period of their burial. The whole extent of the city, not one half of which is excavated, may be about four miles. It is said that Murat employed no less than 2000 men in clearing Pompeii, and that Madame Murat attended the excavations in person every week. The present government have not retained above 100. The unfolding of the Papyri discovered at Herculaneum is extremely curious and interesting. From the frailty of the material, the progress is extremely slow: perhaps not more than half an inch is opened at a time, and is fixed upon gold-beater's leaf. In appearance the Papyri might be mistaken for parts of calcined branches of trees, the circular folds seeming like the growth of the wood. In looking at these black and indurated masses, it requires an effort to believe them to be full of human knowledge. The number of the rolls is very great; only two volumes of them, however, have as yet been published; the last contains fragments of a work of Epicurus, and a Latin poem in hexameters, very much mutilated, apparently descriptive of the contest for empire between Anthony and Octavius. In the next volume will be published a treatise of the philosopher Chrysippus concerning Providence. I believe there was found rolled up in his works a bust inscribed Epicurus, which may, perhaps, form a standard for identifying the different heads of the philosopher.-Travels in Greece, Italy, &c. by H. W. Williams. Published 1820. BURCKHARDT'S TRAVELS IN NUBIA, &c. From the same. Burckhardt has excited an interest in the public only inferior to Mungo Park. As this highly valuable volume is only published to-day, we hope that extracts rather than an epitome will be accepted from us. NUBI JUBIA is divided into two parts, called Wady Kenous, and Wady el Nouba (often named exclusively Savd); the former extending from Assouan to Wady Seboua, and the latter comprising the country between Seboua and the northern frontier of Dóngola. The inhabitants of these two divisions are divided by their language, but in manners they appear to be the same. The following is a curious method which the governors of Nubia have devised, of extorting money from their subjects. When any wealthy individual has a daughter of a suitable age, they demand her in marriage; the father sel See Ath. vol. 4, p. 434 dom dares to refuse, and sometimes feels flattered by the honour; but he is soon ruined by his powerful son-in-law, who extorts from him every article of his property under the name of presents to his own daughter. All the governors are thus married to females in almost every considerable village; Hosseyn Kashef has above forty sons, of whom twenty are married in the same manner. The Nubians purchase their wives from their parents: the price usually paid by the Kenous is twelve mahboubs or thirty-six piasters. They frequently intermarry with the Arabs Ababde, some of whom cultivate the soil like themselves; an Ababde girl is worth six camels; these are paid to her father, who gives back three to his daughter, to be the common property of her and her husband; if a divorce takes place, half the value of the three camels goes to the latter. In Upper Egypt, when a wife insists upon being divorced, her husband has the right to take all her wearing apparel from her, and to shave her head: nobody will then marry her till ber hair be grown again. The Nubian is extremely jealous of his wife's honour and on the slightest suspicion of infidelity towards hin, would carry her in the night to the side of the river, lay open her breast by a cut with his knife,and throw her into the water, "to be food for the crocodiles," as they term it. The Arabs on the mountains between Nubia and the Red Sea, are an extraordinary race. The Bisharye, who rarely descend from their mountains, are a very savage, people, and their character is worse even than that of the Ababde. Their only cattle are camels and sheep, and they live entirely upon flesh and milk, eating much of the former raw; according to the relation of several Nubians, they are very fond of the hot blood of slaughtered sheep; but their greatest luxury is said to be the raw marrow of camels. A few of these Arabs occasionally visit Der or Assouan, with senna, sheep and ostrich feathers, the ostrich being common in their mountains: and their Senna is of the best kind. In exchange for these commodities they take linen shirts and Dhourra, the grains of which they swallow raw, as a dainty, and never make it into bread. Crocodiles seem hardly less dreaded in some parts than the Hippopotamus in others. Crocodiles are very numerous about Shendy. I have generally remarked that these animals inhabit particular parts of the Nile, from whence they seldom appear to move; thus, in Lower Egypt, they have entirely disappeared, although no reasonable cause can be assigned for their not descending the river. In Upper Egypt, the neighbourhood of Akhmim, Dendera,Orment, and Edfou, are at present the favourite haunts of the Crocodile, while few are ever seen in the intermediate parts of the river. The same is the case in different parts of Nubia towards Dóngola. At Berber nobody is afraid of encountering crocodiles in the river, and we bathed there very often, swimming out into the midst of the stream. At Shendy, on the contrary, they are greatly dreaded; the Arabs and the slaves and females, who repair to the shore of the river near the town every morning and evening, to wash their linen, and fill their waterskins for the supply of the town, are obliged to be continually on the alert, and such as bathe take care not to pro-' ceed to any great distance into the river. I was several times present when a crocodile made its appearance, and witnessed the terror it inspired; the crowd all quickly retiring up the beach. During my stay at Shendy, a man who had been advised to bathe in the river, after having escaped the small-pox, was seized and killed by one of these animals. At Sennaar crocodiles are often brought to market,and their flesh is publicly sold there. I once tasted some of the meat; it is of a dirty white colour, not unlike young veal, with a slight fishy smell; the animal had been caught by some fishermen at Esne in a strong net, and was above twelve feet in length. The governor of Esne ordered it to be brought into his court-yard, where more than a hundred balls were fired against it without any effect, till it was thrown upon its back, and the contents of a small swivel discharged at its belly, the skin of which is much softer than that of the back. Next to Sennaar, and Cobbé (in Darfour) Shendy is the largest town in eastern Soudan. --The government is in the hands of the Mek; the name of the present chief is Nimr, i. e. Tiger. The father of Nimr was an Arab of the tribe of Djaalein, but his motner was of the royal blood of Wold Ajib; and thus it appears that women have a right to the succession. This agrees with the narrative of Bruce, who found at Shendy a woman upon the throne, whom he calls Sittina (an Arabic word meaning our Lady). Gold is the second article in the Sennaar trade. It is purchased by merchants of Sennaar from the Abyssinian traders. The name of Nouba is given to all the Blacks coming from the slave countries to the south of Senpaar. These Nouba slaves (among whom must also be reckoned those who are born in the neighbourhood of Sennaar, of male Negroes and female Abyssinians; and who are afterwards sold by the masters of the parents) form a middle class between the true Blacks and the Abyssinians; their colour has a copper tinge, but it is darker than that of the free Arabs of Sennaar and Shendy. Persons from the Hedjaz and from Egypt sometimes pass by Shendy on their way to Sennaar in search of young monkeys, which they teach to perform the tricks so amusing to the populace in the towns of Arabia and Egypt. I was repeatedly asked whether I had not come in search of monkeys, for that my equipments appeared too shabby for a merchant. These monkey-hunters are held in great contempt, as the Negroes say, they spend their whole lives in making others laugh at them. The lyre (Tamboura) and a kind of fife with a dismal sound, made of the hollow Dhourra stalk, are the only musical instruments I saw, except the kettle-drum. This appears to be all over Soudan an appendage of royalty; and when the natives wish to designate a man of power, they often say the Nogára beats before his house. ** The next tribe whose territory the caravan crossed was the Hadendoa. The caravan halted near a village, and I walked up to the huts to look about me. My appearance on this occasion, as on many others, excited an universal shriek of surprise and horror, especially among the women, who were not a little terrified at seeing such an Outcast of nature as they consider a white man to be, peeping into their huts, and asking for a little water or milk. The chief feeling which my appearance inspired I could easily perceive to be disgust, for the Negroes are all firmly persuaded that the whiteness of the skin is the effect of disease, and a sign of weakness; and there is not the least doubt, that a white man is looked upon by them as a being greatly inferior to themselves. At Shendy the inhabitants were more accustomed to the sight if not of white men, at least of the light brown -natives of Arabia; and as my skin was much sun-burnt, I there excited little surprise. On the market-days, however, I often terrified people, by turning short upon them, when their exclamation generally was: " Owez bilahi min essheyttan erradjim :" (God preserve us from the devil!) * It rarely happens that either lions or tigers are killed in these countries; when such an occurrence happens, it is in selfdefence; for the inhabitants having no other weapons than swords or lances, have little chance of conquering the king of the forest, of which this district appears to be a favourite haunt. Some of the Shikhs, but very few, have lions' skins in their tents; they appeared to be of middling size; but if the testimony of the Hadendoa may be credited, a lion here sometimes reaches the size of a cow. Persons are frequently killed by them. In the woods wolves,gazelles, and hares abound; and the Bedouins relate stories of serpents of immense size, which devour a sheep entire. The fiercest animals, however, that inhabit these woods are the Bedjawy, or inhabitants of Bedja, themselves. * Treachery is not considered here as criminal or disgraceful, and the Hadendoa is not ashamed to boast of his bad faith, whenever it has led to the attainment of his object. The Souakin people assured me that no oath can bind a man of Taka; that which alone they hesitate to break is when they swear, "By my own health." A Hadendoa seldom scruples to kill his companion on the road in order to possess himself of the most trifling article of value, if he entertains a hope of doing it with impunity; but the retaliation of blood exists in full force. Among the Hallenga, who draw their origin from Abyssinia, a horrid custom is said to attend the revenge of blood; when the slayer has been seized by the relatives of the deceased, a family feast is proclaimed, at which the murderer is brought into the midst of them, bound upon an Angareyg, and while his throat is slowly cut with a razor, the blood is caught in a bowl, and handed round among the guests, every one is bound to drink of it at the moment the victim breathes his last. A A GERMAN SHAKSPEARE. From the Edinburgh Magazine. NOTHER astonishing genius has BY GRILLPARZER. their own personal offences have not been sufficient to furnish any due cause. We have no belief that they are wise in entertaining so exclusive a partiality for this species of interest; but there is no question the effect it produces in their hands is such as to account very easily for the partiality with which dramas, composed on this principle, are now regarded by all the audiences and almost all the critics of Germany. Neither is it to be denied, that many of the most perfect creations of preceding dramatists have owed much of their power to the influence of the same idea. It lies at the root of all those Greek tragedies, in which the early history of the heroic houses is embodied; and in later times it has been frequently used both by Calderon and Shakspeare. It is sufficient to mention the Meditation on the Cross of the one, and the Macbeth of the other. The present tragedy is a terrible exemplification of this terrible idea; and it is the more terrible, because the sins of the Ancestress are represented as being visited, not by sufferings only, but by sins on her descendants. The scene opens in the chief hall of a gothic castle, the family of which has already become nearly extinct under the influence of that ancestral Até, the final expiation of which now draws near its close. Count Borotin and his daughter Bertha are alone in this hall; and the conversation which they hold will put us in possession of every thing that is requisite for understanding the structure of the piece. letter, which he holds with both hands.) Then lies the oak, whose blissful shade so far Bertha. (At the window.) The night, In truth, is fearful: cold and dark, my father,Even as the grave. The let-loose winds are moaning Like wandering ghosts. Far as our eyes can reach, Snow covers all the landscape, mountains, fields, Rivers, and trees. The frozen earth now seems A lifeless frame, wrapt in the shroud of winter: Nay, heaven itself, so void and starless, glares, As from wide hollow eyeballs, blackly down On the vast grave beneath! Count. How wearily The hours are lengthening! Bertha, what's o'clock? Count. Indeed! But seven! Dark night already! Ah! the year Ber. Nay, but the lovely May will come again; The fields be clad anew; the gales breathe soft; The flowers revive. Count. Aye truly will the year Renew itself; the fields unfold their green; The rivulets flow; and the sweet flower, that now Has fallen away, will from long sleep awake, And from the white soft pillow gayly lift Its youthful head, open its glittering eyes, And smile as kindly as before. The tree That now amid the storm imploringly Stretches its dry and naked arms to heaven, Will clothe itself with verdure. All that now Lurks in the mighty house of Nature, far On woods and plains, then shall rejoice anew In the fresh vigour of the spring.—But never The oak of Borotin shall know revival. Ber. Dear father, you are sad. Count. Him blest I call, Whom life's last hour surprises in the midst Of his lov'd children. Give not to such parting Of his own toil the scattered seeds to leave Count. Ah, no! 'tis not the letter-- There is an old tradition, that has long Is near fulfilment. Almost I believe The tale, though strange; for sure a powerful hand As thou art now. Our nuptials were most happy. My life's last hope. (Thy mother went to Heaven?) These pledges I watched over, but in vain ; He wander'd from his nurse. The door stood open, The mournful tale-What more? Why,he was drown'd Who could help this?-So he was drowned, and f Ber. Dear father! Count. I can feel The gentle reprehension of thy love. Which thou present'st to me, of youth's enjoyments And life's prosperity? Of mine existence Shall the last days be to thy good devoted. Yes: by a husband's side, who loves thee truly, And can deserve thy favour, may to you Ber. Dare I confess ? Count. Didst thou Believe, that from a father's eyes could be |