which Donne compares the joy administered by 'the servants of God' in the holy Sacrament, comparing himself, the preacher, to the sad and doleful bellman that waked you before and, though but by his noise, prepared you for their music.'

But such interest as things of this kind give is of course only incidental. The essential interest is that of the sermons themselves as sermons. I have spoken of their wonderful persistence or continuity and compared it to the never-ceasing pursuit of wave by wave in the sea. But it may perhaps be even more fitly compared to the windings of a great river which again and again seems to be losing itself or turning back towards its source, as Donne's thoughts constantly return upon and correct their predecessors; and yet, as the river in spite of his windings is all the while making sure way to the sea, so Donne, when he is really himself, never forgets the goal to which he is conducting us and never fails to set us safely there before he ends.

All this may be seen, not merely in the complete text of the sermons, but even in Mr Pearsall Smith's selected passages, especially in the longer extracts such as that entitled 'Reason and Faith.' They illustrate the extraordinary fullness of Donne's mind, quotation following upon quotation, fancy upon fancy, argument upon argument, and often, one must confess, conceit upon conceit. He sometimes makes his modern readers regret his power of visual and physical imagination, for his favourite subject for its exercise is that of the body after death.

But the greatest of the gifts which give him his high place among the masters of English prose is his sheer eloquence. There are few more splendid flights in any language than that famous outburst on Eternity which is an oasis is an otherwise dull and pedantic sermon.

'A state but of one Day, because no Night shall over-take, or determine it, but such a Day, as is not of a thousand yeares, which is the longest measure in the Scriptures, but of a thousand millions of millions of generations: Qui nec præceditur hesterno, nec excluditur crastino, A day that hath no pridie, nor postridie, yesterday doth not usher it in, nor tomorrow shall not drive it out. Methusalem, with all his hundreds of yeares, was but a Mushrome of a nights growth, to this day, And all the foure Monarchies, with all their

thousands of yeares, And all the powerfull Kings, and all the beautifull Queenes of this world, were but as a bed of flowers, some gathered at six, some at seaven, some at eight, All in one Morning, in respect of this Day. In all the two thousand yeares of Nature, before the Law given by Moses, And the two thousand yeares of Law, before the Gospel given by Christ, And the two thousand of Grace, which are running now, (of which last houre we have heard three quarters strike, more then fifteen hundred of this last two thousand spent) In all this six thousand, and in all those, which God may be pleased to adde, In domo patris, In this House of his Fathers, there was never heard quarter clock to strike, never seen minute glasse to turne.'

And the great passage in the sermon on the death of James I, strange as the language used about him sounds to modern ears, does not come very far behind this in beauty.

But it must not be supposed that Donne, who, like Bossuet, is greatest when he has death for his subject, treats death always and only as the destined doom of all men, the inevitable end of our business and our pleasures, the gate of judgment, the King of Terrors. If those who listen to him are most commonly filled with trembling and awe, his voice also knows the way of consolation. He is a Christian preacher, and does not forget that, awful as death must always be, to a Christian it has a forward look as well as a backward. The Collect for Easter Eve prays that through the grave and gate of death we may pass to our joyful resurrection'; and thousands of sermons have been preached on that thought and with those familiar words in the preacher's mind. Is there one which contains a passage more beautiful than that which is here entitled The Gate of Death,' and which begins with that sad and curious picture, to which I have already alluded, of the place of execution as the first thing man saw in those days as he drew close to a town? There are greater things in the book. But there is nothing which in a small space shows more of the characteristics of Donne: the beauty of his thought and also its curiousness; his mingling of the life of his day with the life of eternity; his vivid directness and actuality; the Latin sentences which he scatters about his English with such surprising felicity; Vol. 233.-No. 463.

Ꮓ

the ease and abundance of it all, which yet never affects its clarity; the note of sincerity and truth, of an individual and personal voice, which neither his art nor his learning ever long conceal. It shall be my last quotation, and I shall do best to end with it, without adding any more words of my own.

'As he that travails weary and late towards a great City, is glad when he comes to a place of execution, becaus he knows that is neer the town; so when thou comest to the gate of death, glad of that, for it is but one step from that to thy Jerusalem. Christ hath brought us in some neerness to Salvation, as he is vere Salvator mundi, in that we know, that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world: and he hath brought it neerer than that, as he is Salvator corporis sui, in that we know, That Christ is the head of the Church, and the Saviour of that body: And neerer than that, as he is Salvator tuus sanctus, In that we know, He is the Lord our God, the holy One of Israel, our Saviour: But neerest of all, in the Ecce Salvator tuus venit, Behold thy Salvation commeth. It is not only promised in the Prophets, nor only writ in the Gospel, nor only seal'd in the Sacraments, nor only prepared in the visitations of the holy Ghost, but, Ecce, behold it, now, when thou canst behold nothing else. The sun is setting to thee, and that for ever; thy houses and furnitures, thy gardens and orchards, thy titles and offices, thy wife and children are departing from thee, and that for ever; a cloud of faintnesse is come over thine eyes, and a cloud of sorrow over all theirs; when his hand that loves thee best hangs tremblingly over thee to close thine eyes, Ecce Salvator tuus venit, behold then a new light, thy Saviours hand shall open thine eyes, and in his light thou shalt see light; and thus shalt see, that though in the eyes of men thou lye upon that bed, as a Statue on a Tomb, yet in the eyes of God, thou standest as a Colossus, one foot in one, another in another land; one foot in the grave, but the other in heaven; one hand in the womb of the earth, and the other in Abrahams bosome; and then vere prope, Salvation is truly neer thee, and neerer than when thou believedst, which is our last word.'

JOHN BAILEY.

Art. 6.-THE LEVANT COMPANY AND ITS RIVALS.

་

1. State Papers: Turkey' and 'Levant Company' MSS. Public Record Office.

2. Historical Manuscripts Commission: Ninth Report, Part II (1884); Thirteenth Report, Part II (1893).

3. The Present State of the Ottoman Empire. By Sir Paul Ricaut. 6th Ed., 1686.

4. The State of the Turkey Commerce considered from its Origin to the Present Time. By Sir James Porter (in Observations on the Religion, Law, Government and Manners of the Turks. 2nd Ed., 1771).

5. Une Ambassade française en Orient sous Louis XV: La Mission du Marquis de Villeneuve (1728-1741). By Albert Vandal. Paris, 1887.

6. Les Voyages du Marquis de Nointel (1670-1680). By Albert Vandal. Paris, 1900.

7. Voyage en Syrie et en Egypte pendant les années 1783, 1784 et 1785. By C. F. Volney. Paris, 1787.

And other works.

·

THE formation of a new company for the extension of British trade in the Near East is an event welcome to those who have been lamenting the decline of our commerce with that part of the world; but it also possesses a wider interest for the student of England's history. The new Levant Company' represents an attempt to revive, in a modern form, one of our oldest mercantile enterprises-to link up, as it were, the 20th century with the days of Queen Elizabeth, when the original association of that name first saw the light. The birth of that association and its earlier history were related in a recent number of this Review. Here it is proposed to sketch briefly its fortunes through the ensuing two hundred years.

The whole of the 17th century was for English commerce generally a period of steady progress; and in this development the 'Merchants of England trading into the Levant Seas' bore a leading part. Year after year their ships went forth, laden with the cloths of Worcester and

'The English in the Levant.' By Horatio F. Brown. The Quarterly

Review,' October 1918.

Gloucester, kerseys of Hampshire and York, tin of Cornwall, lead-to mention only the principal articles-and returned home bringing in exchange the silks of Persia and Syria, the mohairs of Angora, the cottons and cotton yarn of Smyrna, besides many other commodities of less value. In the time of James I the trade with Turkey was described as one of the most profitable to the nation, and it grew still more important during the earlier part of Charles I's reign. It received a check from the Civil Wars, which distracted Englishmen at home and threw into confusion their 'factories' abroad, but it recovered under the Commonwealth, attaining the height of its prosperity in the years that followed the Restoration.

From the statements of contemporary writers, and even more authoritatively from the Company's own books, preserved at the Public Record Office, it is easy to trace the stages of this growth. But the best criterion is supplied by the figures of exports-especially of woollen goods, the staple commodity of England. According to an official account, in the six years 1666-1671 the total of cloths exported to the Levant amounted to 82,032 pieces; in the next six years (1672-1677) it rose to 120,451; and in a petition to Parliament dated March 27, 1678, the Merchants boasted that they had advanced the consumption of broad-cloth in Turkey from 14,000 or 15,000 to 24,000 or 25,000 pieces a year. After that date exportation fell below the annual average of 20,000 pieces; but it must be noted that now the cloths were one-fourth more in length than formerly and one-third more in value. Translated into terms of money, all the exports to Turkey in the middle of Charles II's reign represented over half a million pounds a year-a very considerable sum at a time when the whole of England's export trade was estimated at little more than two millions.

The gains accruing to the persons engaged in this trade are less easy to compute. It is said that the ordinary returns of the Levant Company at the beginning of the 17th century were three to one on the investments; but, if such a golden age ever existed, it did not last long. Towards the end of the century a Turkey Merchant was content with a profit of between 12 and 20 per cent. on his capital. However that may be, it is beyond doubt that Englishmen trading with