IN

GREECE, PALESTINE, EGYPT,

AND

BARBARY,

DURING THE YEARS 1806 AND 1807.

BY F. A. DE CHATEAUBRIAND.

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH

BY FREDERIC SHOBERL.

PHILADELPHIA:

PUBLISHED BY MOSES THOMAS,

No. 52 Chesnut-street.

James Maxwell, Printer.

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE volume here submitted to the public, is the last performance of a man, whose works, though less known in this country than they deserve to be, have gained at home a greater share both of applause and animadversion than those of perhaps any living writer. His Atala, or the Amours of Two Savages in the Desert, and a short extract from his great work Genie du Christianisme, which appeared under the title of a Demonstration of the Existene of God, are the only part of his writings that has hitherto been laid before the English reader. Les Martyrs, ou le Triomphe de la Religion Chretienne, which may be onsi dered as his master-piece, yet remains wholly unknown here; though repeated editions of each of these performances evince the celebrity which they have acquired in France.

It was the latter that furnished occasion for the present Tour. When we behold an author, for the sake of a close adherence to truth and nature, quitting his native land, and exposing himself in once classic, but now barbarous countries, to every species of fatigue, hardship, and danger, at the expense of his fortune and his health, merely that he may give a faithful portraiture of the scenes which he has chosen for a work of fiction; it is impossible to withhold our admiration of the ardour and enthusiasm which alone could suggest the idea of such an enterprise, and communicate the fortitude and energy requisite for its accomplishment.

Such, as we are informed by M. de Chateaubriand himself, was the sole motive for these Travels, the journal of which, though not originally intended for publication, will, unless I am mistaken, excite a considerable degree of interest in various classes of readers. The scholar and the man of science will ac

company his steps, with feelings of mingled pleasure and pain, through some of the most renowned regions of antiquity; the Christian will follow him with devotion in his pilgrimage to the scenes hallowed by the presence and the miracles of the Divine Founder of his religion; the artist will find studies ready sketched to his hand; and the general reader will be delighted with the variety of information, the adventures, and the reflections alternately sublime and pathetic with which this volume is interspersed; while a tinge of melancholy which pervades all the works of this writer, a grandson of the illustrious M. de Malesherbes, and which may doubtless be ascribed to the domestic calamities that his early life was destined to experience from a sanguinary revolution, will assuredly not diminish the interest arising from the perusal.

With respect to the translation I shall merely observe, that I believe it will be found as free from imperfections as the very short time allowed for its execution will admit. A tolerably copious Index, which is not in the original, will, it is hoped, prove an acceptable addition.

London, October 3, 1811.

F. SHOBERI..

PREFACE.

If I were to assert that these Travels were not intended to see the light; that I give them to the public with regret, and as it were in spite of myself, I should tell the truth and probably nobody would believe me.

My tour was not undertaken with the intention of writing it; I had a very different design, and this design I have accomplished in the Martyrs. I went in quest of images and nothing more. I could not behold Sparta, Athens, Jerusalem, without making some reflections. Those reflections could not be introduced into the subject of an epopee; they were left in the journal which I kept of my tour, and it is these that I now submit to the public. I must, therefore, request the reader to consider this work rather as memoirs of a year of my life, than as a book of travels. I pretend not to tread in the steps of a Chardin, a Tavernier, a Chandler, a Mungo Park, a Humboldt; or to be thoroughly acquainted with people, through whose country I have merely passed. A moment is sufficient for a landscape-painter to sketch a tree, to take a view, to draw a ruin; but whole years are too short for the study of men and manners, and for the profound investigation of the arts and sciences.

I am, nevertheless, fully aware of the respect that is due to the public, and it would be wrong to imagine that I am here ushering into the world a work that has cost me no pains, no researches, no labour; it will be seen, on the contrary, that I have

Les Martyrs, ou le Triomphe de la Religion Chretienne, in 3 vols. 8vo. published by the author about two years ago.