to be concerned in the encouragement of its depredations, by purchasing their acknowledged plunder. This man, however, stood too high, by his wealth only, to be called to account; and the rest, though mostly known, were, by his influence alone, suffered to The Pasha, it was said, had formed the determination of going about the city at night in disguise; but by some, this was thought to be a mere report, given out to alarm the offenders; while others laughed at such a weak alternative, intended to be substituted for what alone could quell the evil, an active and vigorous police.

escape.

The women of Bagdad invariably wear the checquered blue covering, used by the lower orders of females in Egypt; nor among those of the highest rank here are ever seen the black and pink silk scarfs of Cairo, or the white muslin envelopes of Smyrna and Damascus. This, added to the stiff black horse-hair veil which covers the face, gives an air of great gloom and poverty to the females occasionally seen in the streets. When at home, however, their dress is as gay in colours, and as costly in materials, as in any of the great towns of Turkey; and their style of living, and the performance of their relative duties in their families, are precisely the same.

As the view from our lofty terrace at an early hour in the morning laid open at least eight or ten bed-rooms in different quarters around us, where all the families slept in the open air, domestic scenes were exposed to view, without our being once perceived, or even suspected to be witnesses of them. Among the more wealthy, the husband slept on a raised bedstead, with a mattress and cushions of silk, covered by a thick stuffed quilt of cotton, the bed being without curtains or mosquito net. The wife slept on a similar bed, but always on the ground, that is, without a bedstead, and at a respectful distance from her husband, while the children, sometimes to the number of three or four, occupied only one mattress, and the slaves or servants each a separate mat on the earth, but all lying down and rising up within sight of each other. Every one rose at an early hour, so that no one continued in bed after the

sun was up; and each, on rising, folded up his own bed, his coverlid, and pillows, to be taken into the house below, excepting only the children, for whom this office was performed by the slave or the mother.

None of all these persons were as much undressed as Europeans generally are when in bed. The men retained their shirt, drawers, and often their caftan, a kind of inner cloak. The children and servants lay down with nearly the same quantity of clothes as they had worn in the day; and the mothers and their grown daughters wore the full silken trowsers of the Turks, with an open gown; and if rich, their turbans, or if poor, an ample red chemise and a simpler covering for the head. In most of the instances which we saw, the wives assisted, with all due respect and humility, to dress and undress their husbands, and to perform all the duties of valets.

After dressing, the husband generally performed his devotions, while the slave was preparing a pipe and coffee; and, on his seating himself on his carpet, when this was done, his wife served him with her own hands, retiring at a proper distance to wait for the cup, and always standing before him, sometimes, indeed, with the hands crossed, in an attitude of great humility, and even kissing his hand on receiving the cup from it, as is done by the lowest attendants of the household.

While the husband lounged on his cushions, or sat on his carpet in an attitude of ease and indolence, to enjoy his morning pipe, the women of the family generally prayed. In the greater number of instances, they did so separately, and exactly after the manner of the men; but on one or two occasions, the mistress and some other females, perhaps a sister or a relative, prayed together, following each other's motions, side by side, as is done when a party of men are headed in their devotions by an Imaum. None of the females, whether wife, servant, or slave, omitted this morning duty; but among the children under twelve or fourteen years of age, I did not observe any instance of their joining in it.

Notwithstanding the apparent seclusion in which women live

here, as they do indeed throughout all the Turkish empire, there are, perhaps, as many accessible dwellings as in any of the large towns under the same dominion. They are, however, much less apparent here than at Cairo, though they are all under such concealment from public notice, as not to offend the scrupulous, or present allurements to the inexperienced by their external marks. It is said, that women of the highest condition sometimes grant assignations at these houses; and this, indeed, cannot be denied, that the facility of clandestine meetings is much greater in Turkish cities, between people of the country, than in any metropolis of Europe. The disguise of a Turkish or Arab female, in her walking dress, is so complete, that her husband himself could not recognise her beneath it; and these places of appointment are so little known but to those who visit them, and so unmarked by any distinction between them and others, that they might be entered or quitted by any person at any hour of the day, without exciting the slightest suspicion of the passers-by.

Among the women to be occasionally seen in Bagdad, the Georgians and Circassians are decidedly the handsomest by nature, and the least disfigured by art. The high-born natives of the place are of less beautiful forms and features, and of less fresh and clear complexions; while the middling and inferior orders, having brown skins, and nothing agreeable in their countenances, except a dark and expressive eye, are sometimes so barbarously tattooed as to have the most forbidding appearance. With all ranks and classes, the hair is stained a red colour by henna, and the palms of the hands are so deeply dyed with it, as to resemble the hands of a sailor when covered with tar.

Those only who, by blood, or habits of long intercourse, are allied to the Arab race, use the blue stains so common among the Bedouins of the Desert. The passion for this method of adorning the body is carried, in some instances, as far as it could have been among the ancient Britons; for, besides the staining of the lips with that deadly hue, anklets are marked around the legs, with lines

extending upwards from the ankle, at equal distances, to the calf of the legs; a wreath of blue flowers is made to encircle each breast, with a chain of the same pattern hanging perpendicularly between them; and, among some of the most determined belles, a zone, or girdle, of the same singular composition, is made to encircle the smallest part of the waist, imprinted on the skin in such a manner as to be for ever after indelible. There are artists in Bagdad, whose profession it is to decorate the forms of ladies with the newest patterns of wreaths, zones, and girdles, for the bosom or the waist; and as this operation must occupy a considerable time, and many "sittings," as an English portrait-painter would express it, they must possess abundant opportunities of studying, in perfection, the beauties of the female form, in a manner not less satisfactory, perhaps, than that which is pursued in the Royal Academies of Sculpture and Painting in Europe.

APPENDIX.

CONTAINING

A BRIEF STATEMENT OF THE RESULT OF CERTAIN LEGAL PROCEEDINGS

CONNECTED WITH THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF THE AUTHOR.

Ar the close of the last volume of Travels, which I had the honour to lay before the world, was an Appendix, which contained a number of documents, illustrative of the measures pursued by the late Mr. John Lewis Burckhardt,—Mr. William John Bankes, late member for Cambridge,-Mr. Henry Bankes, his father, late member for Corfe Castle,-Mr. Gifford, late editor of the Quarterly Review,—and Mr. John Murray, publisher,—who had united their misrepresentations and their influence, to destroy my reputation, both as a man and an author, for the purpose of preventing the publication of my "Travels in Palestine," and other countries of the East, in order that Mr. W. J. Bankes, who had some intention to publish his observations on the same countries, should come into the field before me, and reap whatever fame was to be acquired by priority and novelty, in the details of researches and observations made by each at the same period and on the same spot.

As soon as my return from India to England rendered it practicable, certain proceedings at law were instituted by me against three of these parties, for the purpose of proving to the world the utter falsehood of their calumnies, and the gross injustice of their conduct. Although two years had elapsed between the institution of these proceedings and the publication of the volume of Travels alluded to, yet, when it was issued from the press, not one of the three had been brought to a close. Since that period, two other years have passed away, and even these have been but just sufficient to terminate proceedings which, had not delays been studiously interposed by the parties interested, might have been closed in four months, and at a cost of one hundred pounds, instead of occupying four years, and involving an expense of upwards of five thousand pounds.

The reader, who desires to acquaint himself with the details of these proceedings, (the history of which is considered, by legal men, to be among the most curious and extraordinary of any to be found on record in the whole range of disputed questions affecting literary property and character,) is referred to the Appendix to "Travels among the