We cannot avoid presenting our readers with the following Eastern character, as drawn by Mr Burckhardt.

The principal among them, and who became the head of our mess, Hadji Aly el Bornaway, had travelled as a slave-trader in many parts of Turkey, had been at Constantinople, had lived a long time at Damascus, (where many Tekayrne serve as labourers in the gardens of the great), and had three times performed the Hadj: he was now established at Kordofan, and spent his time in trading between that place and Djidda. His travels, and the apparent sanctity of his conduct, had procured him great reputation, and he was well received by the Meks and other chiefs, to whom he never failed to bring some small presents from Djidda. Although almost constantly occupied, (whether sitting under a temporary shed of mats, or riding upon his camel on the march), in reading the Koran, yet this man was a complete bon vivant, whose sole object was sensual enjoyment. The profits on his small capital, which were continually renewed by his travelling, were spent entirely in the gratification of his desires. He carried with him a favourite Borgho slave, as his concubine; she had lived with him three years, and had her own camel, while his other slaves performed the whole journey on foot. His leathern sacks were filled with all the choice provisions which the Shendy market could afford, particularly with sugar and dates; and his dinners were the best in the caravan. To hear him talk of morals and religion, one might have supposed that he knew vice only by name; yet Hadji Aly, who had spent half his life in devotion, sold last year, in the slave market of Medinah, his own cousin, whom he had recently married at Mekka. She had gone thither on a pilgrimage from Bornou by the way of Cairo, when Aly unexpectedly meeting with her, claimed her as his cousin, and married her: At Medinah, being in want of money, he sold her to some Egyptian merchants; and as the poor woman was unable to prove her free origin, she was obliged to submit to her fate. The circumstance was well known in the caravan, but the Hadji nevertheless still continued to enjoy all his wonted reputation.' pp. 364-366.

There is a striking description of a storm in the desert, at p. 385, and another very pleasing picture of the scenery, in emerging from the desert into a rich scene of cultivation, p. 367.

The principal articles from Egypt through Berber to Shendy, and so on to Sennaar, Kordofan, and Darfour, are the sembil and mehleb, the former a perfume and medicine, Valeriana celtica, the other a condiment, the fruit of a species of tilia. In addition to these are imported soap, sugar, beads, coral, paper and hardware. The returns from the south and south-eastern parts of Soudan to Egypt, through Berber and Shendy are, grain, gold, (of which latter article the principal market is Raselfil, a station in the road from Sennaar to Gondar, four days from the former), ivory, musk, ebony, leather, coffee, fruit, honey,

and, above all, slaves. The account of the internal African slave trade is full and interesting. Mr Burckhardt calculates the number of slaves sold annually in the market of Shendy at about five thousand; of whom 1500 are for the Egyptian, and 2000 for the Arabian market,-the rest for the Bedouins, who live near the Red Sea, and for Dongola. Those brought to Shendy by Kordofan and Darfour merchants, are from idolatrous countries, from 20 to 40 days south of Darfour. The treatment of slaves is accompanied with the usual circumstances of horror and atrocity. The great manufactory which supplies all European, and the greater part of Asiatic Turkey, with the mutilated guardians of female virtue, is at a village near Siout, in Upper Egypt, chiefly inhabited by Christians. The operators are two Coptic Monks. According to the most moderate calculation, the number of slaves actually in Egypt is 40,000. During the plague, in the spring of 1815, 8000 slaves were reported to the Government to have died in Cairo alone. The number of slaves imported from Soudan to Egypt bears, in the estimation of this traveller, a very small proportion to those kept by the Mussulmans of the southern countries. The Atlantic slave trade he considers as quite trifling to that carried on in the interior; the only cure of which will be the improvement and civilization of the Negro, and the cultivation of those arts which will render him the rival, rather than the prey, of his Mussulman neighbour. Superstition commonly debases and degrades mankind; but, at first, it in some instances contributes to their civilization. In the most despotic countries, the power of the priest is often the only check to tyranny. The Uhlenia in Turkey is a power which the Grand Signior is forced to respect. Two Fakeers, says Mr Burckhardt, conducted the caravan in safety through districts inhabited by ferocious tribes, whom it would have been impossible, without the sanction of their sacerdotal presence, to have approached.-The country people came in crowds to kiss their hands as the caravan passed, alarmed lest the Fakeers, from any absence of customary respect, should withhold the due supplies of rain, and curse their Jands with barrenness.

A dreadful picture is drawn, in these Travels, of the Africans: they are treacherous, false, vindictive, intemperate, cruel; marked with every vice which can degrade the human character. Mr Burckhardt lived long among them; had great means of observing; and appears to be in general so moderate, and guarded in his assertions, that his statements necessarily obtain credit. It must, however, be observed, that he always appeared among the Africans as a very poor man.-A mendicant who was to

travel from Northumberland to Kent, and was to run the gauntlet of jailors, constables, and justices, would not, perhaps, form the most exalted notions of the English character. Not the least interesting account is that of the pilgrims' route, who, from every part of Africa, hasten to perform their religious duties at Mecca. From Darfour, Sennaar, Kordofan, Bergamee, Borgoo, and every part of Soudan, true believers hasten to the tomb of the Prophet; and to secure for themselves that distinction which always characterizes those who have performed this great duty of the Mahometan faith.

In the Appendix is given an Itinerary from the frontiers of Bornou, by Bahr el Ghasal and Darfour, to Shendy, as collected from an intelligent Arab at Mecca. All reports agree that there is a great fresh-water lake in the interior of Bornou; the name of the lake is Nou, and from it the country derives its name, the Land of Nou. In this Itinerary, the river Shary is alluded to, as big as the Nile. Among the Negro tribes, the greatest is the tribe of Fellata. They have spread across the whole continent; and one of them whom Mr Burckhardt saw at Mecca told him, that his encampment, when he left it, was in the neighbourhood of Timbuctoo. The Fellata have attacked and pillaged both Bornou and Kashna. Upon, the celebrated question respecting the Niger, this work contains little or no information, except vague assertions of the natives, that the Nile and the Niger are the same river. On this subject it is surely better to wait for further information, than to build up dull theories of geography, which can confer no fame on the author, and convey neither amusement nor instruction to the reader,

ART. VI. Memoirs of RICHARD LOVELL EDGEWORTH, Esq. -Begun by Himself, and concluded by his Daughter MARIA EDGEWORTH. 8vo. 2 vols. London, 1820.

T HOUGH we have as much veneration for the name of Edgeworth, as for any that graces our modern literature, we confess we thought two octavo volumes rather more than could be required to tell all that the public would care to know of the individual who is here commemorated; and took up the book with some prepossesion against that lavish scheme of biography, by which both great and small names in our history have been lately overlaid. On the whole, however, though we still think the book a good deal too long, we have been agreeably disappointed; and can safely recommend it as being, on the whole, very entertaining, and containing much more than the usual

But she did not quit the place. The mount was called Fairy-Mount, since abbreviated into Fir mount. From which the Abbé Edgeworth took his ordinary name of M. de Firmont.' I. 11-13.

The son of this prudent couple was not much better.

Colonel Francis Edgeworth, besides being straitened in his circumstances, by having for many years a large jointure to pay to his mother, was involved in difficulties by his own taste for play; a taste which, from indulgence, became an irresistible passion. One night, after having lost all the money he could command, he staked his wife's diamond ear-rings, and went into an adjoining room, where she was sitting in company, to ask her to lend them to him. She took them from her ears, and gave them to him, saying, that she knew for what purpose he wanted them, and that he was welcome to them. They were played for. My grandfather won upon this last stake, and gained back all he had lost that night. In the warmth of his gratitude to his wife, he, at her desire, took an oath, that he would never more play at any game with cards or dice. Some time afterwards, he was found in a hay yard with a friend, drawing straws out of the hayrick, and betting upon which should be the longest ! -As might be expected, he lived in alternate extravagance and distress; sometimes with a coach and four, and sometimes in very want of half a crown.' I. p 16, 17.

The learned reader will easily discover the originals of some of Miss Edgeworth's characters in those sketches of her ancestry. The following probably suggested the first idea of Castle Rackrent.

About this time, one of our relations, a remarkably handsome youth of eighteen or nineteen, came one day to dine with us; my father was from home, and I had an opportunity of seeing the manners of this young man. He was quite uninformed; my mother told me, that he had received no education, that he was a hard drinker, and that notwithstanding his handsome appearance, he would be good for nothing. Her prediction was soon verified. He married a woman of inferior station, when he was scarcely twenty. His wife's numerous grown-up-family, father, brothers, and cousins, were taken into his house. They appeared wherever any public meeting gave them an opportunity, in a handsome coach with four beautiful grey horses; the men were dressed in laced clothes after the fashion of those days, and his wife's relations lived luxuriously at his house for two or three years. In that period of time, they dissipated the fee-simple of twelve hundred pounds a year, which, fifty years ago, was equal at least to three thousand of our present money. The quantity of claret which these parasites swallowed was so extraordinary, that when the accounts of this foolish youth came before the chancellor, bis lordship disallowed a great part of the wine-merchant's bill; adding, that had the gentleman's coach horses drunk claret, so much as had been charged could not have been consumed. This wine-merchant, however, obtained a considerable portion of the poor young man's estate,

in liquidation of the outstanding debt. The host had for some time partaken of the good cheer in his own house; but disease, loss of appetite, and want of relish for jovial companions, soon confined him to his own apartment, which happened to be over the dining parlour, where he heard the noisy merriment below. In this solitary situa tion, a basin of bread and milk was one day brought to him, in which he observed an unusual quantity of hard black crusts of bread. He objected to them, and upon inquiry was told, that they were the refuse crusts that had been cut off a loaf, of which a pudding had been made for dinner. This instance of neglect and ingratitude stung him to the quick; he threw the basin from him, and exclaimed, "I deserve it." To be denied a crumb of bread in his own house, where his wife's whole family were at that instant rioting at his expense, "quite conquered him." He never held his head up afterwards, but in a few months died, leaving a large family totally unprovided with fortune, to the guidance of a mother, who kept them destitute of any sort of instruction. I. 37-39.

"When only seven years old, Mr E. received his first bias to mechanical studies from the kindness and patience of an old gentleman, who showed him the construction of an orrery and other instruments. He was also, he assures us, a prodigious dancer and hunter before he was fifteen; and at sixteen went through the ceremony of marriage with a young lady-he says entirely in sport-but under such circumstances as induced his father to institute a suit in the Ecclesiastical court for annulling those imaginary nuptials. Soon after he went to Oxford, where he seems to have conducted himself with great propriety. The following anecdote, like most of those he has remembered, is very much to his credit.

During the assizes at Oxford, the gownsmen are or were permitted to seat themselves in the courts. In most country courts there is a considerable share of noise and confusion; but at Oxford the din and interruption were beyond any thing I have ever witnessed; the young men were not in the least solicitous to preserve decorum, and the judges were unwilling to be severe upon the students. A man was tried for some felony, the judge had charged the jury, and called on the foreman, who seemed to be a decent farmer, for a verdict. While the judge turned his head aside to speak to somebody, the foreman of the jury, who had not heard the evidence or the judge's charge, asked me, who was behind him, and whom he had observed to be attentive to the trial, what verdict he should give. Struck with the injustice and illegality of this procedure, I stood up and addressed the judges Wills and Smith. My Lords, said I"Sit down, Sir," said the judge." My Lord, I request to be heard for one moment. -The judge grew angry." Sir, your gown shall not protect you, I must punish you if you persist. "By this time the eyes of the whole court were turned upon me; but feeling