too much to pass for an impartial historian; he relates many things, which he could not know to be true, some which we know to be false, and several which are contradicted by other authority, as good in respect to them as his own. Mr Hughes' work we have not at hand, and can make use of it only from the recollection of a former perusal, and the extracts made from it in the Memoir of Malte-Brun. Mr Hughes' representation of Ali is in the main a good deal more favorable, than M. Pouqueville's. These two writers, in particular, differ essentially in their details of the most odious event in the life of Ali, from which we would gladly be able to infer, that much abatement should be made from both. The Memoir of Malte-Brun, like every thing that proceeds from him, is highly judicious, and is the most valuable document we think relative to Ali Pacha, of which the public is in possession. We regret that we possess it only in an Italian translation.

Ali Pacha, according to the account which he used to give of himself, was descended from a Turkish family of Asia Minor, which came into Epirus with Bajazet Ilderim in the fourteenth century. Pouqueville objects to this pretended Asiatic descent, that Ali 'produces no titles to substantiate such an origin.' What sort of titles would have satisfied the French consul, and in what way they ought to have been exhibited, he does not inform us. He maintains, however, that it is the result of his own researches, that Ali is descended from one of those native Albanian families, who were converted from christianity to Mahometanism, at the time of the Turkish conquest. With respect to the original christian and subsequent Mahometan faith of these Albanians, we believe there is a good deal of justice in Lady M. W. Montague's account of them, that they go to the mosque on fridays, and to church on sundays, to make sure of their salvation under both creeds.

Pouqueville informs us, that the genealogy of Ali Pacha goes back to the end of the sixteenth century. As this is a period later by one hundred and fifty years than the conquest of Epirus by the Turks, we are at a loss for the Consul's warrant to deny the account, which Ali Pacha gave of his Turkish descent, and to maintain him to have been of an Albanian stock. The first of his family, who signalized himself,

was Muctar his grandsire, who perished, it is said, in the year 1717, in an assault made by the Turkish armies upon the island of Corfu, which was successfully defended by the Venetian general, the Marshal Schulemburg. The sword of Muctar was long preserved as a trophy, in the arsenal of Corfu, and disappeared while that island was occupied by the French. It is said that Ali offered a large sum for it. Muctar left three sons, of whom the youngest was named Veli, and was the father of the celebrated Ali Pacha.

The Albanians, it is well known, are a people wholly distinct from the Turks, of uncertain but probably of Sclavonian origin. A portion of them embraced Mahometanism, on the conquest of the country by the Turks, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but a portion also remained firm in their nominal attachment to the kind of christianity, which is capable of existing in a very barbarous and warlike region. Their local situation and lofty spirit had enabled them to hold a higher aspect toward the Ottoman government, than most of the conquered nations, and at the period at which the history of Ali Pacha begins, in the person of his grandfather, at the commencement of the eighteenth century, Epirus was divided into a great number of small cantons, nominally subject to two or three Pachas, but really possessed of a predatory and tumultuous independence. Muctar was at the head of a canton of this description, of which the town of Tepeleni was the capital, and he was possessed of a revenue of about three thousand dollars of our money; a considerable sum in that quarter, and in those days. Veli, the father of Ali Pacha, being the youngest of the three sons of Muctar, was expelled by his older brothers from his home, and his share in the inheritance, and reduced to take up the profession of a highway robber, an extremely reputable calling for a man of spirit in Albania, at the commencement of the last century. Having in this pursuit amassed a considerable sum of money, and attached to himself a strong band of kindred spirits, he found himself powerful enough, after a few years, to attack the town of Tepeleni, which was subjected to his elder brothers, and having succeeded in driving them to a wooden pavilion, he prudently set fire to it, and burned his brothers alive; an act of fraternal affection, which, according to Pouqueville, they would certainly have shown to him, had they been the conquering party.

Having thus engrossed the patrimony, and the lordship of the canton, Veli looked round for a matrimonial alliance, which might strengthen his interest, having then but one wife, and she a slave. He accordingly married the celebrated Kamco, daughter of one of the neighboring Beys, and a kinswoman of Kurd, the Pacha of Berat, a descendant of the illustrious Scanderbeg. Of this marriage were born, about the year 1740, our hero, Ali Hissas, whose name has gained a place in history, and Shaïnitza, his sister. They were still in their infancy, when their father Veli died, leaving them, with three older children of a former marriage, to the care of their widowed mother, Kamco. Pouqueville informs us, that he received these details from Ali Pacha himself.

On the death of Veli, the neighboring Beys, 'his natural enemies,' regarded a partition of his government among themselves as a matter of course, and began to put their forces in motion to take possession of Tepeleni and its dependent villages. Kamco, however, did not understand the law of nations in precisely the same sense, and quitted the harem to put herself at the head of the troops of her deceased husband. A petty war ensued between her and the neighboring Beys of Cormovo and Cardiki, in which Ali was early trained to the field. After a series of alternate successes and reverses in the course of this war, Kamco fell into an ambuscade, and with her youthful son Ali, and daughter Shaïnitza, was carried captive to Cardiki, an event connected with the most tragical occurrence, in the history of Ali Pacha. After enduring those indignities, in the most revolting excess, from which no age or sex is protected in the warfare of barbarous tribes; after suffering those outrages in her own person, and that of her youthful daughter, which left a sting never to be extracted, in the hearts of each, Kamco and her children succeeded in paying to the Cardikiotes the ransom imposed upon them, and were restored to liberty. Having already, it is said, secured to Ali the sole inheritance of her house, by poisoning her other sons, she devoted herself to educating him to be her future avenger.

Ali commenced his career, according to Pouqueville, at the age of fourteen, in stealing his neighbors' goats, and thus augmenting his property, at the expense of theirs. As it is in this way, that war is carried on upon the frontiers of bar

barous, not to say civilized nations, we are not disposed to deny that Ali made his debut in this way, nor can it be thought a great reproach on his military prowess, when he was yet but about fourteen years of age, that he was repulsed in a marauding attack upon the town of Cormovo. In one of his expeditions, being wholly without resources and deserted by his troops, he betook himself to the ruins of a monastery. While there musing on his prospects, he struck mechanically on the ground with his staff, and hearing a hollow sound, and meeting with resistance, he dug up with the end of his staff a casket filled with gold, with which he was enabled to raise a force of two thousand men, and return in triumph to Tepeleni. This anecdote was related by Ali himself to M. Vaudoncourt.

With the means thus obtained, Ali collected a formidable band of adherents, and began to evince a power and a spirit, which alarmed his neighbors. Kurd himself, the Pacha of Berat, the most powerful of the viziers of that quarter, took umbrage at the increasing forces of the youthful Ali, and sending a powerful army against him, surprised him and brought him prisoner to Berat. While his companions in arms were elevated to the scaffold, it was generally expected that Ali would share that fate. Being however a relation by marriage of Kurd, and at that time in the bloom of youth, and possessed of uncommonly insinuating manners, he succeeded in gaining the heart of the old Pacha, and was retained in his family, for some years, in a close but lenient imprisonment. At length the intreaties or intrigues of his mother prevailed, and he was released from his confinement and restored to the family domain of Tepeleni, where he remained tranquil till the death of Kurd, either protected against his enemies by Kurd's influence, or awed by his power. The season of inactivity, which he had passed in his confinement at Berat, appears to have subdued in some degree the effervescence of his youth. Instead of pursuing a predatory warfare against his neighbors, he enlisted, as occasion invited, with his dependent forces in their service, and thus gradually acquired influence, and a reputation among the Beys of Epirus. At the age of twenty four, he entered into a matrimonial connection, and espoused the daughter of Capelan, Pacha of Delvino, the beautiful, celebrated, and deeply lamented Emineh.

His new father in law was a man of a still more uneasy natural temper than himself, and with the project of rendering himself independent of the Porte, was engaged in an extensive system of brigandage and private warfare, the only mode of accumulating resources, and gathering and paying troops. Pouqueville tells us, that Capelan Pacha looked for a zealous cooperation in this policy from Ali his new son in law; but that the latter, too shrewd to labor in any cause but his own advancement, instead of cordially aiding the projects of Capelan, afforded him only an exterior and insincere cooperation, and privately denounced him to the Porte, as a dangerous subject; and succeeded by stimulating Capelan to new excesses, and then acting in secret as an informer against him, in bringing him to the scaffold. The reward, which Ali promised himself for all this perfidy, was the inheritance of his father in law's treasure. To this account of Pouqueville we object its purely gratuitous character. How could the French Consul be acquainted with the secret and treacherous informations given by Ali to the Turkish Court fifty years before? And knowing, as Ali did, the Turkish law, by which the property of a rebellious subject devolves to the Sultan, a law which actually went into operation on this occasion, what probability is there in the tale, that for the sake of this inheritance, to which he could not succeed, Ali denounced his father in law to the Roumeli Valicy, or Viceroy at Roumelia, and brought him, says Pouqueville, to the scaffold, a place, by the way, to which Pachas are not brought?

On the death of Capelan, his son in law Ali was disappointed in his desires to receive the appointment to the Pachalic of Delvino. It was bestowed on Ali, the Bey of Argyro-Castro, a strong town in the province; but that Ali Pacha was not heinously aggrieved at the disappointment may be inferred from the circumstance, that a marriage was soon contracted between Shaïnitza his sister and Ali, the new Pacha of Delvino. About this time the ancient Kurd died, and Ali Pacha aspired to the succession to the government of Berat, and the hand of the daughter of Kurd, between whom and himself a mutual passion had long existed. The latter, however, had in dying, bequeathed the hand of his daughter to Ibrahim Bey of Avlon, who also obtained the New Series, No. 17.

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