our guide having hinted to us the partiality of those gentry to reconnoitre at the approach of night. On the day following, a boat calculated for the purpose having been obtained, we, by dint of labour and aided by a guide, reached the neighbourhood of Rhodes. The ruins of this once celebrated country are still interesting to the attentive traveller, and afford objects worthy of inspection. It is now no longer a place of any note; although from its situation, and being in the country where wood is abundant for the construction of ships, it is well calculated for the purposes of commerce. The town is situated in the extremity of a promontory, extending to the eastward, precisely in the same spot occupied by the great city?' After having remained a considerable time in the bay of Marmorice, the fleet set sail on the 24th of February for Egypt. The landing on the 8th, and the battle of Alexandria on the 21st of March, have been very frequently described: but the public are much less familiar with the particulars of the intermediate and indecisive action that took place on the 13th. Both parties suffered considerably on that occasion; the loss on our side being owing not only to the superior artillery of the enemy, but to a necessity, on the part of our commander, to push forwards, and endeavour to obtain from the observation of his officers that knowlege of the country and of the force of the French, from which he felt himself debarred by the ignorance of the Turks, and the unfortunate deprivation of the engineers commissioned to that effect in the outset of the expedition. Major M. had been stationed with the division of troops left behind at Aboukir after the landing: On the evening of the 12th, orders were received for the greater part of the troops at Aboukir to move forthwith. These troops, reinforced by a battalion of marines, marched immediately at sun-set. After a long and very harassing march during the night, impeded as they were by a heavy and uncertain road, through a desert of sand, they at length reached the point of their destination. The marines, though unaccustomed to long marches, bore up with their usual firmness against the fatigues of the march. At midnight, I well remember the welcome appearance of the range of lights, discovering the position of the English army. Beyond these, with the intervening distance of half a league, the more extended line of the French, who had also fires along the whole of their position. Our repose here was of short continuance. At four in the morning, the whole of the troops were again under arms. The brigade, to which my regiment was attached, formed on this occasion the extreme left of the army. After the space of an hour, a heavy cannonade from the French line, which in the first instance was but feebly answered, announced to us the commence ment of the engagement. I had an opportunity of witnessing the advance and attack of the cavalry upon our right and center. In the mean time, my regiment, leading the brigade, received a smart salutation from the enemy's light artillery. We observed at the line of hills a brigade of six guns, supported by cavalry. These guns occasioned us some loss, but they did not think proper to relinquish their strong commanding position; and as the brigade advanced, they fell back, still keeping up a sharp fire. A singular instance of the correct firing of the French artillery occurred here. A shot from the guns above mentioned grazed the officer who carried the colours, and killed two men. The brigade were advancing rapidly; it was of course necessary to change the position of the guns; notwithstanding which, six shots successively killed or wounded men in the same company, which were immediately following the colours. 'On the right and center the battle soon took a favourable turn. The enemy abandoned about mid-day the line of hills. ' I perceived the English descending into the plains, advancing The left in open columns, and taking the route to Alexandria. wing, in the mean time, kept parallel with the line of march, and approached the canal of Alexandria and lake Mareotis. A point called the Green Hill, well known to the army in that country, was now occupied within range of the enemy's artillery. We suffered considerable loss here. The French army having about three o'clock in the afternoon re-occupied their positions and batteries on the heights of Nicopolis, now turned upon their pursuers, and poured into the long extended line of the English a tremendous shower of balls and grape-shot. My regiment lost twenty-seven men, without returning a single musket. The very commanding position of the enemy, supported by the garrison of Alexandria, the considerable reinforcements he had received, and the rapid approach of evening, induced the Commander of the Forces to suspend all further attack. The brigades received orders to halt, and soon afterwards fell back. At sun-set, the regiment filed into the space allotted for them in the second line in rear of the line of Sand Hills, held by the enemy the preceding evening.' He proceeds to relate in a few words the battle of Alexandria, and the subsequent march of his detachment to Rosetta and Rahmanie. The resistance of the French was not serious: but the annoyance experienced by the troops in so hot a climate was greater than persons accustomed to the enjoyment of a moderate temperature can possibly conceive. Incessant thirst, wretched lodging, mosquitoes and flies by day, aided by reptiles at night, all concurred to aggravate the sufferings of our countrymen, which became progressively greater as the heat of the season increased. The army remained some time at Amm-el-Dinar. Here the heat of the weather became excessive. The fatigue of the marches unbounded, and the pains of thirst insupportable. 'The The unhappy soldiers were seen rolling in the sand, and giving themselves up without hope, whilst the sun darted upon them its vertical and fiery rays. Times and circumstances were no respecters of persons. Every officer was equally exposed. The greater part of them carried their baggage, if such it might be called, in a knapsack slung over the shoulder; and on the arrival at the position for the night, lay down, if not employed on duty, in the sands or fields: in common with many others, I myself shared without intermission this lot, from the 8th of March, the day of our landing, until the occupation of Alexandria in the September following: during the whole of this period, I never experienced the least diminution of health. The dreadful southerly wind, called by the Egyptians the kamsin, or wind of fifty days, commenced at this period its fatal career. They prevail generally in the fifty days preceding and following the equinox. They are the winds of the desert, and are justly called poisonous, from the baneful effects they occasion to the human frame. It is difficult to form an idea of its excessive heat, or to calculate upon its destructive tendency. After a day spent under the burning rays of the sun, and worn down with a long and toilsome march, the wearied soldier expected some little repose at the approach of evening. It was in vain that he cherished this pleasing hope. Instead of cool and refreshing breezes, the deadly blast of the kamsin assailed him, and prevented the necessary repose. It may be said to resemble the confined air of an oven. It produces a change on all animated bodies, affects immediately the lungs, and causes pain. The skin also becomes parched and dry: no quantity of water drank by the unhappy sufferer produces perspiration, and it is in vain to seek for coolness.' The poor Arabs were seen terrified, and running about in groupes, throwing themselves into the Nile, where they remain for many hours; others shut themselves up in their houses, and dug pits in the earth. If the traveller in the desert should be overtaken with one of the squalls of wind which sometimes happen, a suffocation and sudden death are inevitable, . Even the camels and horses have a mode to resist this horrible enemy, by putting the nose into the sand during the squall; nature has pointed out to them the necessity of thus defending themselves.' The kamsin is more or less felt in the island of Cyprus, and of Rhodes, but passing as it does over a considerable portion of the Mediterranean, its violence is somewhat alleviated by the coolness of the waters. I have experienced it in Minorca, and in Gibraltar in the latter place, it is generally called an easterly wind or levanter: it is extremely oppressive on that rock; and during its continuance, totally changes the nature of the climate. When When the winds proceed alone from the Deserts of Arabia and Lybia, their force is at its extreme height. The air which covers these immense plains, meeting with neither lakes, rivulets, nor water of any description, but always scorched by the rays of a burning sun, and the reflexion of the sand, becomes naturally more arid and destructive. This naturally accounts for its insupportable power in the latitude in which we then were; namely, so very contiguous to the deserts above mentioned.' With the exception of the passages which we have quoted, the volume contains very little that is interesting, being made up (see pp. 180. et seqq.) of extracts from the intercepted letters of French officers published long since in our newspapers, or of repetitions of common-place remarks on the climate and situation of Egypt. -The Major's regiment being ordered towards the Straits at the end of the campaign, he makes a few very cursory observations on Malta, Sicily, Minorca, Gibraltar, and finally on the neighbouring part of Spain; and he concludes his memoir with an account of the dreadful epidemic or pestilential fever which caused such mortality at Gibraltar in the year 1804. As a composition, this little volume is extremely defective, the quotations (as in p. 220.) being generally incorrect, and the descriptions abounding in inelegancies; and Major M. has evidently allowed too long an interval to elapse before he published his account, so that the remnant of information that he had to communicate was scarcely worthy of the press, at least in a separate form; however suitable it might have been to fill the columns of a magazine, or to make an appendage to some larger work on the subject. - MONTHLY CATALOGUE, FOR OCTOBER, 1816. POETR Y. Art. 13. The Festival of Flora. A Poem. With Botanical Notes. 12mo. pp. 60. Sewed. Sharpe. 1815. A rigid censor of the taste of the age might quote, in support of his remonstrances, the frivolity of such poetical effusions as that which is now before us, and the encouraging reception which they have experienced from the public. The antient apologue, he might allege, pointed at least to a moral lesson: but the inferior animals are now exhibited as busied with fashionable balls and routs; even shrubs and flowers must mingle in the dance; and, ere long, we may expect to hear it announced that the Diamond has issued cards to all the gems and precious stones, for an at home, at Golconda. All this may appear abundantly childish; and yet, testy REV. OCT. 1816. P and and cynical as we are sometimes reputed to be, we feel conscious of no disposition to animadvert on those nuga canora which have in any degree contributed either to unknit our own brows, or to allure the young, the gay, or the fair into the delightful paths of natural science. The prose-notes, at all events, usually administer some pleasing or striking instruction; and the verses may be quietly permitted to hang out as an elegant decoy to the temple of philosophy. 6 The following lines,' says their author, were written for the amusement of a very young lady, who permits me to record in them only her Christian name. The spot in which the scene is laid, and which I have attempted briefly to describe, is the summer-residence of her family; a place which, while it owes many of its charms to the bounty of nature, and more to the taste of its possessor, is endeared to me by the recollection of my boyish recreations, by reminding me of kindness which I have uniformly experienced, and of friendship which I hope long to enjoy.' The plan of this little piece of badinage is neither complex nor unnecessarily protracted: yet the nature of the subject would have easily admitted, and, from such a lively and amusing pen, the public would have more than tolerated, a greater multiplicity both of incident and episode. - The Goddess Flora, determined not to be surpassed in splendour and gaiety by the beasts and birds, intimates to all her loving subjects, through the intervention of the Rose, her royal will and pleasure to celebrate a ceremonious gala on the 30th of June; and the Rose, "nothing loth," charges her messengers, the Gnomes and Sylphs, with a bundle of invitations to the principal families of the garden and the field. With joy and alacrity, most of them accept the honour, and make suitable preparations for the assembly: But some-would you think it?-declined to be gay, The stately old ALOE, an alien born, And brought from afar the parterre to adorn, "Twould be long ere he hoped such a scene to partake in, MIGNONETTE had long felt herself drooping, indeed But would join in a dance by the light of the moon. This rhyme would be more allowable on the north side of the Tweed. The |