ssions,
however, lead us to suppose that Mr Paton's tour may have had reference
to objects which do not appear on the surface of the narrative, this
mysterious silence may not be without good reasons; and we shall deal
with him, accordingly, simply as a traveller in a hitherto untrodden
track, which we hope, erelong, to see more fully explored. Mr Paget, we
believe, is now a naturalized denizen of Transylvania: cannot he find
leisure for an excursion across the Save?

Mr Paton announces himself, in the title-page, as the author of a work
entitled "The Modern Syrians," with which it has not been our good
fortune to meet; but from the conclusion of which we presume the thread
of the present narrative is to be taken up, as he presents himself,
_sans ceremonie_, on the pier of Beyrout, preparing to embark on board
an Austrian steamer for Constantinople:--"I have been four years in the
East, and feel that I have had quite enough of it for the present." On
the third day they touched at Rhodes, "a perfectly preserved city and
fortress of the middle ages, with every variety of mediaeval
battlement--so perfect is the illusion, that one wonders the warder's
horn should be mute, and the walls devoid of bowman, knight, and
squire." Though these ancient bulwarks of Christendom, within which the
White-Cross chivalry, under d'Aubusson and L'Isle-Adam, so long
withstood the might of the Osmanli, are thus briefly dismissed, Mr Paton
immediately after devotes five pages to some choice flowers of
Transatlantic rhetoric, culled from the small-talk of one of his
fellow-passengers, whom he calls "an American Presbyterian
_clergyman_"--though we grievously suspect him to have been a boatswain,
who had jumped from the forecastle to the pulpit by one of those
free-and-easy transitions not unusual in the "free and enlightened
republic." At Smyrna, he signalized his return to the "land of the
Franks," (which we had always imagined to be Europe,) by ordering a
beefsteak and a bottle of porter, and bespeaking the paper of a
Manchester traveller in drab leggings--and we at last find him safe in
Constantinople. For all that concerns the city of the Sultan, he
contents himself with referring his readers to the volumes of Mr
White--and certainly they could not have been left in better hands; and
so, "after a week of delightful repose," during which he was greatly
indebted to the hospitality of the embassy, "I embarked on board a
steamer, skirted the w