for their education. He spoke our language very well, and seemed disposed to render every attention in his power to our countryman. Among other useful points of information, he told Mr. Fraser that Gheelan was ruled by two princes, the most rapacious governors in the kingdom, and that the elder of them was then absent at Tehran, whither he was summoned to answer the complaints of the Ghelanees against him, and to account for a large defalcation in the revenues of the province. It is surprising that a people so amply protected by the nature of their country as the Ghelanees should submit so tamely as they do to the oppression and rapacity of which they are the daily victims. That part of their territory which is subject to the crown of Persia extends along the south and south-western banks of the Caspian, from the western boundary of Mazunderan to the banks of a small stream called Ashtara, forming a tract not quite two hundred miles in length. Since the early part of 1813, the northwestern part of the province, including the place of Lankeroon, has been in possession of the Russians. A considerable part of the province is mountainous, and occupied by hordes of wild clans, who are active, patient of fatigue, brave, and devoted to their chiefs, but treacherous, cruel, and rapacious towards all other persons. The district which they possess is called Talish, and they are described by the author as for the most part spare, raw-boned men, of robust though not tall frames, with countenances not unlike the Highlanders of Scotland.' The town of Resht like Astrabad is enveloped by trees: it has neither the comfort nor neatness of Balfroosh. The bazars, however, are extensive, clean, and well kept. The beggars are numerous and importunate, many of thein are affected with leprosy, and most of them opium-eaters. We cannot pass over the author's amusing description of the religious mendicants. Of another description, and very different in character, were the fakeers and dervishes, or religious mendicants. These impudent but often amusing vagabonds practised largely their expedients for levying contributions on the purses of the multitude. Some, fantastically dressed in tattered robes, and caps ornamented with flowers and feathers, or still more wildly wreathed with their own matted and twisted locks, ran in groups about the bazars, vociferating, in the cant of their caste, "Yah Alee! Huk! Huk!" and clamorously demanding charity. Others, seated in booths or corners, sold charms against all diseases, and magic tusbees or rosaries, and pieces of clay brought from Mecca or Kerbela to be used in prayer. Others, again, confiding in their known celebrity, sat quietly coiled up in their dens by the wayside, attended by some of their disciples, beholding with a satirical grin, or with imperturbable and abstracted gravity, the bustling scene before them; while the numerous dupes of their fancied wisdom poured in their tribute of presents in return for the councils or instruction received from the pious hypocrites. All these scenes afforded much amusement, and rendered the bazars of Resht always an interesting lounge.' - pp. 150, 151. The staple produce of Gheelan is silk, for which Resht is the chief mart, and one of the most considerable entrepots on the Caspian for exchanging the commodities of Persia with those of Astrakan. Its population is estimated at about eighty thousand. Towards the latter end of May, Mr. Fraser had made his arrangements for quitting it, and was actually on his way out of the town, when, in consequence of an express just arrived from Tehran, he received an order from the young Prince to suspend his journey until the return of the elder Prince, which was expected in twelve or fourteen days. This order appears to have originated in a false report which had reached the elder Prince at Tehran, representing Mr. Fraser as a Russian spy. This blunder caused him a world of uneasiness. He feared that his life was in danger; and as the return of the elder Prince was protracted from time to time, it was perfectly natural that a stranger, situated as Mr. Fraser was, should make use of every means in his in order to effect his escape. power Several chapters are occupied in detailing the projects formed by the author for accomplishing his purpose, the adventures in which they engaged him, his recapture by one of the Talish clans, the cruel treatment which he experienced from that barbarous race, and his forced return to Resht, where he was compelled to wait the arrival of the elder Prince. A miserable apology was made to him for the misrepresentation to which he was indebted for his sufferings, and at length he was allowed to take his departure for Tabreez, which he reached about the middle of July. Here he found that Mr. Willock the envoy had already quitted Persia, and was then on his way to England, in consequence of an insulting message that was sent to him by the King concerning certain arrears of subsidy which His Majesty peremptorily demanded. Tabreez, the capital of Azerbijan, the most important province of Persia, has been so often described that it is unnecessary to detain the reader with any account of it. It has really little remarkable about it, except that it was the favourite residence of Zobeide, the wife of that Haroun-alRaschid, who cuts so conspicuous a figure in the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments." After remaining here for some weeks, Mr. Fraser returned by way of Tefflis and Odessa to Vienna and England. The work concludes with an appendix, which contains two very able and useful papers. The first is occupied with geological observations on certain parts of Persia, and the second with an account of its commerce, which the want of space alone prevents us from noticing more in detail. ART. X. Memoirs of the Court of Henry the Eighth. By Mrs. A. T. Thomson. 2 Vols. 8vo. 17. 8s. London. Longman and Co. 1826. THESE HESE Volumes belong to a department of historical literature which we now appear to have gallantly resigned, by common consent, into the hands of our accomplished fair. The memoirs of courts, with their appurtenances of contemporary manners, amusements, ceremonies, costumes, and fashions, present many pleasing and elegant points of enquiry; and we know no branch of authorship which may more appropriately occupy the leisure, or better display the polished taste, of a lady of intellectual pursuits. The success with which such subjects have lately been treated by more than one of our literary countrywomen may justify this opinion. Miss Aikin's Memoirs of the courts of Elizabeth and James I. are really spirited and valuable episodes in the history of manners, literature, and character; and Miss Benger's Lives of Mary Queen of Scots, of Anne Boleyn, and of Elizabeth Stuart, if less full and finished productions, are still all entitled to a respectable rank among the records of royal biography and courtly scenes. To these names we have now to add with pleasure that of the lady whose volumes are before us. The history of the court and of the reign of Henry VIII. may be divided under several heads, each either of grave importance or amusing curiosity, and all of them therefore fully meriting regard and attention. In the varying aspect and progress of English manners, the first half of the sixteenth century was a peculiar and remarkable epoch. In that age the martial uses of chivalry were adorned with the highest splendour of pomp and pageantry; and among the youthful nobility of England, the stern spirit of the ancient knighthood was already blended with the softened influence of intellectual taste. The flowers of literature were wreathed around the sword and the lance; the preux chevalier learned to indite a sonnet, while he still broke a spear, in his lady's cause; and, as our historian of chivalry has justly remarked, its character in this age began to partake more of a passion for poetical and romantic sentiment than it retained of its strictly original qualities. The devotion of the knight to his mistress was often no more than a poet's dream. The state of English society was undergoing a rapid change from the absence of all mental cultivation to eager aspirations after refinement and improved civilisation. Nor was this state of transition confined only to manners; it pervaded and characterised every thing in the same age,―literature, religion, arts, and arms. From Italy our well-travelled ancestors had already imbibed both a keen relish for the classical learning of antiquity, and a taste for the allegorical and romantic numbers of Ariosto. The thirst of knowledge had already been excited; the inspiration of poesy was awakened; and the reign of Henry VIII. was the dawn of that era, which burst forth into its full flood of meridian glory before the close of the century. The King himself, perhaps, was more skilled in polemical divinity and scholastic subtilties than in the mystery of the gayer sciences. But he was not without poetic taste; and if one wretched ballad, of undoubted authenticity, which is still extant, may entitle him to the name, he was also a poet. His court may certainly be characterised in some measure as a school of letters. It was graced by the presence and the amorous lays of Lord Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt. It was there, too, by Henry's special command, that the admirable work of Froissart was translated by a soldier and a courtier, who was himself a worthy exemplar of the knightly character; and that English version of the great chronicle of chivalry, by John Bourchier, Lord Berners, remains to attest the fact that, for vigour and raciness of expression, and for picturesque richness of style, our language had even then attained a strength and beauty which its more polished maturity has scarcely surpassed. But, for the advancement and encouragement of severer studies, the age and the court of Henry VIII. have much higher associations. Learning never found a more munificent protector than Wolsey. Here, whatever were his political faults and vices, the great Cardinal most worthily employed the "full blown dignity" of his power. Ever witness for him Those twins of learning that he raised in you, Of the names which figure in this early age of our literature, the scholar need scarcely be reminded; Erasmus and Sir Thomas More, who might of themselves confer dignity and interest on any age; Dean Colet, the learned and virtuous founder of St. Paul's school; Linacre, also, the common associate of all these illustrious spirits, the first man who raised medicine into a science in England, and by whose counsel the King gave a legal incorporation and protection to the faculty, and founded the College of Physicians; Lillye, the celebrated grammarian; Cranmer, Tonstall, Pace, and Latimer, all eminent in theology. This pleasing interest which attaches to the age of Henry VIII., in its connection with the history of manners and literature, does not extend to the political and ecclesiastical transactions of his reign. It was indeed the epoch which marked the first secure establishment of the great kingdoms of Europe in their durable form, and in which the principles of international politics began first to be understood and practised. But there is nothing in this period to which the English student can recur with satisfaction and pride. The selfish vanity of Henry was gratified by the flattering and delusive title of arbiter of the balance of power; but the fancied ascendancy which he enjoyed in the affairs of Europe was never exercised either for the national dignity or advantage. His reign was a period of no glory, and it would be impossible to trace, in his capricious and vacillating administration, a single stroke of enlightened policy or statesmanlike wisdom. Place his foreign measures in comparison with those of his illustrious daughter, and he sinks to his true level of a selfish and brutal tyrant, insensible to the honour of his country and his people, and differing in no respect from the ignorant and barbarian despots of the darkest ages. The government of Elizabeth was sufficiently absolute, but its arbitrary temper was at least redeemed in the eyes of her subjects by a thousand concomitants of national grandeur and public happiness: under the jealous and merciless yoke of Henry, the internal aspect of the kingdom presented only the unrelieved picture of degrading and abject servitude. Every spark of the freedom which the parliament had asserted and won in the fourteenth century, and which, favoured by the doubtful title of our first Lancastrian princes, might have appeared to be securely established, had been extinguished in the sanguinary wars of the rival Roses. Throughout the whole reign of Henry, he knew no other law than his own furious and unresisted passions; and, if our whole history had corresponded to the spirit of this reign, we should have little cause for pride in tracing our national ancestry to the nobles and the people who crouched under so despicable a slavery, and consented to hold their properties and lives at the mere beck of a master, at once so impatient, unrelenting, and atrociously cruel. On the ecclesiastical history of the time the mind must dwell with much more feeling of repugnance than satisfaction. It is written in characters of blood. Here we have the disgraceful spectacle of a whole nation subjecting their consciences and their reception of eternal truths to the will of an intolerant despot, whose judgment was at the same time ferociously bigoted and absurdly inconsistent. We find the Catholic and Protestant parties alternately the victims and sport of his cruel violence; nor was the degradation of even the most vigorous spirits wanting to complete this shameful picture of national subserviency. Contradictory articles of belief, imposed at the capricious pleasure of the royal polemic, were abjectly subscribed to by the very men who, but a few years after, encountered a yet more bloody persecution, and sealed the sincerity of their opinions with their blood. A single glance at all these topics of various and opposite interest which belong to the reign of Henry VIII. will sufficiently show the nature and extent of the labour which Mrs. Thomson has imposed upon herself. In one point of view, the difficulty of treating her subject was much increased for a female pen. The memoirs of the court of Henry VIII. must, of course, exhibit his domestic life; and this, bared in all its grosser circumstances, would be little more than a tale of sensuality and indecency. The |