Opera. Pietro l'Eremita, 13-Cleopatra Kent East Indiaman, Narrative of the Loss Paris, letters from, by Grimm's Grandson, La Vision, par Mademoiselle Delphine L'Honnet Homme et le Niais, 140. Le Plus beau Jour de ma Vie, translation Le Roman Comédie, par M. de la Ville, Legalle, M. de, description of, 96. Louis XII. et Francois I., par M. le Comte Mandement de M. Cardinal Croy, ac- compagne par une Refutation par M. Martine, M. de la, his Meditations, 135- Dernier Chant de Childe Harold, 136, Modern Athens, the, 490-politics of 498 -No. V. Beranger's Chansons Nouvelles, - Le Charletanisme, notice of, 285.-Le. No. VII. en -Mr. Colburn's letter to the John Bull Register, Theatrical, 89, 301, 478, 618. Royal Academy, Exhibition of, 256. Science, News of, 147. Scraps from the Correspondence of a Senior Wrangler, continuation of Struggles Severoli, Cardinal, his boldness, 329—is Shares in the principal Canals, &c. prices of, 156, 315, 485, 620. Smith, Rev. Sidney, his speech on the 537. 614. Mathews at the English Opera House, University Intelligence, 150, 310, 479. Quarterly Review, No. LXIII, 437-The Refinement, Man of, 120-Ryder, Hon. Vers prononces a St. Genevieve, par 283. Vigne, M. de la, his character as a poet, Wedding, the, 217. Austria, 550—of Hungary, 551-of the Works imported by Bossange and Co. Works, projected, list of, 153, 313, 482, Works published during the month, list of, Wright's Life of Richard Wilson, Esq. THE LONDON MAGAZINE AND REVIEW. MAY 1, 1825. MR. W. BANKES AND MR. BUCKINGHAM. MR. BUCKINGHAM has lately published a volume of Travels among the Arab Tribes of the East of Syria and Palestine, to which he has appended a bulky collection of documents relating to a most extraordinary literary quarrel" between himself and Mr. Bankes, the member for the University of Cambridge. The circumstances of this dispute are such as to involve the moral reputation of the parties in question in the gravest manner-either the one or the other is guilty of a series of wicked and complicated frauds—either the one or the other is a specimen of the meanest, if not the basest, of his species. The ample materials supplied by Mr. Buckingham's Appendix enable us to give a sketch of the charge and the defence. Mr. Buckingham's sad want of condensation and arrangement makes this the more necessary. He is afflicted with an abominable incapacity of retention, and seems to imagine that every thing that can be said should be said, and that every thing which has been written should be repeated. His account of the transaction is one eternal recitation of documents, and reiteration of charges and arguments. The real case lies in a nutshell. Mr. Buckingham's love of original instruments fortunately supplies all the necessary documents on each side. In the year 1816, Mr. Buckingham, being at Alexandria, undertook a journey to India by land, partly to be the bearer of a treaty of commerce, drawn up between Mohammed Ali Pacha, the Viceroy of the country, Mr. Lee, the British Consul, and himself; and partly to be in Bombay at the time the first ships should come up the Red Sea, in order that he might navigate them through the difficult passages of the Arabian Gulf, with which he was well acquainted. Mr. Lee was a partner in the house of Briggs and Co. merchants, at Alexandria, and it was at his desire that this journey was undertaken, the house agreeing to pay his MAY, 1825. B travelling expenses. Circumstances which he has detailed in his two publications, his Travels in Palestine, and in the recent one of his Travels among the Arab Tribes, prevented him from pursuing the route he intended; the deviation from which gave him an opportunity of observing a most interesting portion of the world which had hitherto been very insufficiently known. When Mr. Buckingham arrived at Bombay, and afterwards at Bengal, he read the notes he had taken on this journey to various individuals, who earnestly recommended the publication of them. He, accordingly, through his friends in England, made a very advantageous agreement with Mr. Murray, and a Prospectus and Advertisements of the forthcoming publication were inserted in the Calcutta Journal, a newspaper of which he had become the editor. In the course of Mr. Buckingham's journey in Palestine, he had met with Mr. Bankes, who was examining that country; and as their route coincided, a small part of the journey was performed in company; and after their separation they were again thrown together by the difficulties and uncertainties which invariably beset an expedition in so barbarous and so untravelled a region. When Mr. Bankes saw the advertisement, announcing the travels of his quondam companion, he wrote the following letter, addressed to Mr. Buckingham, dated Thebes (in Egypt), June 12, 1819, and sent it to India by the hands of Mr. Hobhouse, to whom he delivered it open, with instructions to make it as public as he chose on his way to that country. Mr. Buckingham,-After some anecdotes respecting your conduct, which you cannot but suspect must have come, however late, to my knowledge before this time, you cannot expect that I should address you otherwise than I should the lowest of mankind. It is, indeed, with reluctance that I stoop to address you at all. It will require, however, no long preface to acquaint you with the object of this letter, since your own conscience will point it out to you from the moment that you shall recognise a hand-writing which must be familiar to you, since you have copied it, and are about to turn the transcripts to account. You have hoped that the distance of place would befriend you; you have hoped that I should shrink from proclaiming that I have been imposed upon. It would have been far more politic in you to have shrunk from being proclaimed the man who has imposed. In that advertisement by which you announce as your own the works of another, you have at least spared me the humiliation of being named in the list of your friends (the motive of this is sufficiently obvious, and it furnishes in itself both a proof and an aggravation of your culpability). Yet some of those who are made to appear in that list would rather, I am persuaded, that you had invaded their property, as you have mine, than have subjected them to so unmerited a stigma. One amongst the number (whom you would not have dared even to allude to had he been alive) is unhappily unable to repel the imputation in his own person, I mean the late Mr. Burckhardt, whom you so imprudently cite as your bosom friend. The boast is rash and ill-timed. Are you not aware that copies of a letter are extant in which he styles you a villain, in which he says that the rogue can be brought to a sense of duty only by a kick. Do you wish then to publish your own disgrace by letting the world know how well you were known to that excellent person, who, during the two last years of his life, lost no opportunity of testifying his contempt and aversion for your character. Do not imagine that these sentiments were confined to the pages of a single letter. Sheik Ibrahim was too open and too honourable to wish others to be deceived as he had been for a time himself; |