Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 8.djvu/145

Rh characteristic enthusiasm, and finished in 1833. Thus, even when his name was least before the public, he was toiling generally in behalf of some great benevolent object with an earnestness under which his health frequently sank, and by which his final decay was rapidly accelerated. Still, however, he was earnest to produce one poem more—a final work, by which the poetical reputation he had hitherto acquired should be confirmed, and, if possible, extended—and as health was necessary for this purpose, he resolved to make the classical tour of Italy, by which mind and body should be braced alike for the contemplated enterprise. He therefore passed over to Paris in 1834; and although the Apollo Belvidere and Venus de Medicis were no longer there, he found the same cheerful society, and more than the same cordial welcome that had gladdened his visit of 1814. After having remained several weeks in the French capital, he resumed his journey, but with a very different destination; for, instead of Rome, he now embarked for Algiers. His friends at home were as much astonished at the tidings as if he had set off on a pilgrimage to Timbuctoo. But he had been poring in the king's library at Paris over books and maps of ancient geography, where the Roman city of Icosium, that had occupied the site of Algiers, met his eye; and the late changes by which this Mauritanian city of the waters had been converted into the capital of a French province, fired his imagination with pictures of the future civilization of Africa. This was enough to decide him on embarking at Toulon, on the 11th September, 1834, and in seven days after he was traversing the crooked streets of Algiers, beneath the blaze of an African sun. But he was still among French society, to whom his literary reputation was a welcome passport; he even found one of the French officers there employed in a translation of his poems with a view to publication. New health, nay, a new life itself, was the reward of this journey, and he describes the scenery and his own feelings in the following buoyant style: "Oh, my old crony! it would do your heart good to see your friend prancing gloriously on an Arabian barb over the hills of the white city (for Algiers, with all its forts, battlements, mosques, and minarets, is as dazzling white as snow), and enjoying the splendid scenery. I have no words to convey the impression it has made on me. I felt, on my ride, as if I had dropt into a new planet! Some parts of the hills, it is true, are bare; but wherever there is verdure, it has a bold, gigantic richness, a brilliancy and odour, that mock even the productions of our hot-houses. Never shall I forget my first ride! It was early morning: the blue Mediterranean spread a hundred miles beneath—a line of flamingoes shot over the wave—the white city blazed in the rising sun—the Arabs, with their dromedaries loaded with fruits for the market, were coming down the steeps. Around, in countless numbers, were the white, square, castle-looking country-houses of the Moors, inclosed in gardens; the romantic tombs of the Marabouts, held sacred, and surrounded with trees and flowers, that are watered with a perpetual spring from marble fountains, where you see the palm towering with its feathery tufts as high as a minaret. . . . . . Then the ravines that run down to the sea! I alighted to explore one of them, and found a burn that might have gurgled in a Scottish glen. A thousand sweet novelties of wild flowers grew above its borders; and a dear little bird sang among its trees. The view terminated in the discharge of the stream among the rocks and foam of the sea,—