thesis onomatōn, the syntaxis or combination of words into sentences; the other of far wider extent, and expressing all possible relations that can arise between thoughts and words-the total effect of a writer, as derived from manner. Style may be viewed as an organic thing and as a mechanic thing. By organic, we mean that which, being acted upon, reacts-and which propagates the communicated power without loss. By mechanic, that which, being impressed with motion, cannot throw it back without loss, and therefore soon comes to an end. The human body is an elaborate system of organs it is sustained by organs. But the human body is exercised as a machine, and, as such, may be viewed in the arts of riding, dancing, leaping, &c., subject to the laws of motion and equilibrium. Now the use of words is an organic thing, in so far as language is connected with thoughts, and modified by thoughts. It is a mechanic thing, in so far as words in combination determine or modify cach other. The science of style, as an organ of thought, of style in relation to the ideas and feelings, might be called the organology of style. The science of style, considered as a machine, in which words act upon words, and through a particular grammar, might be called the mechanology of style. It is of little importance by what name these two functions of composition are expressed. But it is of great importance not to confound the functions; that function by which style maintains a commerce with thought, and that by which it chiefly communicates with grammar and with words. A pedant only will insist upon the names-but the distinction in the ideas, under some name, can be neglected only by the man who is careless of logic.

We know not how far we may be ever called upon to proceed with this discussion: if it should happen that we were, an interesting field of questions would lie before us for the first part, (the organology.) It would lead us over the ground trodden by the Greek and Roman rhetoricians; and over those particular questions which have arisen by the contrast between the circumstances of the ancients and our own since the origin of printing. Punctuation, trivial as such an innovation may seem, was the product of typo. graphy; and it is interesting to trace

the effects upon style even of that one slight addition to the resources of logic. Previously, a man was driven to depend for his security against misunderstanding upon the pure virtue of his syntax. Miscollocation or dislocation of related words disturbed the whole sense its least effect was, to give no sense; often it gavea dangerous sense. Now, punctuation was an artificial machinery for maintaining the inte grity of the sense against all mistakes of the writer; and, as one consequence, it withdrew the energy of men's anxieties from the natural machinery, which lay in just and careful arrangement. Another and still greater machinery of art for the purpose of main. taining the sense, and with the effect of relaxing the care of the writer, lay in the exquisitely artificial structure of the Latin language, which, by means of its terminal forms, indicated the arrangement, and referred the proper predicate to the proper subject, spite of all that affectation or negligence could do to disturb the series of the logic or the succession of the syntax. Greek, of course, had the same advantage in kind, but not in degree; and thence rose some differences which have escaped all notice of rhetoricians. Here also would properly arise the question started by Charles Fox, (but probably due originally to the conversation of some far subtler friend, such as Edmund Burke,) how far the practice of foot-notes-a practice purely modern in its form-is reconcilable with the laws of just composition: and whether in virtue, though not in form, such foot-notes did not exist for the ancients, by an evasion we could point out. The question is clearly one which grows out of style in its relations to thought-how far, viz., such an excrescence as a note argues that the sentence to which it is attached has not received the benefit of a full developement for the conception involved; whether, if thrown into the furnace again and re-melted, it might not be so re-cast as to absorb the redundancy which had previously flowed over into a note. Under this head would fall not only all the differential questions of style and composition between us and the ancients, but also the questions of merit as fairly distributed amongst the moderns compared with each other. The French, as we recently insisted, undoubtedly possess one vast advantage over all

other nations in the good taste which governs the arrangement of their sentences; in the simplicity (a strange pretension to make for any thing French) of the modulation under which their thoughts flow; in the absence of all cumbrous involution, and in the quick succession of their periods. In reality this invaluable merit tends to an excess; and the style coupé as opposed to the style soutenu, flippancy opposed to gravity, the subsultory to the continuous, these are the too frequent extremities to which the French manner betrays men. Better, however, to be flippant, than, by a revolting form of tumour and perplexity, to lead men into habits of intellect such as result from the modern vice of English style. Still, with all its practical value, it is evident that the intellectual merits of the French style are but small. They are chiefly negative, in the first place; and, secondly, founded in the accident of their colloquial necessities. The law of conversation has prescribed the model of their sentences: and in that law there is quite as much of self-interest at work as of respect for equity. Hanc veniam petimusque damusque vicissim. Give and take is the rule, and he who expects to be heard must condescend to listen ;, which necessity, for both parties, binds over both to be brief. Brevity so won could at any rate have little merit; and it is certain that, for profound thinking, it must sometimes be a hinderance. In order to be brief, a man must take a short sweep of view: his range of thought cannot be extensive; and such a rule, applied to a general method of thinking, is fitted rather to aphorisms and maxims as upon a known subject, than to any process of investigation as upon a subject yet to be fathomed. Advancing still further into the examination of style as the organ of thinking, we should find occasion to see the prodigious defects of the French in all the higher qualities of prose composition. One advantage, for a practical purpose of life, is sadly counterbalanced by numerous faults, many of which are faults of stamina, lying not in any corrigible defects, but in such as imply penury of thinking, from radical inaptitude in the thinking faculty to connect itself with the feeling, and with the

creative faculty of the imagination. There are many other researches belonging to this subtlest of subjects, affecting both the logic and the ornaments of style, which would fall under the head of organology. But for instant practical use, though far less difficult for investigation, yet, for that reason, far more tangible and appreciable, would be all the suggestions proper to the other head of mechanology. Half-a-dozen rules for evading the most frequently recurring forms of awkwardness, of obscurity, of misproportion, and of double meaning, would do more to assist a writer in practice, laid under some necessity of hurry, than volumes of general disquisition. It makes us blush to add, that even grammar is so little of a perfect attainment amongst us, that with two or three exceptions, (one being Shakspeare, whom some affect to consider as belonging to a semibarbarous age,) we have never seen the writer, through a circuit of prodigious reading, who has not sometimes violated the accidence or the syntax of English grammar.

Whatever becomes of our own possible speculations, we shall conclude with insisting on the growing necessity of style as a practical interest of daily life. Upon subjects of public concern, and in proportion to that concern, there will always be a suitable (and as letters extend, a growing) competition. Other things being equal, or appearing to be equal, the determining principle for the public choice will lie in the style. Of a German book, otherwise entitled to respect, it was said-er lässt sich nicht lesen, it does not permit itself to be read such and so repulsive was the style. Among ourselves, this has long been true of newspapers: they do not suffer themselves to be read in extenso, and they are read short-with what injury to the mind may be guessed. The same style of reading, once largely practised, is applied universally. To this special evil an improvement of style would apply a special redress. The same improvement is otherwise clamorously called for by each man's interest of competition. Public luxury, which is gradually consulted by every thing else, must at length be consulted in style.

NO. CCXCVII. VOL. XLVIII.

B

Ar the death of Soliman the Magnificent in 1566, the Ottoman empire, then at its zenith of triumph and grandeur, presented a system of military and political organization superior to any which the world had witnessed since the decay of Roman power. A regularly paid and highly disciplined standing army, with a numerous and effective artillery, and aided at the same time by an inexhaustible supply of timariots, or local troops holding land by the tenure of military service, combined, in a great measure, the advantageous points of the feudal and modern systems, between which the rest of Europe was then in a state of transition; and enabled the Sultan to advance with confident superiority to the encounter of the raw levies, or tumultuous bands of mercenaries, which then constituted the bulk of the German armies; while an assured and ample revenue, such as no other European prince of that age enjoyed, gave him the power of exhausting his opponent by the indefinite prolongation of the war, if im mediate success proved unattainable. The personal qualifications of the princes of the dynasty of Othman, had been, moreover, remarkably adapted for attaining and securing this emi nence of power: from the foundation of the monarchy in 1299 to the accession of Selim II., the sceptre of the Osmanlis had been swayed, in an unbroken series from father to son, by ten sultans, all (with the single exception of Bayezid II.) distinguished by military capacity and personal energy in a degree of which the annals of no other sovereign house furnish so many successive examples; while the extraordinary average duration of their reigns prevented the frequent changes of policy incident to a rapid succession, and enabled each ruler to carry out to their accomplishment the schemes of conquest and aggrandizement which had been planned by himself. The

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vast dominions won by the sabres of his ancestors, were consolidated by Soliman, whose legislative enactments and municipal institutions† continued, till the late innovations, to be recog nised and acted upon as the standard of the political and social relations of the Turks, who commemorate their author (known only as a conqueror to the nations of the West) by the venerable title of Soliman the Lawgiver. But with the succession of the enervated Selim II., the vigour and energy of the imperial line expired; and, though the impulse previously communicated preserved the empire for some years from manifesting any external tokens of disorganization, the forty years which followed the death of Soliman, are evidently a period of suspense between the progressive advance in territory and strength which had been previously maintained, and the gradually accelerated descent which marks the history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

But, independent of the personal superintendence and activity of the first ten sultans, the continual success, which had raised the monarchy to such a point of prosperity, was but in small proportion due to the heads or hands of native Turks. The janizaries, whose scimitars were directed to the subversion of the faith in which themselves had been born, were, till long after the institution of the corps, recruited exclusively from youthful Christian captives trained up in the Moslem faith; while those in whom indications of superior talent were apparent, were educated in the palace of the Sultan, and destined, on attaining manhood, to fill the high offices of the state and army: and so rigidly was this rule originally observed, that the fact of Pyrrhus or Piri-Pasha, the first vizir under Soliman, being a Turk by birth, is remarked by historians as extraordinary. But as the fame of the splendour and munificence of the Os

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manli emperors became more widely extended, renegades of a more mature age were not wanting, who were attracted from all parts of Europe, to range themselves under the banner which flew victorious from the Danube to the Tigris and the Nile, and to barter their religion and their country for the dazzling rewards which were at the disposal of the Commander of the Faithful. Of the ten grandvizirs who supported by their prowess and wisdom the throne of Soliman, no less than eight were of this class : and of the naval commanders of the same epoch, the famous Piali was a Hungarian, Kilidj-Ali (Occhiali), a Calabrian, and Salih an Ionian Greek; and the comparatively mature age at which he became a Moslem, (though he afterwards underwent a regular course of discipline and instruction,) justifies our ranking with these valiant renegades the famous Sinan-Pasha Jaghalah-Zadah, who, under the successors of Soliman, supported the banner of the Crescent in almost every quarter of their realms; and who, meriting by his ferocity, as well as his courage, the epithet often conferred on him of Arslan or Lion, was beyond dispute one of the most energetic and undaunted, though not the most fortunate, of the generals who upheld for a time the renown of the empire, when the glories of Soliman and his lieutenants had passed away.

The father of this famous rene. gade was the Viscount de Cicala or Cigala, a Genoese of noble family settled in Sicily,* who followed the profession of a privateer or maritime partisan against the Mohammedans; cruising with three or four galleys, sometimes on his own account, but more frequently associating himself with the Venetians or the Knights of St John, in the marauding expeditions with which they continually devastated the hostile coasts, and which, it should always be borne in mind, first gave rise, on the principle of retaliation, to the system of Barbary piracy, on the horrors of which so much has been said and written. The naval skill and daring of Cicala made his co-ope

ration valuable in the sudden descents and hazardous enterprises which characterize the Mediterranean warfare of that period; and his assistance was accordingly secured by the Hospitallers, (then, 1531, just landed on their desert island-home of Malta,) in the armament by which they hoped to possess themselves of the important port of Modon in the Morea. Two Greek renegades betrayed the mole and the fortifications of the harbour to the party detached to the attack; but the enterprise, after the assailants had gained possession of the streets, was defeated by the insubordination of the Italian soldiers, who dispersed themselves in search of plunder instead of assaulting the citadel which commands ed the lower town, till the advance of the Pasha of the Morea rendered a speedy retreat inevitable; when the knights and gentlemen who had joined the squadron, perceiving all hope of permanent occupation at an end, stained their chivalry by sharing in the pursuit of spoil: every house was ransacked of its most valuable effects; and eight hundred Turkish ladies, torn from their homes for slavery or ransom, formed a somewhat incongruous addition to the booty carried off by an order in whose statutes celibacy was most rigidly enjoined! One of these fair prizes, a Turkish girl of surpassing beauty, who fell to the lot of Cicala, so won upon the fierce heart of the rover, that, on his arrival at Messina, he offered to enfranchise and marry her, on condition of her abjuring her faith. She was accordingly baptized by the name of Lucrezia, and became the wife of Cicala; and from this strangely assorted union sprung Scipio de Cicala, who was destined, in the changes of his subsequent career, to exact heavy retribution from the Christians for the desolation inflicted by them on the homes of his maternal ancestors.

Such is the story of his birth related by Vertot. Scipio was the youngest of several brothers, and was eighteen years of age when he fell, with his father, into the power of the Turks, at the disastrous defeat of the Christian armament by the Capitan

Pasha Piali, (May 14, 1560,) at the isle of Djerbeh, or Galves, on the African coast. The father and son figured in the naval triumph in which the victorious admiral entered the harbour of Constantinople: the cap. tured vessels, dismantled of their masts and rudders, were towed in procession to the arsenal; while, from the stern of Piali's admiral-galley, the inverted standard of the Cross was trailed in the waves of the Bosphorus, and the principal captives, after being exhibited in chains on the forecastle to the gaze of the populace, were paraded through the streets to the presence of Soliman. The notoriety of the elder Cicala as a corsair, excluded him from all hope of being admitted to ransom; and as he refused to change his religion, he was thrown, with the other captives, into prison, where he died after four years confinement, as some accounts improbably state, through poison administered by the Sultan's order; but the youthful figure of his son attracted the compassion of Soliman, and he was enrolled among the ich-oghlauns, or pages of the interior court, who were destined, on the completion of their education, to be transferred to the civil and military employments of the state. Embracing with the reckless avidity of youth the faith which opened to him the paths of honour and advance ment, Scipio Cicala became a Moslem, under the auspices of the noted Khoja-Sinan Pasha, who, as his saghdedj or sponsor, bestowed his own name on the neophyte ;* and so high was the reputation which he acquired for talent and zeal, that, on quitting the chamber of instruction for an appointment in the corps of capidjis, (guards of the gate,) his pay and allowances were fixed at a rate one-fourth higher than that usually assigned. The gradations of rank and progressive steps of promotion were at this time regulated with a rigid exactness, which was soon relaxed under the succeeding

reigns; and Cicala, after serving under the imperial standard in the last Hungarian campaign of Soliman, (who died at the siege of Szigeth in 1566,) and seeing towns and castles surrender when summoned in the name of a monarch who was no longer among the living, had, in 1572, only attained to the command of his original corps as Capidji-Bashi,† in which capa city he was deputed, two years later, to install the Waiwode Peter in the principality of Moldavia, and, at the same time to nail as a warning, at the gate of the new prince's palace at Yassi, the head of his predecessor Iwan, who had perished in an attempt to assert independence by the help of the Poles and Cossacks.

But, on the accession of Mourad III., the grandson of Soliman, the services of Cicala, still supported by the patronage of Khoja- Sinan, who recognised in his fierce and unyielding character a kindred spirit to his own, procured him more rapid advancement; and a tumult of the janizaries, who, in the fury of intoxication, had insulted the Sultan himself, and torn down with contumely the edicts prohibiting wine, having caused the disgrace of their aga, he was appointed (1576) to the vacant command, as the officer best qualified to control the increasing excesses of this turbulent soldiery. In this important post, (the highest military rank which did not convey the government of a province,) he became a distinguished favourite of the Sultan, who, in the following year, honoured him with the hand of a bride of imperial descent, the daughter of AhmedPasha by a grand-daughter of the great Soliman. The nuptials were celebrated with a degree of splendour extraordinary even in those days of Osmanli magnificence. The trousseau of the bride, whose expenses were defrayed by her grandmother, the Sultana Mihrmah, daughter of Soliman, and widow of his grand-vizir Roostem, amounted to 100,000 ducats, exclusive