BARTLETT'S GLEANINGS ON THE OVERLAND ROUTE. * ALTHOUGH the Annuals themselves
are almost extinct, the genial feelings that gave them their extraordinary popularity in days of yore require a supply of gift-books for the season; and indications are abroad that the demand will be met. The first afield in this way, though in an unintentional manner, is Mr. Bartlett ; who has added a fourth volume on Malta, Gibraltar, and Granada, to his previous works on Jerusalem, the Desert, and the Nile. With a passing trip to the ruins of Carthage, he thus completes the Mediterranean in .its non-European aspect (always excepting the British force) ; the whole forming either separate subjects or a continuous series. The characteristics, however, that adapt it for a gift-book, are the numerous illustrations, the popular treatment of the text, and the tout ensemble of the volume : it does not appear that the author designed it for anything else than a volume for all seasons.
The peculiar literary power of Mr. Barlett is the faculty of bringing a scene before the reader with almost literal exactness yet without fatiguing the attention. Many writers can describe with more or less felicity, but they treat their subjects as literary artists, and leave out whatever weakens the impression : they aim at pictures, not portraits. Mr. Bartlett goes beyond portraiture. He not only endeavours to produce the scene, but the plan also ; and he accomplishes his endeavour. The reader of the present volume, for example, will have as good a general idea of Malta as if he had studied the topography. The training of the artist enables Mr. Bartlett to select those things that give the distinguishing charac- ters of the scene, as a happy knack of describing enables him to paint it in words. And the draftsman very materially assists the writer on the present occasion. A glance at the little map of Va- letta, with the " bird's-eye view " beneath it, instantly impresses upon the mind the form and features of that singular port and city ; while an examination or occasional reference enables the reader to follow the tourist as if he knew the place. Gibraltar is displayed with more elaboration, and with as much distinctness, but from the complicated nature of the ground without the instan- taneous impression of Malta. The more directly pictorial illustra- tions of particular spots, as in some of Mr. Bartlett's other works, form a portion of the litera scripta, and are not mere " pictures " put there. In fact, this author shows how pictorial representa- tion and literature may be combined together so as to give interest to both in a greater degree than has yet been practised. It cannot, however, be done by the mere mechanic or compiler; both must be conceived with reference to each other and to the whole.
The literary topics of Gleanings on the Overland Route are the show places, sights, antiquities, and history of Malta and Gibral- tar ; a voyage from the former to the latter, including a call at Tunis • and a journey from Gibraltar to Granada via. Malaga and Alhan;a. None of these subjects are very new, but Mr. Bartlett gives them an air of freshness by the peculiar treatment we have spoken of, and by his really attractive style. At the same time, it is well in a certain sense that he has arrived at the end of hie subject. The siege of Malta by the Turks after Vertot, and of Gibraltar after Drinkwater, however cleverly abridged and repro- duced, and however interesting in themselves, are too well known to form features in a book of mark.
The author's primary object, besides that of producing an attrac- tive volume, was to furnish for the Mediterranean portion of their j voyage an assistant to those who make the overland journey to In- dia; and a general guide to those who may take advantage of the present facilities to visit Gibraltar, the Spanish cities in its vicinity, and Malta. The screw-steamers from Liverpool carry a first-class passenger to Gibraltar for twelve pounds, and thence to Malta for ten pounds. Where the money is no particular object, a person can hardly do better towards the middle of autumn, or in the early spring, than vary his excursions by this trip ; returning overland through the Continent. The wonders of military and na- val art are exhibited at both places to an extent unsurpassed else- where. Malta has various historical associations, and more curi- osities and antiquities than the hurried voyager ever sees. Gibraltar, besides its own natural wonders, and being a good head-quarters for rambles or excursions into gpain, exhibits an approach to Tro- pical vegetation, without the inconveniences and dangers of the Tropics. It would be worth while going thither for its public place, the Alameda, alone. "The public buildings of Gibraltar may be despatched in a few words. There is not (save the old Moorish castle, which shall be noticed presently) a single edifice of the slightest pretensions to architectural beauty or anti- quarian interest. But for the sentinel at the door, one might pass the Go- vernor's palace without ever suspecting it. It is, in fact, nothing but an old Spanish convent, more spacious than externally appears, and possessing a good garden, which, by the taste and labours of its successive tenants, has been rendered a little oasis, full of verdure and beauty. The principal church is a vulgar attempt to imitate Moorish architecture ; an utter and deplorable failure. But as soon as we pass through this stuffed up, uninter- esting town, and issue out at its Southern gate, the contrast is positively magi- cal. We are at once upon the Alameda—perhaps the most beautiful, but at all events the most singular public promenade within the confines of Europe, or perhaps in the whole world. An open space, extending from the sea-wall to the base of the almost perpendicular rock, formerly called the "Bed Sands," has been levelled, serving as a ground for parading and exercising the troops ; a walk, well shaded, runs round three sides of it; and on the • Gleanings, Pictorial and Antiquarian, on the Overland Route. By the Author of " Forty Days in the Desert." Published by Hall and Virtue. other, or Southern extremity, begins an ornamental garden, with intricate winding walks carried ingeniously, as far as practicable, up the face of the mountain, and furnished with alcoves and seats planted in the moat shady and inviting nooks. Let the reader fancy himself reposing in one of these, and he will behold the bare and rugged precipices of the rock towering to a height of a thousand feet over his head, while around km is a perfect para- dise of semi-tropical vegetation, a miniature Brazilian forest; huge clusters of aloes and enormous cactuses, thickets of odoriferous geraniums of every dye, orange-trees, bearing at once the white blossom with the clustering fruit, grey rustling olives, matted together by flowers and minute creepers, starting from between the fissures of the crags. Below is the broad esplan- ade, upon which some regiment is exercising, or the military band sending forth its animated strains. In the assembled crowd, the white turban and crimson robe of the Moor, looking on with quiet interest, contrasts with the familiar costume of the English mammas and nurses, with their rosy charge ; beyond is the broad blue bay studded with shipping—the opposite mountains of Spain ; while across the strait appear the more distant and solemn ranges of Africa, extending to Tangier and the dimly-seen Atlantic Ocean. Cer- tainly the Alameda of Gibraltar more than atones for the unavoidable defi- ciencies of the town."
The ruins of Carthage is a brief sketch ; but what is there to be seen save thorough rum ?
"Stepping out of the walled enclosure, the eye ranged over the whole ex- tent of Carthage. The plain, the shores of the inland lake communicating with the sea, and probably the original harbour, everywhere bear traces of the site of buildings; deep and dangerous vaults yawn beneath the feet of the careless traveller, and fragments of walls and oclumus arc embedded in a luxuriant growth of wild flowers. Our afternoon was wearing away as we descended to the borders of the sea. The beach of Carthage ! it is one of those places that, like the Colosseum of Rome or the ruins of Thebes, tower up in the memory of a traveller above a host of inferior spectacles. Here, however, it is not the monumental grandeur, but the utter desolation of what was once so great and renowned, that powerfully affects the mind. For more than two miles we followed the shore, everywhere lined with the continuous ruins of the buildings of the city, huge blocks of which, of a sort of conglomerate formed by the mixture of mortar and pebbles, are strewed upon the soil, intermingled with reefs of rock, and marble columns, and fragments half embedded in the sand ; while over what seem to be the trace!, of piers as well as the foundation-walls of buildings, the waves broke grandly, sometimes covering us with spray as we climbed over soine jutting fragment, while their melancholy monotone kept up an incessant requiem over this scene of fallen magnificence."
Mr. Bartlett appears to be a sensible Liberal ; but he casually mentions an instance which illustrates the arrogant bigotry of-the Popish priesthood. Till Queen Adelaide erected St. Paul's Church, the Protestants had only "a wretched and confined chapel within the walls of the palace " as a place of worship. "It must not be supposed, however, that this building [Queen Adelaide's church] was erected without every opposition from the bigotry of the Catholic priesthood of Malta, particularly rampant on this occasion. They almost ventured to bully and threaten the Government, and did all that, without committing themselves, they could do, to excite the prejudice/1 of the popu- lation. So long as the English Protestants almost continued, as at Rome, to conceal their worship, they sullenly put up with them ; but this open esta- blishment of their heresy was more than their pious bile could bear. Since that period some of the more fanatic of their body have endeavoured to in- sist upon the use of the offensively unchristian expression the dominant religion, in all the public statutes; and at the period of our visit the news- papers were full of a controversy on this subject. That the maintenance of the Catholic Church, as the established religion, was one of the conditions of the cession of Malta to the British, is, we believe, the fact ; nor has any set of the Government hitherto belied their promise ; but this gratuitous and disgusting attempt to fix an insult and a stigma upon the religion of their masters, has, we believe, been very properly repelled by a decision of Parlia- ment."
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