order that the localities of the scene may be better understood. Saladin had taken Tiberias; but the citadel in which the wife of the Count of Tripoli had shut herself up still resisted, in the expectation of succour. This citadel, to the left of Tiberias, on a round hill which commands the shores, now serves for the Seraglio of the Mutselim. The Christian army, which set out in the morning from the fountain of Sepphoris, suddenly appeared in the plain between Loubi and Hittim; Guy of Lusignan, who knew the encampment of Saladin on the shores of the lake, wished not to give battle, but to encamp at Hittim, on account of its fountain; if the Christian army had succeeded in seizing that position, Saladin would have been in a critical situation. The Sultan was not ignorant of this; therefore, on the approach of the king of Jerusalem he also broke up his camp, in order to take up his position at Hittim, and to occupy the heights called the Two Horns of Hittim. Master of the fountain, he awaited the Crusaders, who had to traverse a country without water; the Franks, anticipated by the Mahometans, and thus forced to encamp in a dry place, halted in the plain. The two armies were drawn up front to front all the night between Friday and Saturday. Saladin watched in his tent; on the break of day, when the sun had risen above the lake, the Saracens were ready for battle. The Franks, who suffered from want of water, (for they were still at a distance from the lake and the fountain,) prepared for the battle; it was heard said among them, "To-morrow we must find water with our swords."

Saturday the 14th July, 1187, the Franks, in their desperation, made a furious attack on the Mussulmen. As the battle took place in the territory of the Count of Tripoli, it was he who, according to feudal custom, commenced the onset. The slaughter became horrible; Saladin was everywhere. The Count of Tripoli, whom the Chroniclers have made a traitor, though he was only a skilful politician, having dashed at the left of the enemy, opened himself a way to the valley of Hittim. Guy of Lusignan remained alone with the centre of the Christian army, the right wing having fled. But before the engagement of the two armies, a conflagration had been kindled on the right of the Franks, to the south-east; the Mahometans had set fire to the harvest; clouds of smoke and flames running under the feet of the horses, aggravated the dismal situation of the Crusaders, surrounded on all sides by their enemies and by the conflagration. Blood flowed in streams, mingling itself with the pure water of the Fountain of the Five Loaves, which, like that of Hittim, was in the power of the Saracens. The only Christian body of troops which remained engaged with the enemy, took by assault the Mountain of the Beatitudes; there the Templars, the Hospitallers, and other knights, rallied round the king; the combat was awful; the Bishop of St. Jean d'Acre lifted the true Cross as a standard, in the very place where Christ, showing himself to the multitude, said to them, Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. The true Cross fell into the hands of the Mussulmen; the bishop was slain. King Guy had not

more

more than a hundred and fifty warriors with him three times this little troop repelled the enemy to the foot of the hill; three times the Saracens returned to the charge. After some moments of respite, the attack recommenced with new fury; the king was taken and disarmed; none remained but the slain and prisoners; an army of 22,000 Christians had yielded to an army of 80,000 Mahometans.'

With this extract we close our notice of these pleasant volumes. We have, of late, paid so much attention to Egyptian antiquities, that M. Michaud must excuse us if we decline to follow him into that country. We will only observe, that the reader whose curiosity concerning that inexhaustible subject is still unsated, will find in M. Michaud's Letters a great deal of easy and agreeable description, and many lively sketches of manners. He will derive much amusement and some instruction.

ART. V.-Letters of J. Downing, Major, Downingville Militia, Second Brigade. New York. 12mo. 1834.

SINCE

INCE Washington Irving's delightful genius first revealed itself in the Knickerbocker, we have met with few specimens of native American humour calculated to make any very favourable impression on this side the Atlantic; with none, in our humble opinion, approaching, by many degrees, to the merit of this thoroughly homespun production. The Letters of Major Downing' appeared originally in the New York Advertiser, at the time when General Jackson's grand experiment on the banking system of the United States was exciting throughout the chief provinces of that republic an interest hardly, if at all, inferior to what was among ourselves concentrated in 1831 upon the question of Parliamentary Reform. They produced a powerful effect, and were presently collected into a volume, adorned with a variety of woodcuts, which, though very rudely executed, are not without indications of the same odd humour that characterizes the text. Edition has followed edition, until they are no longer enumerated on the title-page; and the author, Mr. Davis, of the respectable mercantile house of Brookes and Davis, New York, has fairly established a formidable reputation among the politicians of the western world-by what the European reader, unenlightened as to the topics, and indifferent as to the persons, discussed and satirized by his imaginary Militia Major, may be apt to consider merely as a handful of grotesque drolleries,-a local and ephemeral jeu d'esprit.

We certainly shall not affect to hang a dissertation concerning American political economy, and the merits of the Jackson Govern

ment,

ment, upon a performance of this description. Mr. Coleridge, however, has laid it down that every man of humour is more or less a man of genius,--and, whether that be or be not so, few will dispute that all really effective humour must be bottomed upon a substratum of strong good sense. If, therefore, our readers derive any solid aliment for their minds from the extracts which we are about to submit, we shall be well pleased; but the primary object with us is to illustrate the merits of the author as a humourist, and more especially to call attention to what we think by far the most amusing, as it must be allowed to be the most authentic, specimen that has as yet reached Europe, of the actual colloquial dialect of the Northern States. It will be manifest that the representations of this gibberish, for which Mr. Mathews, Mrs. Trollope, and other strangers have been so severely handled by the American critics, were, in fact, chargeable with few sins except those of omission. The most astounding and incredible of their Americanisms occur, passim, in the work of Major Downing; but it is as obvious that the wealth and prodigal luxury of his vocabulary put the poverty of theirs to shame, as that he applies the particular flowers and gems of republican rhetoric which had caught their fancy, with a native ease and felicity altogether beyond the reach of any superficial and transitory admirer not to the manner born.'

The French author, whose Tableau des Maurs Américaines has already edified our readers, says, at p. 351 of his first volume,

The rivalry which exists between the English and the Americans is not solely that of commerce and industry. The two nations have a common language, and each asserts that it is better spoken on her side of the Atlantic than on the other. I believe they are both in the right. In England, the superior classes possess a delicacy of language which is unknown in America, except in a small number of salons, which can at best make an exception: but in the United States, where there is neither a really upper class, nor a positively low one, the entire population speak English less purely indeed than the aristocracy of England, but as well as her middle orders, and infinitely better than her populace.'

We shall see in the meanwhile, another author, already reviewed in this Number, may save us some trouble in supplying a fit preface to our extracts from the classic of Downingville :

'The interest of these letters lies partly in the simple and blunt, yet forcible, and not unfrequently convincing manner, with which certain intricate questions, of much importance to the nation, are treated in them; partly in the peculiar compound of the bluntness and shrewdness of a country Yankee, being personified in Major Jack Downing, the pretended author of the Letters; partly, also, in the impudence of the real author, who, sans façon, makes the Major tell long stories of

what

what happened between him and the president, the vice-president, Mr. Clay, Calhoun, Biddle, and other distinguished citizens; and, again, in the singular mode which the author has chosen for bringing forth his views and arguments, as Jack Downing pretends to belong to the party of the president, while the real author is a member of that party which thinks that the president has wantonly disenchanted the constitution, as Napoleon said of Dupont's defeat of Baylen :"Il a désenchanté l'armée." . . . They will be a curiosity to the philologist some hundred years hence, when the true Yankee idiom will have given way, as all provincial languages in time do; and in fact they are now of interest to the student, unacquainted with the peculiar expressions of New England,―and a little glossary ought to be attached to them when they are collected together.'-The Stranger in America, vol. i. pp. 253-256.

This hint has not been taken by the editor of the copy now before us, -so we must make the best we can of the Major's elegant idiom. One beauty that constantly occurs at first puzzled us,but in the book called New England by one of her Sons,' we since found kind-of' used in the same fashion with the 'kinder' of Downing; the other odd phrases of most frequent recurrence, such as stumped, raft of fellows, &c. seem to be derived either from the life of the wood-clearing farmer, or from the steamboat experiences of the Yankee in general.

In the Preface, the Major modestly says of himself,

'I ony wish I had gone to school a leetle more when I was a boyif I had, my letters now would make folks crawl all over: but if I had been to school all my lifetime, I know I never could be able to write more honestly than I have. I am sometimes puzzled most plaguily to git words to tell jest exactly what I think, and what I know; and when I git 'em, I don't know exactly how to spell 'em-but so long as I git the sound, I'll let other folks git the sense on't-pretty much as our old friend down to Salem, who bilt a big ship to go to China-he called her the "Asha." Now there is sich a thing as folks knowin too much all the larned ones was puzzled to know who "Asha" was; and they never would know to this day what it ment, if the owner of the ship hadn't tell'd 'em that China was in Asha. "Oh! ah!" says the larned folks, "we see now-but that ain't the way to spell it." What," says he, "if A-s-h-a don't spell Asha, what on earth does it spell?" And that stump'd 'em.-Introd. p. 2.

66

:

He thus announces his truly patriotic object in his authorship; with a caution to his coutrymen, to which we humbly beg the attention of ours :

If folks will ony keep an eye to what I tell 'em, things will go strait enuff: but that won't be till the people agree to vote for no man to any office unless he has got a good character, and is capable to do all the duties honestly and well, and according to law-but if the

people

people put scamps in office, jest because they are party-men, things will go on worse and worse, and there won't be no laws but jest such laws as will keep these very scamps in their offices.'-Ibid., p. 5.

In June, 1833, the Major accompanies General Jackson in a grand progress through New England, beating up in all quarters for recruits to help the worthy President in the approaching campaign against THE Bank. The visit to the author's own dear native Downingville is described with special gusto and emphasis:

'I went full drive down to the meetin-house, and got hold of the rope, and pull'd away like smoke, and made the old bell turn clean over. The folks come up thick enough then to see what was to pay, and filled the old tabernacle chock full, and there was more outside than you could count. "Now," says I," I spose you think there's going to be preaching here to-day, but that is not the business. The Gineral is comin." That was enough-" Now," says I, "be spry. I tell'd the Gineral last winter he'd see nothing till he got down here, and if we don't make him stare then there's no snakes.-[Subintellige "in Virginia."] Where's Captain Finny?" says I. I be," says he; and there he was, sure enough the crittur had just come out of his bush-pasture, and had his bush-hook with him. Says I, "Captain Finny, you are to be the marshal of the day." Upon that he jumps right on eend. "Now," says I, "where is Seth Sprague, the schoolmaster ?" "Here I be," says he; and there he stood with his pitch-pipe up in the gallery, just as if I was going to give out the salm for him. "You just pocket your pitch-pipe," says I, "Seth, and brush up your larnin, for we have pitched on you to write the address."

"Here

Why, Major," says Zekiel Bigelow, "I thought I was to do that, and I've got one already." "But," says I, "you don't know nothing about Latin; the Gineral can't stomack anything now without it's got Latin in it, ever since they made a Doctor on him down there to Cambridge t'other day; but howsever," says I, "you shall give the address after all, only just let Seth stick a little Hog-Latin into it here and there. And now," says I, "all on you be spry, and don't stop stirrin till the pudden's done." Then they begun to hunt for hats, and down the gallery-stairs they went. And if ther'd been forty thanksgivens and independence days comin in a string, I don't believe there could be more racket than there was in Downingville that afternoon and night.

6

By ten o'clock next morning all was ready. I had 'em all stationed, and I went out and come back three or four times across the brook by the potash, to try 'em. I got a white hat on, and shag-bark stick, put some flour on my head, and got on to my sorrel horse, and looked just as much like the old gentleman as I could. Arter tryin them two or three times I got 'em all as limber as a withe, and the last time I tried 'em you've no idee, it went off just as slick as ile.

"Now," says I, "tenshion the hull! Stand at ease till you see me agin;" and then I streaked it down to old Miss Crane's ta