صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

ADVERTISEMENT

TO THE

FOURTH EDITION.

INTELLIGENCE has lately reached the author of a transaction connected with the FIRST PART of these Travels, which is so highly honourable to the individual whom it concerns, and to the SOVEREIGN whom he represented, that it is hoped every one, interested in the character of the British Nation in foreign countries, will be gratified by its insertion. It was conveyed in a Latin letter from the Capital of the Don Cossacks, written by Colonel ALEXIUS PAPOF, president and director of all their scholastic institutions; to the following purport.

Sir GORE OUSELEY being upon his return from Persia, where he had resided in his capacity of British Ambassador to the Court of the Shah, came to the Cossack Capital. Here he despatched a messenger to Colonel Papof, inviting

that officer to his presence. Upon the Colonel's arrival, Sir Gore Ouseley proceeded to state, that, "as the Representative of a British Sovereign, he conceived it to be his duty to acknowledge the disinterested hospitality shewn by the Colonel, and by the Cossacks in general, to those English travellers who had visited Tcherkask; and therefore he begged to bestow upon his family such a mark of his gratitude as it was then in his power to offer." Having accompanied this declaration with a handsome present, Sir Gore further gratified his guest, by translating, from this work, all those passages which related either to himself, or to his countrymen; until the worthy Cossack, as he is kind enough to confess, "shed tears of delight."

In relating a circumstance of this nature, an author may easily be credited when he professes himself not to be more indifferent to the honour thereby conferred upon his work, than to its general success'; but no author will

(1) Notwithstanding a ferocious attack made upon it in an American Review, it has passed through Three Editions in that country. The Agents for the Russian Government caused the article which appeared in the American Review, said to be written by a Russian, to be reprinted, and inserted in one of the minor Journals of England. An

allusion

be so sensibly affected by the encouragement he receives, as one who is conscious of witnessing, in the favourable reception shewn to his writings, the triumph of truth. Having every reason to be convinced that they have outlived the opposition made to them, in consequence of the description given of the Russians, he now confesses that, when he published the FIRST PART of his Travels, he was not politician enough to be aware of the clamour it was likely to excite. In shewing that his testimonies concerning this people coincided with those of the most reputable writers who had gone before him, he thought he had fulfilled an obligation

allusion to the Foreign Editions of this work having been introduced, the author cannot avoid noticing a French Translation of it, published at Paris in 1813, in three volumes octavo; because it is accompanied by Notes, said to have been inserted under the surveillance of Buonaparte. Those Notes are evidently intended to persuade the Russian Government of the bad policy of an alliance with Great Britain: the writer, perhaps, not being aware that this alliance is not so much a matter of choice, as of necessity. French Notes explanatory of the text of an English author are sometimes highly diverting: of this we have an instance in a Note, of the Edition now mentioned, upon the words "purlieus of St. Giles's;" which the French translator explains, by saying that they signify Certaines terres démembrées des forêts royales, et sur lesquelles le propriétaire a droit de chasse." Voy. tom. I. p. 163. Note (1) du Traducteur. Paris, 1813.

[ocr errors]

66

(2) Even the eulogists of the Russian Government might be cited to prove that the condition of the people does not differ from the account given of it in this work. "The peasantry," says Mr. Eton, look upon the monarch as a divinity; styling him (Zemnoi Bog) GOD OF THE EARTH." (See Eton's Survey of the Turkish Empire, p. 433.) It

remained

to the public. Leaving, however, this point to be decided by his adversaries; and their harmless opposition, to the inevitable fate of all political struggles, fitted only to serve the interests of party; and, moreover, being called upon for a Fourth Edition of the particular portion of his work against which so much hostility was levelled; he has nothing more to say of it, than that it is, at length, printed in a more commodious form, and with every attention to accuracy which repeated revision has enabled him to bestow.

remained for Mr. Thornton (Present State of Turkey, vol. II. p.99. Note. Lond. 1809) to shew what were Mr. Eton's real sentiments concerning the Russian Government; by contrasting the observations he made after the death of CATHERINE, with those which he had before published. "Two years," observes Mr. Thornton, "after writing an eulogium on the Russian Government, Mr. Eton wrote his Postscript; though both were published together. The Empress CATHERINE was then dead; and then we are told, "that IT IS TIME THE VOICE OF TRUTH SHALL BE HEARD."-"It is only in foreign politics," says Mr. Eton, "that she (CATHERINE) appears great: as to the internal government of the (Russian) Empire, a most scandalous negligence, and a general corruption in the management of affairs, was visible, in every department, from Petersburg to Kamchatka."

Cambridge, Jan. 1. 1816.

« السابقةمتابعة »