Is not this the land by Nature blessed beyond her pale, and where "all save the spirit of man is divine?" and yet is it not here that those blessings are least appreciated, and left to run fallow through the sheer neglect and inanity of the lazy and stupid possessors of the soil? Is not this once splendid capital of a Roman empire now the mere rendezvous of a horde of beastly Tartars?

The palace of a Constantine and the stately temples of a Theodosius, are they not levelled with the dust; and from their discordant materials have not sprung the Vandalian structures of a barbarous race of Turcomans? The Christian temple, once dedicated to the service of the God of peace, has it not been sacked, and its priests passed over with the bloody cimeter, and its sacred altar profaned by the worship of the murderous Moslem?

Does not the crescent now wave where first in all the East the cross was raised as a nation's standard?

Are not the intrigues of a polluted hareem now directed by a sultan mother, on the very spot where an Empress Helena once moved the splendid court of her all-powerful son in favour of the gospel of Christ, and the pure religion which it inculcates? In short, this capital, intended by Nature to be the key of the East, and the seat of empire and of power, has it not now become a proverb among the nations for its weakness and imbecility?

From the halls of that palace, whose ruined walls lie scattered around, went forth the mandates which called into existence those stately structures whose domes and arches now serve to mark those sacred spots in Palestine, rendered "Holy Land" by the birth, the life, the death and resurrection of our Christ, and the acts and martyrdom of his apostles. Shade of Helena! couldst thou but rise and see thy loved Sophia's shrine, desecrated by the infidel, her altars polluted by the hands of a guilty and benighted priesthood, her sacred cross displaced by Islam's crescent, and the

bloody banner waving over God's holy fane, in despair wouldst thou return to thy resting-place, to await that judgment-day when a just retribution may be expected upon those who now trample under foot the sacred emblem of our holy religion. But, before that day arrives, we are promised a millennium of peace, when all men shall be of one religion. God's peculiar people will again be gathered into one fold. The Turk and all the Moslem race will ere then have disappeared; the days of the evil to come will have passed away; and the seven golden candlesticks be once more replaced, and lighted in the midst of Asia.

At that perhaps not distant epoch the crescent will fall from each proud minaret, and the emblem of the Christian faith resume its former place, and these swelling domes shall again resound with loud Hosannas to the Lord of Hosts.

When I took you to the tower of Galata to overlook the city of Stamboul and its dependences, nothing could have been farther from my thoughts than being surprised into this long digression.

Suffice it now to say, that having taken a satisfactory observation of different important localities, we descended and walked to the foot of the hill, where we embarked, and were soon put across the Golden Horn to Seraglio Point, the first object of all travellers in this region of romance and song. Here, according to the itinerary of Constantinople in the book of the minister, we commenced our work of lionizing in regular order, determined not to leave unnoticed one ancient stone that might have been fashioned after the order of a Constantine, a Theodosius, or even a Justinian, and to ransack old Stamboul until we saw all she now possesses of the city of Constantine or of the older Byzantium. You will perceive by his book that the minister has divided the Eastern capital into seven sections, corresponding with as many hills, and to each one he calls the attention of the industrious traveller for at least one day.

I shall not trouble you with a detailed account of each day's progress through the mazes of old Stamboul's crooked lanes, but at the end of my sevenfold task I shall return to you and notice only the more prominent objects which may attract my notice.

As our time here will necessarily be short, on account of other arrangements and the lateness of the season, we shall call here again on our return from the East, and, perhaps, at a different season of the year, when we can better enjoy the delights of the beautiful environs than this winter weath er will now permit.

When the minister's week shall have been faithfully employed, I will return to you again: until then,

Adieu.

LETTER IV.

A Snow-storm.-Turkish Picnics.-The Golden Horn.-The Sultan's Pal-The Missionaries.-A Turkish Banker.-A Turkish Breakfast.A Banker's Troubles.-The Art of rising.-Travellers' Perplexities.

ace.

Constantinople,

We are now completely snowed under; the snow is still descending, and the wild wind roaring about our ears calls to mind the steppes of Russia and the storms we there experienced. I thought that when once under the lee of the mighty Balkan I should neither see nor hear of winter. This is very unusual weather for this country, as you may well suppose when I inform you that there are no fireplaces in the houses. I am now seated at one of those warming machines called a "tandour;" it is a table about four feet square, lined underneath with tin, and on the floor is a brass vessel called a "mangal," filled with coals; an ornamental cover is laid over the table, reaching down to the floor;

several persons sit around, and, lifting the cloth upon their laps, put their feet under the table, thus keeping the nether man in a tolerably comfortable state, while the back and shoulders are left to take care of themselves.

The houses here, being built for summer, are all windows, and those not well fitted, so that there is no such thing as warming the rooms with this temporary fire apparatus.

By means of hanging up shawls to some half dozen of the surplus shutterless windows, and placing several supernumerary "mangals" between me and the wall, I feel as if I am tolerably secure for the evening.

We are now very cosily sitting around our table, reading, writing, and consoling each other under our present affliction. The only one who does not seem to heed this Lapland weather is my brave little Muscovite Nic; he frisks about the courtyard in the snow, barking at and biting all the shaggy Turkish curs that venture to trespass on the premises.

Yesterday we made an excursion, by which we circumnavigated the whole of Stamboul. We took a boat at Galata, rowed first to the navy-yard, where we saw the fine frigate which Mr. Rhodes, successor to the late Mr. Eckford, the American naval architect, is now building for the sultan. They who seem to be judges of such kind of work pronounce this vessel to be a perfect specimen of the art. From thence we sailed to the valley of the "sweet waters,” where there is a small fresh-water river falling into the upper end of the Golden Horn, on the banks of which there is, pleasantly situated, a handsome villa belonging to the sultan.

This is one of the places where, in summer, the Turkish families go to make "keff," which in our Western idiom might be rendered jollification, or, more classically speaking, a saturnalia; but in reality is a sort of uproarious picnic party; a kind of safety-valve by which they let off all their surplus gayety, in order the better to sustain their usual gravity at home.

THE GOLDEN HORN.

43

We next rowed to the spot where the great wall com. mences at the shore of the Golden Horn, where we had sent horses on to meet us; we thence rode over the cape to the Marmora, about six miles, with the triple wall on our left, and one interminable graveyard on our right, and not a single house of any kind to be seen. These immense walls and towers were erected by several of the Greek emperors (Roman emperors I call them), and we saw the spot where Mohammed the Second made the fatal breach with the newly-invented engine of war, the thundering cannon and its murderous projectiles.

In that breach perished the last of the emperors, bravely defending the remnant of this once great empire. Through that breach first poured into the beautiful city those Tartar hordes, who, thirsting for the blood of Christians, bade the cimeter do its worst, and over the bodies of the prostrate Greeks was raised the standard of Islam.

By the imperfect and hurried manner of repairing this breach, and the perfect state of every other part of the wall, the spot may easily be recognised.

Near the Marmora are the famous seven towers, where such foreign ambassadors as incurred the displeasure of the "Porte" were formerly confined. It is a sort of citadel, of no great strength against artillery. From thence we again took to the water, and rowed along the sea wall for five miles to Seraglio Point. The sea wall appears to have been built and rebuilt very often, and of all sorts of materials, from the meanest stone to be found on any shore, to the splendid marble of Paros and the beautiful granites of Egypt.

Columns and capitals, cornices and friezes, are all min. gled with viler materials in one heterogeneous mass. It grieved me to see thousands of splendid marble and granite antique columns used for the under-water foundations of