and from what we have observed in Constantinople generally, there is no present prospect of a wane of this symbol. The Sultan is building new palaces, the priests have their old powers, the Faith seems as firm, and the heart of the city throbs as warmly as ever. If these be indices of all Islamism, the Cross is not making much headway toward that Millennial point which we are assured it must attain even in these strong holds of the prophet.

The population of Constantinople is over 600,000 souls; and how many are in the surrounding cities I do not know. It is curious to see the unusual phases this population presents, not the least curious among which is that of a class called scribes, who sit cross-legged at their stands, and write letters and petitions for the people. The time is reckoned as at Rome, from sundown. The graveyards are the public promenades, where joy meets joy in gratulation. The muffled faces of the women, the odd costume of the men, the sacredness of the public dogs, the howling and dancing of the dervishes-a singular piece of madcapery-the easy air, grace, dignity and gorgeous apparel of the Pashas and Beys contrasted with the heavy-loaded, half bent and head-shaved carriers, are to be met with at every corner. But above all, is the unutterably grand panorama of the cities which form the margin of the Bosphorus, inclosed in walls which gleam as they wind over the distant hills-belted in from the waves of Marmora by a deep blue band, and the harbor interspersed with the heavy steamers and men-of-war, and light canoes by the thousand-and all this flooded by a sunlight, in which the orange and the acanthus bloom as no exotics, and the cypress points upward in rivalry of the gilded minarets and gleaming crescents, and where the transparent water repeats the enchanting scene, and waving, breaks it into myriad forms o glancing splendor. We left these scenes at sunset, and as we moved out of the harbor amidst schools of sportive porpoises and flocks of gulls (called condemned souls), soon bade the lovely scenes at distance farewell. "The sun of life will set" ere we

forget thy luxurious people and gorgeous palaces, oh, Byzantium! Already to the memory thou risest like a vision of the night or a reverie of the evening, which painter never illus trated, and which Poetry alone has inwoven in

Dreams of many-colored light,

Of golden towers and phantoms fair."

A

XIX.

Oriental Larary and Classic Isles.

"Slow sinks more lovely ere his race be run,
Along Morea's hills, the setting sun,
Not as in Northern climes, obscurely bright,
But one unclouded blaze of living light."

Byron.

FTER leaving the Dardanelles, we stopped again at Smyrna, where I took a Turkish bath, the seventh heaven of Orien talism. It is grateful enough for the traveller whose lungs have been shivered almost by the northern airs, or smothered by office confinement, just to breathe this delicious atmosphere under this rainless and cloudless sky. It is holy repose to the mind, vexed at home with business and pestered with care, only to look out through the calm eye upon these seas of beauteous blue (so blue that there is no expression for it), sleeping so calmly and tranquilly under a canopy of purple lustre, to watch the gloaming rise and die away along these coasts of Morea, and to recall in "clear dream and solemn vision," the mighty intellects who of old peopled these shores of Greece. Oh! it was delicious to float amidst the isles, upon this morning, around the promontory of Sunium, past the temple of Pallas upon its rocky crest, or amid the waves which wash Navarino; and which at a later day than that upon which they kissed the victorious prows of Themistocles at Salamis, bore the united fleets of Russia, England, and France, in array against the fleets of the Bosphorus and of Alexandria, and when in signal defeat the Turk was compelled to yield to Greece her dear-bought freedom. In fine, there is a delight which only belongs to dream-land and the Levant which we have experienced throughout these waters, where

Beauty loves to linger, and where crusading heroism roamed whilome; but after all, the apex of sensuous delight, the ultimate gratification of all the senses at once, lies in a Turkish bath. It laps the world of sense in a new Elysium.

The process consists simply of bath-rooms of heated air, in which, after becoming an embodied ooziness through perspiration, your attendant gently washes you in warm water, rubbing through many courses, including soaping and hair-glove processes (as many as a French table d'hôte), all the old Adam of clay out of you, leaving the original porcelain; when swathed in warm linen, turbaned and chibouqued, you are put away amidst pillowey ottomans to "leep-perchance to dream ;" and in that dream to be transported, in wavy motion, to new climes of softer skies and lovelier tintings, of mellower music and balmier fragrance. But -I wish I had leisure to tell you my dream as I sat all enveloped amidst a company of easy Greeks and luxurious Turks, in the baths of Smyrna. Two hours long it lasted. An American never experiences at home such an indifferentism to all sublunary things. He never loses his earnest consciousness of what he is where he is what he is born for. But this is a peculiarity of Orientalism. Such an abominable waste of time would never do in America. One's clients would go off in a huffy, and business would disappear completely. But one should not come to Turkey, unless he does as the Turks do, in some respects.

I never knew what it meant to "eat like a Turk," before I saw these Islam people in Ramazan time, when after fasting all day, at the sound of the sundown gun, they turn in with pipe and knife, and eat and smoke" till daylight does appear," when the gun calls a halt. If we Christians were one-tenth as observant of our religion as these benighted Mussulmans, one could reasonably speak of the Millennium. Mahometanism is an unceasing prayer. The very atmosphere of the East seems fitted for this most holy, solemn, and devout exercise. If Moslemism be untrue (and why should I write it conditionally)? what a

condemnation awaits this Eastern world; not for its sins, but for its devotion!

But I have bid farewell to the Turks.

The last one left us at Smyrna. Our deck jabbers with Greeks yet; who talk continually, ever moving their beads, rapidly or slowly according "to the ardor of their heart and the interest of their theme. The presence of a Franciscan so frequently seen in Italy betokens our westward course. The Austrian steamer, the best boat we have yet had, dashes on as I write. Already she has passed the gulf of Navarino; and Zante just begins to look like a thin gauzy web in the distance. We shall run between that isle and the main land, when look out for Mount Olympus! By Jove! I will be on deck then, and if this visual orb cannot discern the

gods upon its snowy top, I will resurrect the shade of Old Homer, and people imagination with the "powers imperial."

And now (enrapturing thought!) we sail the same watery way he sailed. His gods drank nectar upon that cloudy height. His Ulysses sought his home along these very shores, and we shall harbor in the same inlets which his crafty sagacity selected. Ithaca will meet our eye to-day, the most Homeric spot existing except Troy, and Leucadia's pale cliffs will shine to the eye as ever it has shone in classic light.

Our English captains have kindly invited us to break our fast ashore with them in their barracks to-morrow at Corfu, where we shall regret to part with them. Corfu is the ancient Corcyra, where Athenian greatness met a signal check. All around us throngs, without system or order, the spirit of the past. Botzarris sleeps where he fell upon the mainland near Missolonghi, where, too, Byron "chose his ground and took his rest," after his feverish, unhappy, yet not ungenerous life. What a land for the poet to die in? A land where each star in the lofty vault was a Deity, where each mount had its Oread, each river its Naiad, each fountain its Nymph, each woody copse its Dryad, and every scene its guardian angel! A land where no superstitious fear prevailed, such as the dark forests of the