"It was during an extended tour in the Mediterranean about ten years ago, that Mr. Warburton sent some sheets of manuscript notes to Mr. Lever, at that time Editor of the _Dublin University Magazine_. These at once caught that gentleman's attention, and he gladly gave them publicity, under the title of "Episodes of Eastern Travel," in successive numbers of the magazine, where they were universally admired for the grace and liveliness of their style. Mr. Lever, however, soon saw that though for the purposes of his periodical these papers were extremely valuable, the author was not consulting his own best interests by continuing to give his travels to the world in that form; and, with generous disinterestedness, advised him to collect what he had already published, and the remainder of his notes, and make a book of the whole. Mr. Warburton followed his advice, entered into terms with Mr. Colburn, and published his travels under the title of 'The Crescent and the Cross.' "Of this book it is needless for us to speak. In spite of the formidable rivalry of an 'Eothen,' which appeared about the same time, it sprang at once into public favor, and is one of the very few books of modern travels of which the sale has continued uninterrupted through successive editions to the present time. Were we to pronounce upon the secret of its success, we should lay it to its perfect _right-mindedness_. A changeful truth, a versatile propriety of feeling initiates the author, as it were, into the heart of each successive subject; and we find him as profoundly impressed with the genius of the Holy Land, as he is steeped, in the proper place, in the slumberous influences of the dreamy Nile, upon whose bosom he rocks his readers into a trance, to be awakened only by the gladsome originality of these melodies which come mirthfully on their ears from either bank. And, we may observe in passing, it is precisely the _want_ of this, which prevents the indisputable power and grace of 'Eothen' from having their full effect with the public. "Passages of beauty, almost of sublimity, stand isolated from our sympathies by the interposed cynicism of a few caustic remarks; and scenes of the world's most ancient reverence and worship become needlessly disenchanted under the spell of some skeptical sneer.