Timbuctoo, and all parts of the interior of Africa. Now, Mr. Buckingham concludes, that as many of these pilgrims come for trade as well as for religion, they must bring something there, and take away an equivalent in return. He suggests, therefore, that if the warehouses of Birmingham or Manchester could be only emptied in this great centre of intercourse, that the pilgrims would each carry away to their respective places of abode, some commodity of British manufacture, which is far superior, in cheapness and excellence, to any thing that could be found in their own country. Thus they would act as so many radii from the centre of a circle, and would carry over all the parts of the Eastern world samples of British goods, for which they would soon spread a taste, and excite a demand. This would be a beginning; and the next step would be the establishment of a commercial house at Mecca, to which British goods could be consigned, when there is little doubt that a great increase of trade would be the consequence, and British manufactures would make their way where they never had been before heard of. In adverting to the humanizing influence of trade in softening the prejudices, and refining the manners of barbarous countries, Mr. Buckingham mentioned a curious anecdote of a Mahometan, a native of Fez, who had visited Gibraltar, whom he met in a voyage in the Red Sea, where he (Mr. B.) was disguised as a follower of Mahomet, speaking their language, wearing the dress, and having a long beard, three years old. This person, though a zealous disciple of the Prophet, was liberal in ideas, and had no objection to a little free discussion. Mr. Buckingham began the conversation, by asking him whether he thought the fast of Ramadan, which is not like our fast in Lent, that freely admits an indulgence in many rare luxuries, such as salmon and turbot, &c., with lobster-sauce, but a strict fast from sun-rise to sun-set, during which the worshippers eat nothing, nor so much as smoke a pipe. Mr. B. asked him if he thought this fast indispensable to the Mahommedan reiigion; he replied that he did. Then, said Mr. B., the Prophet could not have intended his religion to have been universal all over the world. Why so? said the young man. Because, said Mr. B., there are certain parts of the world where it would be impossible to observe it, for the sun does not set for six months. The young man stared, and was incredulous; but Mr. B., constructing a globe, demonstrated the fact in such a manner as left him in no doubt, when he freely admitted that the Prophet could not have been aware of this fact, or he would not have promulgated his creed; and from that moment, the spirit of inquiry being set afloat, his faith was much shaken; and in place of making the pilgrimage of Mecca, which was his first intention, he sneered at the idea, and after transacting his business at some of the towns in the Red Sea, he returned to his own country, with impressions very different from those with which he had left it; and Mr. Buckingham mentioned this fact to shew how inevitably the free intercourse

of trade tended to pave the way for the accomplishment of higher than even commercial objects, how it tended to break down superstitious prejudices, and to diffuse other and better notions in their stead.

Mr. Buckingham concluded his third lecture last night to a more crowded audience than he has ever had. Not being previously known in this city, he was not so numerously attended at first as might have been expected; but as his merits become known, a greater interest is excited, and we have little doubt that his hearers will still increase. The room last night was quite crowded, and it was with difficulty that seats could be procured. His discourse on Palestine, Syria, &c., was, like all the others, equally amusing and instructive.'

From The Edinburgh Observer,' July 17.

We noticed briefly, on Tuesday, the commencement of this gen. tleman's lectures on the Eastern World. Since then we have been twice to hear him; and, on the whole, have derived a very considerable degree of pleasure from his labours. Mr. Buckingham's name has, for several years past, been of note in the literary circles; he is, perhaps, the greatest traveller, as a meter of miles, alive at this moment; and to crown all, the stout battle he has fought with the East India Company, has given him somewhat the character of a political martyr. Before saying any thing of his lectures, we shall abridge, for the information of our distant readers, the sketch of his life, travels, and political and literary labours, which is now in circulation among his auditors at the Hopetoun Rooms. The reader, the better to understand his pilgrimages, would do well to peruse our abridgment with a good map of the world before him. At the early age of nine years, Mr. Buckingham embraced, with the most enthusiastic ardour, the maritime profession; and embarked in one of his majesty's packets for a foreign station. Before he completed his tenth year he was captured, and, as a prisoner of war, passed several months in confinement at Corunna, after which he was marched, with other companions in misfortunes, a distance of many hundred miles, barefoot, through Spain and Portugal, from Corunna to Lisbon. Subsequently he visited other countries in the same profession, and obtained a maritime command at the age of twenty-two. In this capacity he performed several voyages to the West Indies, the two Americas, and the Mediterranean Sea, including Gibraltar, Malta, the Greek Islands, and Smyrna in the Levant. In 1813, having resolved to abandon the sea, and settle as a merchant in Malta, he sailed from London for that island; but, on his arrival, found it devastated by the plague, in consequence of which his speculation failed, and he proceeded to Alexandria, in Egypt, to look for fresh sources of enterprise.

Here he obtained the notice and attention of Mahommed Ali, the present ruler of that country, who had just begun to appreciate the advantage of encouraging the settlement of intelligent Europeans in his territories. With Mahommed Ali he spent a very considerable portion of his time instructing and explaining, with the assistance of a set of Arrowsmith's charts, the relative positions and productions of various countries. From Alexandria he proceeded to Cairo; and from thence ascended the Nile into Nubia, beyond the cataracts, where almost total blindness, arising from a long and severe ophthalmia, prevented him from penetrating farther. On his descent, he halted at Keneh, and crossed the desert to Kosseir, on the shores of the Red Sea, in the course of which journey he encountered a body of mutinous soldiery of the Egyptian army, returning, in a state of revolt, from Kosseir, by whom he was stripped, plundered, and left nearly naked on the barren waste. Nevertheless, he succeeded in reaching Kosseir, from whence, finding it impossible to proceed further in that direction, he retraced his steps back to Keneh, on the Nile. Descending the Nile to Cairo, he from thence traversed the isthmus of Suez, and visited every part of Lower Egypt, and the Delta, habited as an Egyptian, speaking the language, and mixing freely with the people of the country. At this period the English merchants resident in Egypt proposed to him to undertake on their account a voyage to India, by way of the Red Sea-partly to ascertain the practicability of its coasting navigation by English ships, and partly to learn whether the merchants of India were disposed to renew the commercial intercourse which formerly existed between India and Egypt. He set out for Suez accordingly, with a vast caravan of pilgrims bound to Mecca, and proceeded from thence to Jedda and Mocha, and ultimately to India. His mission to the Indian merchants was unsuccessful; and he then bethought himself of turning his attention to some maritime or mercantile speculation in India itself. In accordance with this desire, he was appointed to command a new frigate just launched at Bombay for the Imaum of Muscat, an independent Arab Prince, who had commissioned her for a voyage to China. Scarcely however was he invested with this command, when the government of Bombay intimated to him, that having arrived at India without license or authority, he should ship himself forthwith for England. All his efforts to obtain a mitigation of this harsh, but legal degree, were unsuccessful. The authorities at Bombay admitted at once that he was an intelligent man, and likely to prove a useful agent in that quarter; but the orders of the Court of Directors in England were too peremptory to be departed from. Mr. Buckingham then returned to Egypt by a second voyage through the Red Sea; and, in the course of time, was again empowered by the British merchants at Alexandria, to act as their envoy in a second commercial mission to Bombay, and

also as the Ambassador of Mahommed Ali. Previous to setting out on this expedition he took care to procure from England the license necessary to qualify him to become a resident in British India. He left Alexandria, by sea, in the close of 1815, landed at Bairout, in Syria, proceeded by Tyre, Sidon, Acre, and Jaffa, to Jerusalem; was compelled, by the disturbed state of the country, to traverse nearly the whole of Palestine, and the countries east of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, the Hauran, and the Decapolis ;reached Damascus ;-passed several weeks in the agreeable and hospitable society of Lady Hester Stanhope ;-visited Baalbeck, Lebanon, Tripoli, Antioch, the Crontes, and Aleppo. From thence he proceeded into Mesopotamia; crossed the Euphrates at Bir; visited Orfah, the Ur of the Chaldees, and Edessa of the Greeks, near Haran, the birth-place of Abraham the Patriarch; journeyed to Diarbekr, or the Black City, in the heart of Asia Minor: from thence to Mardin on the mountains; and the great Desert of Sinjar to Moosul on the Tigris ;-inspected the ruins of Nineveh, Arbela, Ctesiphon, and Seleucia; made extensive researches on the ruins of Babylon, identified the Hanging Gardens and the Palace, and discovered a portion of the ancient wall; ascended to the summit of the Tower of Babel, now still erect in the Plain of Shinaar, and at length reposed in the celebrated city of Bagdad, on the banks of the Tigris. After a short stay there he proceeded into Persia, crossing the chain of Mount Zagros, and going by Kermanshah to Hamadan, the ancient Ecbatana; Ispahan; the ruins of Persepolis; and byShiraz and Shapoor to Bushire. At this port he embarked in an East India Company's ship of war, bound on an expedition against the Wahabees, the Arab Pirates of the Persian Gulf: visited their Port at Ras-el-Khyma; went on shore with the commodore of the squadron, and acted as his Arabian Interpreter; assisted afterwards in the bombardment of the town, and finally reached Bombay at the end of 1816, having been nearly twelve months in performing this long and perilous jonrney. The issue of his second mission to Bombay was not more successful in bringing about the wished-for trade between India and Egypt than his first; but he resumed the command of the Imaum of Muscat's frigate, in which he sailed for the Persian Gulf; and after visiting Muscat and Bussorah, returned, with a successful result, to Bombay. From hence he proceeded down the coast of Malabar, touching at Tellicherry, Calicut, Mahee, and Cochin; Colombo and Point de Gaile, in Ceylon; up the coast of Caromadel, touching at Covelong, Madras, and Bimlipatam; and at length reached Calcutta in June, 1818. Here he found orders from the Imaum directing the frigate to proceed to the coast of Zanzibar, in Africa, to give convoy to several vessels there engaged in procuring slaves, a service which he declined, and by doing so resigned his command. Having met with much attention from people of distinction in India, he yielded to their solicita

tions, and agreed to undertake the editorship of a public journal in Calcutta. In three years he brought this paper to produce a net profit of 8000l. per annum. The Marquis of Hastings, who was then Governor-General, cordially approved of the independent manner in which the "Calcutta Journal" was conducted, but the more bigotted adherents of the Company's system regarded him with the utmost distrust, and spared no efforts to procure his arbitrary banishment from India. The Marquis, however, scorned to do an oppressive act, and while he remained at the head of affairs, Mr. Buckingham found that he had a shield between him and the exercise of arbitrary power; but no sooner had Lord Hastings quitted India, than his temporary locum tenens, Mr. Adam, made no secret of his intention to banish the editor of the obnoxious Journal from India, as early as possible. This made "Buckingham grow circumspect;" but a Presbyterian minister, Dr. Bryce, whose name is not unknown in this country, having entered the lists against him as a political adversary, and received, as a reward for a very virulent attack on him, an office of some emolument under Government, of which we have also heard something in Scotland, Mr. Buckingham was induced to play off a little wit against him and his patrons, and for that small fault he was instantly sent out of the country, and returned to England, with all his prospects blasted. Since then he has been one of the most Herculean labourers in the vineyard of literature. He has established several political journals, -and, filled with a spirit of hostility towards the East India Company, which is identified with his existence, he has rendered all of them more or less subservient to the subversion of its power. He is now, we need scarcely state, making a circuit of the British isles, for the avowed purpose of preaching a crusade, if we may employ such a term, against the Leadenhall monopoly; and to render his prelections palatable to all classes, he garnishes them with rich geographical descriptions of those Oriental lands which he wishes to redeem from moral and commercial barbarism.

Having been thus particular in regard to the adventures of Mr. Buckingham, we shall now speak of his appearance in our city. In his lectures on Arabia and Palestine, the two at which we were present, he stated very little that is not familiar to every intelligent reader; but at the same time, what he did state was so happily expressed and so agreeably illustrated by personal anecdotes, that we believe every body in the room was heartily sorry when he brought them to a close. We were in particular greatly struck with his picture of Damascus-than which nothing oral could be more graphic and enchanting; and it recurred to us repeatedly, that were such a man to devote himself entirely to delineating the face of the earth by word of mouth, he would do more to advance geographical knowledge than all the professors in Britain. It is Mr. Buckingham's object to draw attention to the Eastern world, and of course he paints,