Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 10, 2025
Of traveller authors, he preferred "the accurate Burckhardt." He read with delight Boswell's Johnson, Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands, Renan's Life of Jesus, Gibbon, whom he calls "our great historian" and the poems of Coleridge. At Cowper he never lost an opportunity of girding, both on account of his Slave Ballads and the line: "God made the country and man made the town."
Burckhardt remained at Aleppo from September, 1809, to February, 1812, pursuing his studies of Syrian manners and customs, and of the language of the country, with but one interruption, a six months' excursion to Damascus, Palmyra, and the Hauran, a country which had hitherto been visited by Seetzen only.
Peter's Chair without simony and amid general applause, and with him ceased, at all events, the undisguised traffic in the highest offices of the Church." Other writers in plenty have suggested this, but none has quite so plainly and resoundingly thrown down the gauntlet, which we will make bold to lift. That Dr. Burckhardt wrote in other than good faith is not to be imputed.
Latterly we have seen this ardour united with the highest genius, the most comprehensive knowledge, and the rarest qualities of perseverance, prudence, and enduring patience. This generation will not leave behind it two names more entitled to the admiration of after ages than Burckhardt and Humboldt.
The vast Sala della Palla, where the dukes and their courtiers indulged in their favourite pastime of "pall-mall," which Burckhardt calls the classic game of the Renaissance, was decorated with frescoes by the best artists of Pavia or Cremona, representing fishing and hunting scenes.
Leaving Damascus in 1813, Burckhardt visited the Dead Sea, the valley of Akâba, and the ancient port of Azcongater, districts which in our own day are traversed by parties of English, with their Murray, Cook, or Bædeker in their hands; but which then were only to be visited at the risk of life. In a lateral valley, the traveller came upon the ruins of Petra, the ancient capital of Arabia Petræa.
It still showed brilliant flashes of attack, but its defence was poor, especially against Brooks's smashing questions on the Italian influences in Milton's shorter poems. Harvard made its principal gains against Burckhardt, who simply could not solve Winship's posers from Ben Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher.
Foremost in the ranks of the governments which organized and encouraged exploring expeditions we find as usual that of England. It was in Central Africa, the vast riches of which had been hinted at in the accounts given of their travels by Hornemann and Burckhardt, that the attention of the English was now concentrated.
Within these very few years, some valuable notices have been received, through M. Burckhardt, and Mr. Kosegarten of Jena, of Ibn Batouta, an Arabian traveller of the fourteenth century. According to M. Burckhardt, he is, perhaps, the greatest land traveller that ever wrote his travels. He was a native of Tangier, and travelled for thirty years, from 1324 to 1354.
But we have given sufficient extracts to induce the reader who desires further information respecting the manners and customs of the Arabs, which have not changed, to refer to the book itself. Upon the 21st of April, 1815, Burckhardt joined a caravan which conducted him to Yembo, where the plague was raging.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking