Page:The travels of Macarius, Patriarch of Antioch - Volume I.djvu/10

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amply furnish. Familiar with the varied dictions, and accustomed to the chequered thoughts, ripened so diversely in different climates, you would expect to regale vour sight, and gratify your discriminating taste, with the gayer flowers of Eastern eloquence, and the luxurious fruits of warmer fancies, successfully transplanted and cherished in the more oblique rays of the Western sun.

The pages here offered to your perusal will afford, I apprehend, scarcely any thing to satisfy your just expectations. How much-soever able to convey with fidelity and truth the strength and colour of the foreign text into his native idiom, a Translator, in the plain and unadorned style of the Archdeacon Paul, would discover but few traces of type for the ornament of his own. Educated in the seclusion of the convent, or the retirement of the sacerdotal cloister, the unworldly Author comes for ward devoid of the preparation which courts and camps bestow, for the keen intuition of human-nature, the comparison of distant objects, and the knowledge of the relations of parts and interests.

To your practised mind, however, the of his remarks may afford some amusement; and his accurate collection of facts, some various material for useful meditation.

That the Institution under your auspices will continue to afford the encouragement so long and so much wanted to Oriental Literature—that rich mine of