RULES OF THE
BOSTON LIBRARY
FRANKLIN PLACE.

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VISIT

CONSTANTINOPLE

ATHENS

JREV. WALTER COLTON, U. S. N.
AUTHOE OF SHIP AND SHORE.

** Vagari, luEtrare, discuirere, qui.lB potost, panel,
lodagare, discere, id ejt vere peregriaari."

NEW- YORK :
LEAVITT, LORD & CO., 180 BROADWAY.
BOSTON i-CROCKER & BREWSTER.
1836.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, by Leavitt, Lord & Co.,
in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and thirty-six, in
the Clerk's office of the southern district of New- York.

TO GULIAN C. VERPLANK. ESQ.
These unpretending pages, penned in those leisure
hours which are ever occurring in a life at sea, and
which may perhaps be excused from those higher and
sterner obligations which opportunities more propitious
impose, are inscribed, as a slight token of the author's
respect for his intellectual and moral endowments, and
the effective, unostentatious manner in which these have
been exerted for the benefit of others.

PRINTED AT THE
UNIVERSITY PRESS,
13 John-street, New- York.

CONTENTS.

Preface ¦

CHAPTER I.
Departure from Smyrna — Condition on board an English yacht —
Storm ofFMetelin — Loss of spars and provisions — Tenedosand
the strand of Ilium — Beating up the Dardanelles — Scenery,
towns, and fortifications of the shore — Passage of Leander
and Xerxes — Pliny's aerolite — Sea of Marmora — First view
of Constantinople — Apprehensions on landing— A night scene 13
CHAPTER II.
Janizary cavash — Fate of Hallet Effendi — Stratagem of Maho
met — Capture of Constantinople — The silver sofa — Palace of
the Sultan — his wives, odalisques, guards, garden — The Sultan
shooting an arrow — Conversation with him — His personal ap
pearance — Prevalence of the plague  37
CHAPTER III.
Visit to the royal Mosques — St. Sophia — Mosque of Achmet— of
Sultan Solyman — Tomb of its founder — Mosque of Osman —
Church and State — Mausoleums of Ottoman princes — Antiqui
ties of the At-meidan — Egyptian obelisk — Marble pyramid —
Delphic column — Marcian's pillar— Sports of the djerid  51
CHAPTER IV.
City fountains — Artificial lakes — Subterranean structures — Ap
pearance of bazars — Merchandise of the east — Habits of the
females — Sister of the Sultan — Khans of the city — Turkish bath
— Sale of a Georgian — Condition of a purchased girl  64
1*

6 CONTENTS. CHAPTER V.
Teriakis, or opium-eaters — An experiment with the drug — its
effects on the imagination — grandeur and horror of its dreams —
Walls of the city — Intentions of Russia — Grave of Ali of Ya-
nina — Traits of this fierce pasha — Treachery connected with
his death  78
CHAPTER VI.
Caloyer and his deathless fish — The Seven Towers — Imprison
ment of foreign ambassadors — Arabian story-teller — Habits of
the Mussulman — Birds of the Bosphorus — Objects of a Turk's
humanity — The great cemetery of Scutari  91
CHAPTER VII.
Navy yard and national ships — Memory of William Eckford —
Introduction to the Capudan pasha— Powers of his office —
Valley of sweet waters — Repose of the scenery — Party of la
dies — Conflagration of a village — A Greek girl and her
blind father — Moral eifeets of the plague — Fires in the Turk
ish capital  103
CHAPTER VIII.
Beauty of the Bosphorus— Tragical associations — Tower of Ma
homet — Godfrey's tent — Janizary surrogee — Village of Bel
grade — Circle of Greek girls — Superstition of a dervish — Sim
plicity of religion — Man's last sleep  120
CHAPTER IX.
Sultan's attendance at Mosque — Royal barges — Worship of the
Mussulman— Assemblage of Turkish ladies— Their personal
appearance — Social amusements — Early education — Matrimo
nial alliance — Ruling passion — CoDJugal traits  132
CHAPTER X.
The Mussulman in his treatment of his Mother — in commercial
transactions — in private life— in a public station — in misfortune
— in the disguise of his feelings — in attachments to ancient usa
ges — in an ignominious death  148

CONTENTS. /
CHAPTER XI.
The life coveted by a Mussulman — Stillness of a Turkish town —
Inferences of the stranger — Love of show — Capabilities of the
Turk — His conjugal habits — Inconsistencies in his character- • 162
CHAPTER XII.
Destruction of the Janizaries — Means employed to effeGt it — their
final deportment— Features in the present government of Tur
key — Character of Sultan Mahmoud — Spirit of his reforms- -- 173
CHAPTER XIII.
Departure from Constantinople — Plain of Troy — Ancient remains
Opinion of travellers — Arguments of a lady — Vigils of a night
on the plain — Visit to Helen's fount — Ruins of Alexandria
Troas — A gloomy Greek— -Mental tortures  182
CHAPTER XIV.
Gulf of Argos — Reported Iosb of the frigate — Storied features of
the Argolic plain — Trait in woman — Tomb of Agamemnon —
Fortress of Napoli— Love of the marvellous — Discovery of
Eve's Monument — Inscription — Antiquarian rapture  197
CHAPTER XV.
Town of Napoli — Appearance of the place — Gayety of the inhab
itants — Paganini of Greece — Island of Hydra — Wildness of its
features — Habits of the men — Costume of the ladies— Religious
services on board ship— Passage to Egina  212
CHAPTER XVI.
Island of Egina — Softness of its scenery — Twilight ramble — As
pect of the town — College and Museum — Visit to the temple
of Jupiter Panhellenius— Sites of sacred edifices — One's native
village — " Maid of Athens" — Officer of the Greek army  229
CHAPTER XVII.
Firet view of Athens — Straits of Salami's — Strand of the Pirseua —
Temple of Theseus — Mars Hill— Paul before the philosophers
of Greece— Prison of Socrates— Testy travellers — Modern
town — Schools of the missionaries  242

8 CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Athens— Ascent of the Acropolis— The Parthenon— beauty of its
architecture — present condition — impressions it makes on the
spectator — Erectheum— delicacy of its proportions — violence it
has suffered — The Pandrosea — singularity of its origin — Horo-
logium — failure of the artist— Lantern of Demosthenes— elo
quence of the orator — Temple of Jupiter Olympus — Cell of an
anchorite on its architrave — Ruins of the Stadium  256
CHAPTER XIX.
Athena— Sunset from the Acropolis— Traits of the Athenians— Ob
jects of their superstition — Person, costume, and habits of the
Females — Domestic peculiarities of the mother — Female wri
ters — their attempt at great themes— Traits of the men — Phy
sical and moral qualities — Period and objects of marriage  272
CHAPTER XX.
Athens — Moral influence of her memorials — Features of the revo
lution — Conduct of the Greeks — Their future prospects — Char
ges brought against them — Intellectual and moral claims of the
Turks and Greeks compared— Genius of the two nations con
trasted — Sources of religious influence — Missionaries — The
missionary enterprise  286
CHAPTER XXI.
Departure from Athens — Feelings on leaving Greece — Reasons
for writing this Journal — Armenian bride — Entertainment on
board ship — Sentiment of an Athenian gentleman — Washing
ton's last injunction — Passage to Mahon— Arrival of friends —
Winter amusements— The waltz and camp meeting  308
CHAPTER XXII.
Consequences of Our visit to Constantinople — Solemnities of a
court martial — Situation as counsel for the defendant — Sen
tence of the court — Principles of our naval code — Redress of
grievances— Thoughts of Home— Obituary  328

PREFACE,

The situation in which the following pages were writ
ten must be my apology for any faults in style, any errors
in matter, which they may contain. They were written
at sea, from hasty notes taken at the places to which they
refer, without any aid from the observation of other tra
vellers, or the assistance of a common guide book, or any
access to historical records. They were written amid the
ceaseless noise and systematized confusion which prevail
on board a man-of-war ; the lively conversation of the
ward-room officers in one ear, the prattle of the pantry
boys in the other ; the echoing tread of sailors over head ;
on a table lashed down to prevent its being capsized,
in a chair secured with lanyards against the force of the
ship's lurch, and with the manuscript tacked to its place to
escape the fate which befell the Sybilline leaves. This
is no fancy picture : any one who has been at sea, and
especially they who have traversed the ocean in an armed
ship, can attest the sobriety of the sketch, and also appre
ciate the embarrassments which such a situation imposes.
But, notwithstanding these unfavorable circumstances,
I humbly trust the reader will find something in the fol
lowing pages that may compensate him for the time spent

10 PREFACE.
in the perusal. If I did not think so, I would cast the
manuscript into the fire, for its publication could only in
jure me, without benefiting him. The man betrays but
little sense who speaks when there are none to listen, and
still less when what he says is to be condemned for its
stupidity or errors. But I hope the reader will find, among
the lighter sketches of this narrative, some of the habits,
customs, and characteristic traits of the Turk and Greek
brought into prominent relief. If I have utterly failed on
these points, I will not now fall back upon the strength of
any reserved forces. Phaeton soared at the sun, and fell
into the strangling waves of the Eridanus ; but as my
attempt has not been quite so ambitious, my fall may per
haps be less disastrous.
But I would not vainly stir expectation : to tell the
plain truth, I wrote this unpretending book for my own
pleasure and advantage, and I now publish it for the pos.
sible pleasure and advantage of the reader. As for pecu
niary considerations, I should have reluctantly submitted
to the drudgery of correcting the proof sheets for anything
it may avail me in that form ; and as for literary celebri-
ty, the book itself will drop, in a few months, from the
expanse of the public mind, silently as a pebble sinks
through the surface of a sleeping lake.
The reader, who may have honored " Ship and Shore"
with a perusal, will perceive that this book, though sepa
rate and distinct in its topics, is yet a continuation of that
humble effort. The subjects which remain, as connected
with our cruise in the Mediterranean, upon which I pro
pose to touch in a future volume, relate to Italy. I took

PREFACE. 11
notes in my visit to Paris and London, but as their prepa
ration for the press would be only an unwelcome task, I
have abandoned all idea of making use of them as a jour
nalist. Italy, however, lies so warmly in my feelings, and
awakens so many bright and mournful recollections, that
I cannot forego, however superfluous it may seem, all ex
pression of my admiration and grief. I should like to take
the reader with me among her monuments of perished
grandeur and beauty, and see if we cannot awaken some
of the eloquent echoes that sleep in her ruins. The at
tempt, considering who it is that proposes to make it, may
perhaps be vain ; for these ruins are too much like the
bell of some old cathedral that sends out its tones only at
the approach of kings ; but perhaps for once the favor
may be accorded to a poor pilgrim who brings nothing,
except the sincerity of his tears.
The more serious reader, who may have taken excep.
tion to some of the harmless pleasantries of " Ship and
Shore," will find, perhaps, in these pages less cause of
regret. But should he meet, occasionally, with sentences
betraying some of those lighter and less regular pulsa
tions which will, now and then, visit the heart, he must
not be offended. The only real difference between us,
probably, is, that I give expression to feelings which he,
more discreetly, perhaps, allows to pass off in silence.
Religion is not with me — and it ought not to be with any
one — a source of gloom : it is' not a great funeral pall,
spread out over nature, wrapping the fragrant flowers,
hushing the melodious fountains, and shutting out the
bright influences of heaven ; it is, itself, an exhaustless

12 PREFACE.
source of cheering, all-pervading light — warming and
beautifying the earth — visiting man in his most obscure
abode — reaching the darkest recesses of his doubts and
dismay, relieving his cares — sanctifying his sorrows —
dispelling the despondency which the brevity of his exist
ence here casts around him, and inspiring hopes over
which death and the grave have no power.
To return to this volume : I hope the reader will
not rebuke the author on the force of any detached pas
sages : It is a small attempt, taken as a whole, and as such
he will let it undergo the ordeal of his opinion. There are
passages in it which I could wish were out, but it is now
too late : the feeble, the irrelevant, and the rash must
remain. But some of their faults may, perhaps, come,
with the reader, under the amiable, absolving rule of the
ancient critic —
" Ubi plura nitent in carmine, non ego paucis ;
Offendar maculis, quas aut incuria fudit,
Aut humana parum cavit natura."

W. C.

Naval Station, Boston, May 1, 1836.

VISIT

CONSTANTINOPLE AND ATHENS.

CHAPTER I.

Departure from Smyrna— Condition on board an English Yacht —
Storm off Metelin — Loss of Spars and Provisions— Tenedos and
the Strand of IBum — Beating up the Dardanelles— Scenery,
Towns, and Fortifications of the Shore — Passage of Leander and
Xerxes — Pliny's Aerolite — Sea of Marmora — First View of Con
stantinople — Apprehensions on Landing — A Night Scene.
Our frigate was how riding quietly at anchor,
before Smyrna, 'and we were eagerly casting about
for the most feasible fnethod of reaching Constanti
nople. As the route by land must be entirely Oh
horseback, exposed to a scorching sun, to the un
ceremonious demands of outlaws, and without the
eOndforts of a solitkry hotel, we preferred a convey
ance by water. The Wind prevailing, at this season
of the year, directly from that point in which our
course lay, rendered it quite impossible for us to
beat our ship up against the current of the Darda
nelles. We therefore Went on board a little cutter,
maliciously called the Spitfire, which was Once a
barge belonging to 'a member of the English parlia
ment frdfh Liverpool: but which, % sonde strange
2

14 THE PASSAGE TO
vicissitude in the taste of the times, or the fortunes
of its owner, has found its way to its present less
elegant, but more serviceable situation.
Our company on this occasion consisted of Capt.
Read with his Lady, and eight or ten Officers attached
to the Frigate. Our provisions having been taken
on board, our anchor weighed, and our parting gun
discharged, we made all sail to a stirring breeze,
and passed quickly down the gulf of Smyrna. We
were all in a fine flow of spirits, especially the cap
tain of the little craft, who, I presume, never before
felt so fully the importance of his situation. _ Nor
was Bill, the cook, insensible of the increased dignity
and responsiblity of his occupation ; but was ever
and anon, as he counted over again the number to
be fed, dropping some new article into the pot,
which was now vigorously boiling in the caboose ;
it grieved me to see the ruthless manner in which
he would wring the necks of the chickens. Though
naturally of a humane disposition, yet he was now
so full of the " pomp and circumstance of office,"
that I really believe he would have sacrificed, with
out a sigh, a whole aviary of the most sweetly sing
ing pets.
The contents of the pot, which had now been
for several hours in a state of violent ebullition, were
at length turned into a common receiver, from which
each one helped himself with a delightful self-appro
priating privilege. The varieties it contained went

CONSTANTINOPLE. 15
fer beyond those of the sea-pie, chowder, or even
the inimitable lobscouse ; I doubt, indeed, whether
they have ever been equalled, since the witches in
Macbeth filled their capacious cauldron. But Bill,
who had been so successful as a cook, rather failed
in the functions of a waiter ; for as he cut the wires
which confined the corks, the porter escaped with
such a foaming vehemence, that very little of it was
arrested by the goblet. His look, as he saw the be
verage irrevocably escape, had a force of regret
that reminded me of the anguish of one, who, on a
different occasion, was witnessing with me the burn
ing of a distillery. This mill of delirium occupied
a slight eminence close to a sheet of quiet water,
with which it communicated by a precipitous chan
nel. The, whiskey, as the fire reached the long tiers
of casks which held it, was at once kindled and
released, and rushing down this channel overspread
the little lake, and rose in a pyramid of flame ; its
light fell on the dismayed countenance of the indivi
dual to whom I have alluded ; he looked as a devotee
with his hope of heaven suddenly blotted out. He
had no pecuniary interest in the distillery ; but the
irretrievable destruction of so much of that which
can drown sorrow, inspire forgetfulness, and which
had been his only refuge for years, overwhelmed
him. He retired to his house and died that night !
The close of our first day out, brought us along
the bold and beautiful shores of Lesbos. This

16 THE PASSAGE TO
island was anciently celebrated for the richness of its
wines, the softness of its climate, the fertility of its
soil, and the beauty of its females. It was the birth>
place of I Theophrastus, whose eloquence and philo
sophy enlisted the admiration of Plato and Aristotle ;
of If Pittacus, whose valor and patriotism were the
pride and defence of his country ; of f Sapho, the
fire and sweetness of whose verse have cast an un
fading splendor on the genius of her sex. But of
its ancient opulence and refinement scarcely a
vestige remains; its wines are no longer sung or
sought; its temples and statues have passed away;
and of its daughters I have seen but one with charms
of form and mind sufficient to move and melt the-
heart. I met her in Smyrna ; why was it not in
America ? Alas ! we are the fools of time and cir
cumstances! When that which most strikes and
captivates us comes within our reach, some obstacle
springs up, against which it is in vain to struggle :
thus our life is a conflict with capricious incidents
and irremediable fortuities.
The night closed over us in our little craft with
a dark and heavy frown. The black masses of
cloud which began to ascend above the horizon, at
sunset, were quickly followed by others of a still
more portentous aspect. These squadrons of dark
ness and storm soon invaded the whole heaven, and
in their gathered depths seemed to hang over us in
substantial gloom. The wind appeared to have been

CONSTANTINOPLE. 17
entirely obstructed in its passage ; the sea retained
a swinging, dead motion; yet a stranger to these
phenomena would have anticipated only a night's
detention on his voyage. Not so with the weather-
beaten sailor who sat at the helm ; for as often as his
eye rested on the lamp which glimmered in the
binnacle, I observed something in his countenance
which spoke of change and peril. He had scarcely
raised his eye, when the black brooding mass above
was riven and kindled with the fiercest lightning
and thunder ; torrents and tempest soon followed ;
we immediately dropped under the deck, but it was
a poor refuge. The hatches were instantly battened
down, all fresh 'air excluded, and we were there shut
up, with scarcely room enough to sit or stand in ;
while above, the tempest was breaking down our
masts and rigging, the thunder shaking the very sea,
and the waves plunging over the cutter, as if they
had already overmastered their victim.
It is a part- of a sailor's creed, when he can do
nothing to relieve his situation, to put up with it re
signedly. We found below several dark and narrow
recesses called berths ; casting lots for them, one
fell to me, and I eagerly deposited a portion of my
self in it, for it was so short, that head or feet must
swing; but I was immediately pounced upon by a
host of those corsairs who take a man's flesh and
blood, instead of his purse. I quickly jumped out,
determined not to die two deaths, for we were all
2*

18 THE PASSAGE TO
apprehensive of one, before the night should be
through. One or two more of these berths were
tried by others, but instantly forsaken, with denun
ciations upon all insects that jump or creep. We
now piled ourselves down on the floor, without regard
to positions or propinquities ; while a kind of sarco
phagus, fixed up in the stern of the craft, accommo
dated Mrs. R. : the commander of the Constellation
being on deck to watch what might betide, and afford
counsel where it might avail for good. This was
the longest night I ever saw, save one ; when I
watched alone in a deserted house with a corse, and
saw, through my excited imagination, in the stir of
each cricket, a giant bursting from the cerements of
his grave !
The loss of fresh air, and room to stand or lie
in, were not our only misfortunes ; the quick roll and
plunge of the cutter were so unlike the long, majestic
motion of our Frigate, to which we had become ac
customed, that the dull dizziness and faintness of a
mockish sea-sickness came in to aid the miseries of
our condition. " What a senseless dupe to my cu
riosity I am," exclaimed one, twisting himself into
some new shape. " This is going to Constantinople,"
cried a second, "or to the bottom," interrupted a
third, " and I don't care which," muttered a fourth.
" I never understood before the horrors of the Middle
Passage," muttered another. " This is very like it,"
replied the twister at his side, " and if the Sultan

CONSTANTINOPLE. 19
should make us slaves, as he has done many a good
Christian man before, the sickening parallel would be
completed." " Don't be concerned on that score," in
terrupted one, a little more inclined to be facetious,
" for he will never be able to find us, unless he can
plunge to the bottom of the sea, and I have never
heard that his Sultanship has taken to pearl-diving."
" Pearl-diving !" ejaculated the startled critic of the
pile, " do you compare that poor figment of mor
tality, when it shall become breathless, to a pearl 1
Why, the dust of all the beauty and manly perfection
that has breathed from the birth of Adam, is worth
less now as the bubble that breaks over our heads.
Human vanity, pride, and self-conceit, in such an
hour, and such a place as this, is like a tinselled
shroud in a closing grave." Here the only lamp
that glimmered in our dismal abode went out ; and
for the remainder of the night, we had as little to do
with light, air, or the upper world, as Jonah, in his
truly sub-marine ship.
Daylight at last began to break ; though we had no
evidence of it, till we had burst up the battened hatches
with that convulsive force which one unconsciously
exerts when near being smothered. The storm had
partially subsided, the wind came in suspended gusts ;
the rain in occasional dashes. I inquired respecting
Mrs. R., and found that she had rested in her sar
cophagus with the fortitude and repose of a true
sailor in his wind-swung hammock. Capt. R., who

20 THE PASSAGE TO
had been up through the night, was sitting braced up
near the man at the helm, and sound asleep ; the
captain of the cutter, in his capote and tarpaulin,
was meekly nodding against the binnacle ; two sail
ors, exhausted with fatigue, had thrown themselves
upon the tattered fragments of the gaff-sail ; while
Bill, the cook, whom I never knew to flag or sleep,
was fastening a pulley to a jury mast. Our poultry,
consisting mainly of two or three dozen chickens,
lay dead in their wave-washed coop ; and several
ducks, strange as it may seem, had shared the same
melancholy fate. Most of the casks which contain
ed our fresh water had made their escape through
the shattered railing ; and our cooking apparatus had
gone to aid the culinary wants of some mermaid of
the sea. Tangled ropes, and the remnants of sails,
and broken spars lay around ; and the whole had the
appearance of a mangled relic left to float, as un
worthy of the burial which the sea accords to the
stately ship. The piteous plight of our craft, the
sudden bereavements of our condition, with the wan
and melancholy cast of each countenance, contrasted
so strongly with the beauty and gallantry of our
first setting sail and with the romance of our expe
dition, that two of us, as we sat down in silence to
look at each other, burst into an involuntary laugh.
" There is but a step between the sublime and ridi
culous." Only yesterday, we were a picture of
floating symmetry, grace, and gladness, and now so

CONSTANTINOPLE. 21.
changed that even the sea-bird wheeled away from
the spectacle to his rude aerie in the cliff.
We were not far from that spot where iEneas
fitted out his ships for their long voyage ; with this
great example of patience and perseverance before
us, we set ourselves to repairing our shattered craft.
Fortunately a. spare spar or two had been taken
on board ; a cast-off sail and a few coils of rope were
found in the hold ; these, with what the storm had
left, enabled us to restore the upper works, so that
before evening we were on our way again, with
the promise of a better night ; and so it proved, with
the exception of the couch-corsair, who renewed,
with unrepentant severity, the full measure of his
bloody exactions. The next morning we passed
the ancient Lectum, now a beautiful village, on a
forest-feathered acclivity, with its delicate minarets
glittering above the green shade, and its leaping
cascade, dashing down as if it heard the call of the
wave on the beach. At evening we were beating
up between Tenedos and the Troad ; and though our
starboard tack hardly brought us upon a long reach
to the silent shore of Priam, yet we could bear wit
ness to the reasonable range of vision in Virgil :
Est in conspectu Tenedos, notissima fama
Insula. — Ma. ii. 21.
Nor could we say less for the optical propriety
and vaticinal truth of that blind minstrel, who, as he

22 THE PASSAGE TO
placed his hand against the majestic tomb of Achilles,
and heard the waves break on the shore, sung of
this sweet romantic isle.
A soft twilight was resting on hill and dale,
through which the island, the tomb-crowned shore,
and the distant range of Ida, rose with melting beau
ty. It was, perhaps, in a night like this, that the
Grecian fleet, leaving with muffled oars their unsus
pected retreat behind Tenedos, advanced to the
strand of Troy, and laid that city of song in ashes.
I can imagine the consternation and despair of the
daughters of Ilium, as they woke from their early
slumber, and found their dwellings in flames. One
could almost wish to turn the current of time back
ward, and float up to that infant period when this
scene of treachery and sorrow occurred, that he
might plunge into it, and rescue some of the young
and beautiful beings who were its innocent victims.
But as the river returns not to its source, so time will
never retrace its steps, ; and from the distance to
which it has now borne us, so far from sympathiz
ing with the bewildering grief of this sad catastro
phe, we begin to doubt its ever having been a reality.
The day will come when our woes will fall on the
skeptical ear of man like the vanishing sounds of the
sighing wind ; our graves will be sunk in the very
earth where others have mouldered, and tomb will
thus inherit tomb, till even the place of our dust and
the last memorial of our existence have vanished

¦CONSTANTINOPLE. 23
forever ! Yet there is One who will never cease to
be mindful, and who, if we are his, will hold us in
everlasting remembrance.
And now, gentle reader, should you prefer lin
gering among the fading relics and sacred recollec
tions of this Plain, to following me in my troubled
way to Stamboul, I will meet you here again close
to that soft fount, in which the beautiful Helen once
laved her delicate limbs, or on the green banks of
the Scamander, in whose yellow waves Minerva,
Juno, and Venus, about to appear before Paris,
changed their locks to floating gold. Yet you must
not stay here ; I cannot part with you, for there is
a life between us, a mystical thread of union, that
must not be broken. Come with me, and if there be
any kindness in love, any truth in the human heart,
you shall not be without a friend.
Another day had nearly passed when our barge,
still struggling against a head wind, cut her way
through the entrance of the Hellespont, which is de
fended by two formidable castles posted on the ex
treme verge of the Asiatic and European shore. A
small village rose in the rear of each, crowned with
a mosque, whose connection with the huge ranges of
mounted ordnanee reminded one of the time when
Islamism was not only defended, but propagated, by
the sword. The country, from a frequent and lofty
xange of precipices, became of a milder genius, and
fertile valleys were seen stretching up far and wide

24 THE PASSAGE TO
among the swelling hills, yet in these rich cham-
paignes the voice of the plowman, and the song of
the reaper, were not heard, nor could we observe,
but in very few places, the animating tokens of
agricultural enterprise. Why these productive lands,
which spread luxuriantly on each side, should be left
unfilled, is a mystery which can be solved only by a
reference to the nature of the government which
afflicts them. Every blade of corn that springs, every
olive that buds, is exposed to the rapacity of some
presiding Pasha, who recognizes no higher rule of
equity than that which emanates from his own inte
rest. Under such a system an Eden would soon
pass to the lizard and owl.
At the close of our fourth day out, we reached
Chariak-Kelessi, where the channel suddenly nar
rows, and the current becomes mare rapid : indeed
the channel may be said to commence at this point ;
for below, it more resembles a small arm of the sea.
It being necessary to obtain a firman here, and be
ing also in want of fresh water and provisions, we
ran our barge into a small quiet cove, a little above
the town, and dropped anchor. Our rambles through
>the place were rewarded by nothing worthy of the
trouble. It is a collection of miserable dwellings,
intersected by narrow dirty streets, and inhabited
mostly by Jews, who traffic in the indifferent wines
<of the country, and in a species of coarse pottery
which has but little to recommend it, except its

CONSTANTINOPLE. 25
capacious qualities. The castles, which here defend
the strait, excited some attention from the singularity
of their positioas, for they are precisely opposite, and
would in action bombard each other with demolish
ing effect. This is a specimen of Turkish sagacity
which sets the triumphs of all modern engineering
at defiance 1
I should mention here the politeness of the Eng-
glish Consul, and the proffered hospitality of an
Italian merchant who enjoys some accredited pri
vileges under our government. He invited us to re
main, and attend the wedding feast of his son, a
good-looking youth of twenty, and who, he assured
us, was about to be married to a young Armenian
lass, whom he had never seen, but who, as he had
been repeatedly informed, was a great beauty. But
as our Captain had obtained his firman, and BilL, the
cook, had procured something as a substitute for the
chickens which had been lost in the storm, we de
termined to forego the nuptial banquet, and resume
our voyage, or we should be as long in accomplish
ing it, as were the Argonauts, our renowned prede
cessors through this difficult strait.
We were soon on board ; but the night was now
gathering so blackly, and the wind rising to such a
degree of force, that our Captain deemed it not pru
dent to forsake the security of his present little an
chorage. Had he been of a poetical vein, he might
3

26 THE PASSAGE TO
have warmed our impatience, in a quotation of the
lines so peculiarly apposite to this occasion :
The winds are high on Helle's wave,
As on that night of stormy water
When Love, who sent, forgot to save
The young, the beautiful, and brave,
The lonely hope of Sestos' daughter.
We were in truth rocking close to the spot where
Leander, to whose tragical end these lines allude,
was wont to cross, on his nocturnal visits, to the
gentle object of his affections. Owing to the ra
pidity of the current, and a curve which it makes
here, the romantic lover had to swim over three
miles, and as many on his return, an arduous enter
prise, but — amor vincit omnia. Lord Byron per
formed the same feat, but with a purpose widely
different. The object of his Lordship, independent
of historic association, was the reputation of being a
vigorous swimmer ; but that of Leander was the
gratification of being a few hours by the side of one
for whom he entertained a degree of attachment that
finally cost him his life. This story may perhaps be
a fiction ; but whether founded in fact or fable, it
once interested men's hearts, and bespoke a strength
.and sincerity of love which, I fear, has now fled the
/earth, or been utterly lost among the sordid calcu-
I lations of a selfish interest. There is nothing which
I more ardently admire than that pure, uncalculat-
ing affection which binds one heart indissolubly to

CONSTANTINOPLE. 27
another, which makes us willing, for the sake of this
confiding being, to encounter poverty, persecution,
and death.
Another day had just begun to break, when the
Captain called to us with a request that we would
aid him in shoving off the barge from the shallows,
into which she had drifted during the night. His
wishes were easily complied with, for having tum
bled below in our clothes, we had no toilet to make,
and were immediately on deck, exerting all the
pushing power which the emergency demanded ;
our little sails were again spread, and we commenced
beating up the most rapid pass in the strait. Our
tacks were short, but each took us perceptibly
ahead ; and we soon passed the protruding rocks to
which Xerxes fastened his second bridge of boats,
after having very properly chastised the flood for
the insolence of breaking up his first contrivance.
Of the five millions which the Persian monarch
marched over this strait in his invasion of Greece,
how few ever returned to their homes ! their graves
swell from every foot of ground between this and
the Athenian hills. The pride and valor of the
mightiest empire sunk here to that hurried shroud
in which war and pestilence wrap a nation as they
would an individual. The wailing surge of the loud
ocean would be a befitting knell over the ghastly
doom of such a countless host. It is no wonder that
Xerxes is said to have wept at the thought that they

28 THE PASSAGE TO
must die ; he might have trembled at his responsi
bility in sending so many to their last account, with
all their imperfections on their head. But a con
queror regards human life only as the means of pro
moting his personal schemes. He would steep the
earth in blood to add another feather to his fame !
As we passed up, it was very observable that the
Asiatic side in fertility and beauty of landscape has
the advantage over its sister shore. The Cherso
nese ascends more steeply from the wave, is broken
into bolder bluffs and darker glens, and has a
back ground of wild, precipitous elevations, while
the verge of Asia descends in easy undulations,
where the rich valleys are rendered still more
fresh by the wooded swells which diversify the sur
face. Yet I could discover on neither side any
attempt at a thorough and systematic cultivation ot
the soil. Little villages were sprinkled here and
there, creating around them for a short distance an
agricultural smile, but there was nothing indicating
an effort beyond an immediate and pressing neces
sity. There were no lowing herds in the rampant
vales, no bleating flocks on the frolicsome hills ; it
appeared as a country where nature had lavished
her richest means, and man had turned away to
busy himself in the construction of fortifications,
which might excite the timid gaze of the foreigner :
and yet these castles, which frown so formidably
along the Dardanelles, may, many of them, especially

CONSTANTINOPLE. 29
those on the Thracian shore, be commanded by
neighboring heights ; and in the event of an inva
sion by land, could serve their friends only as a
temporary and perilous refuge. It would be like
the gathering of the superstitious crowd within the
walls of a stupendous church, when its foundations
were rocking with the throes of the earthquake.
It was near evening when we passed on the
right the narrow outlet of a stream which has
been identified in conjecture with the ancient ^Egos-
patamus. This spot figures in history as the scene
of the memorable engagement in which Lysander
terminated the Peloponnessian war. If naturalists
should pass this way, ambitious of celebrity, they
will do well, perhaps, to look for the huge meteoric
stone which fell on the margin of this celebrated
stream, whose burning and ominous descent Anax-
agoras foretold, whose fearful visit Pliny described ;
and if they cannot find it, and fix the topography of
the stream, they can at least find on the bank some
other rock, declare it to be of atmospheric formation,
and, in short, nothing less than the great historic
iErolite ! The fame of such an imputed discovery
would make a man an honorary member of every
antiquarian and scientific association through the
civilized world. The initials of his titles would em
brace at least half the combinations of which our
alphabets are capable ; and when he should die, he
would leave behind him a name as dazzling and
3*

30 THE PASSAGE TO
durable as the iErolite itself. It is strange, yet
beautiful, to see what a man may acquire by merely
making an serial out of an earth-born stone, and
just throwing its date back a few harmless centuries.
I expect to hit upon some such expedient for fame
before I get through with my travels — and to be
found lugging home a part of Nebuchadnezzar's
image, or one of Pharaoh's chariot wheels, or per
haps the very hearth-stone of Adam, with the little
niche in it, under which the first cricket chirped off
the quiet night.
At a short distance above the stream of classical
ambiguity we passed Lampsachus, situated on a pro
jecting plain that comes with advancing beauty and
richness into the strait. The marble mosque, which
was once a Christian church, now points its delicate
minarets, with brilliant effect, above the small forest
of dwellings beneath ; while a back ground of green
acclivities presents a pleasing boundary to the rang
ing vision. The spirit of merriment and gayety
which characterized its ancient inhabitants, and rang,
like a voluptuous lyre, over its flashing waters, has
been sobered down by misfortune and time. Lamp
sachus was one of the three cities which Artaxerxes
presented to Themistocles in his unjust and ungrate
ful banishment from Athens ; but even these splen
did bribes, it seems, were insufficient to corrupt the
ill-requited patriotism of the hero of Salamis.
Passing on, we rounded Galipoli, on the opposite

CONSTANTINOPLE. 31
shore, the first European town in which the Otto
man standard was unfurled, and where it waved for
nearly a century before advancing successfully upon
the city of Constantine. Would to God it had there
paused, in troubled plight, to this day ! We were
now entering the Propontis : we had cut our way
up through the Hellespont against its strong current,
leaving behind, at baffled anchorage, hundreds of
sail, waiting for a change of the wind. Our barge,
though desperately assailed in the storm, and partially
dismantled, yet, like a true and fearless friend, proved
worthy of our trust. The night now deepened
around us, and, one after another, we sunk to sleep ;
but in our floating dreams we passed up again
the enchanting stream, over which the hills of Eu
rope and Asia cast their golden shadows at each
other's feet.
In the morning we found ourselves slowly ap
proaching Marmora, a central isle, that has now
given its own soft name to this vast sheet of water.
From the marble quarries of this island the material
was taken which has contributed essentially to the
architectural beauty of the Ottoman capital. We
rocked along its shore till towards evening, when
the breeze, which had been faint through the day,
began to freshen, and though still ahead, yet our
peerless barge compelled it into its service. Ano
ther night passed away in dreams of the past and the
approaching : and never was a magnificent dream

32 THE PASSAGE TO
more fully realized than when, with the breaking
light of the morning, the obscuring clouds passed off,
and left, in distant and developing view, the minar
ets, domes, and palaces of Constantinople ! This
vast city appeared to swell, in a stupendous and gor
geous mass, from the very bosom of the Marmora.
Nor were the expanding splendors of its first emerg
ing aspect diminished, when a clearer prospect be
gan to blend its insular outline with the main, and to
present its continuous dwellings, mosques, and mo
numents upon their seven permanent hills. At every
glance of the eye, some new range of swelling cu
polas, surmounted with gilded crescents, towered
jnto view; or some new group of gardens disclosed,
through an opening vista, their gathered depths of
fragrant shades, or some unseen line of marble por
ticoes flashed into brilliant relief; till the mingled
and varied whole stood before us in all the richest
combinations which nature and art can bestow.
Our fixed and entrancing gaze nearly involved
us in a serious catastrophe : for, as we entered the
rapid outlet of the Bosphorus, which sweeps around
the bold bend on which the castle of the Sultan
stands, the breeze being intercepted by the opposite
heights of Scutari, we were suddenly becalmed,
and narrowly escaped being carried against the surg
ing rocks. To be wrecked here, after all the depri
vations and discomforts which we had undergone to
gratify our curiosity, would indeed have been a sad

CONSTANTINOPLE. 33
tale. But, fortunately, we dropped into a broad
eddy below : and taking advantage of the breeze
which was felt here, we passed to the opposite shore,
where, after tacking about for several hours, we
gained a position that enabled us to fetch across into
the Golden Horn, which winds up between the Capital
and Galata. Letting go our light anchor close to
the crowded quay of the latter place, we disembark
ed our little all that had survived the passage, and
delivering it to several porters, out of a crowd who
clamored for the employment, we started for a hotel
on the high grounds of Pera.
As we walked on, I inquired of an Armenian,
who had already been introduced to us as a desirable
cicerone, if they had no carriages in these parts?
" None," he replied, " except the araba, a kind of
covered wagon, drawn by buffaloes, in which the
Turkish ladies are frequently transported." " Are
you sure," I inquired again, " that the porters, who
are straggling off with the baggage there, will not
make free with any of our trunks 1" " Never," he
returned ; " if any one should do it, he would lose his
head before to-morrow morning." Well, I thought,
if there be no law here, there is at least a powerful
dissuasion from theft, for a trunk can be of very little
use to a man who has lost his head. " And why,"
I asked again, " is it that the crowd, in passing each
other, so carefully avoid coming in contact ; for they
appear as timidly shy as if each supposed the other

34 THE PASSAGE TO
to carry a pestilence in the very hem of his gar
ments." " It is very much so," he replied, " for the
plague is prevailing here to an alarming degree, and
no one knows when he is safe, or with whom he
may trust himself; and I should advise you not to
touch an article of your baggage from the backs of
those porters till it has been thoroughly fumigated."
And so we passed on, without any very flattering
prospect of gratification, or even safety. Arriving
at the hotel, our luggage was taken into a separate
room, by the order of the prudent landlord, where
it was steeped in the fumes of aromatic shrubs and
sulphurs. We passed ourselves also through the
same purifying process ; and then sat down to an
excellent dinner in the Italian style, which, I need
not say, was relished well after the cold cut of seven
days, that followed the loss of our little caboose in
the cutter.
The night soon came on, attended by a silence
that one could hardly expect to realize in the tumul
tuous heart of a mixed and crowded city. Of the
thronging multitudes scarcely a footstep lingered in
the streets ; a deep slumber seemed to hover at once
upon each habitation ; not a voice of wrangling or
revelry was to be heard ; and nothing remained to
disturb the stillness of the place, except the startled
howl of the watch dog at the gloomy gate, and the
wail of the mourner over some fresh couch of death.
I ascended to the terrace, which commanded a wide

CONSTANTINOPLE. 35
and diversified prospect, and there spent a solitary
hour in gazing at a scene that cast on my feelings
the most brilUant and mournful images. Beneath
me flowed the Bosphorus, in a broad stream of
liquid silver, and mingling its glittering line with the
rich flow of the Golden Horn, as it swelled down
with a bolder circle from the distant valley of Sweet
Waters. Farther on rose the domes of the vast city,
lifting themselves, in magnificence and beauty, into
the soft light of the evening sky ; while beyond slum
bered the Marmora, enshrining in its pure bosom the
subdued splendors of the mirrored heaven ; while
less remote, and in a different range, stood the long
and dense grove of the Cypress, casting its solemn
shadows over the turbaned tombs of thousands who
had sunk to their latest rest. In that populous soli
tude not a bird broke into momentary song, and
even the moon-beams seemed timidly still, as they
stole through the darkening foliage, and faintly
gleamed on the marbles of the dead. Around me
lay, in unconscious sleep, multitudesj for whom the
insidious pestilence was preparing a hurried grave ;
and all, in their deep unbroken repose, were so like
to that which they must finally become, that life
scarcely appeared to survive in this map of death.
It was as a peopled and voiceless barque, boating on
that sullen flood which moves from this narrow
isthmus of time to that uncertain shore from which
no wave, or sail, or mariner, has ever returned.

36 THE PASSAGE TO CONSTANTINOPLE.
Filled with these sad sentiments, I descended to
my chamber, and having revived the lamp which
had been lit beneath the countenance of a sweet
Madonna, in trusting invocation of her blessed pro
tection against the encroaching perils of the plague,
I sunk upon my pillow, and soon passed into that
shadowy realm, where the anxieties and sorrows of
earth are soothed and forgotten. How inexplicable
is sleep ! We wake from this mysterious state each
day to a fresh existence ; one in which our wisdom
is retained, and the fever of our doubts and cares
assuaged ; and then a few glimpses of philosophy may
perhaps be attained, in a resembling experience,
each night, of the end that awaits us, —
" Our little life is rounded with a sleep."

CHAPTER II.
Janizary-cavash — Fate of Hallet Effendi — Stratagem of Mahomet —
Capture of Constantinople — The silver sofa — Palace of the Sultan
— His wives, odalisques, guards, garden — The Sultan shooting an
arrow — Conversation with him — His personal appearance — Preva
lence of the plague.
I would challenge any one, situated as we were,
to look at the breaking morn, so full of life and fresh
ness, and not determine to forego his apprehensions of
the most deadly contagion, and visit, at once, the ob
jects of his wearisome pilgrimage. Taking with us
our Armenian guide, and placing ourselves under the
protection of a cavash, attached to the American
legation at the Ottoman court, we started on our
first day's ramble. The cavash exercises the func
tions of a body guard, is allowed certain rights and
privileges, and any violence or insult offered to his
person, or official character, is regarded as an indig
nity to the embassy with which, for the time being,
he becomes identified. The person who attended us
in this capacity had been a Janizary ; but being ab
sent from the capital in the catastrophe which over
whelmed that fierce body, he escaped their tragical
fate. Still there was something in his bearing, as he
moved-on with his mounted wand, pipe, pistols, and
yategan, which betrayed the proud, indomitable
spirit of the corps to which he had belonged.
We paused a moment, near the college of the
4

38 HALLET EFFENDI.
dancing dervishes in Pera, at the sumptuous mauso
leum of the late Hallet Effendi. The melancholy fate
of this distinguished individual is a striking proof of
the precarious and perilous nature of honor and in
fluence in the Ottoman government. Hallet had been,
for several years, ambassador at the court of France,
and being a man of quick perception, had naturally
imbibed something of the literature and liberal spirit
of the age ; with these impressions he returned to
Constantinople ; and the Sultan, so far from being
displeased with his European sentiments, placed him
near his person, and made him keeper of the royal
signet. This office, in itself, conferred no direct
power, but it afforded Hallet an opportunity of ex
erting his individual influence, and his opinions were
powerfully felt in the decisions of the divan. The
enlightened poliey of many important measures could
be traced to the wisdom of his counsels. Among his
invaluable suggestions were some which encroached
upon the old and riveted order of things : these gave
great umbrage to the Janizaries, who, it would seem,
had determined that the world should for ever re
main in statu quo, and they imperiously demanded
the head of their offensive author. The Sultan, at
first, very justly hesitated ; but at length so far yield
ed to their clamorous demand as to dismiss Hallet ;
not, however, without giving him a written protec
tion, under his own hand, extending over his person,
property, and life. He advised him, for the present,

HALLET EFFENDI. 39
to retire to Iconia assuring him that he should be
recalled, with increased honors, as soon as the excite
ment had subsided.
He set off on his temporary exile with a guard
of honor, and received, in the successive villages
through which he passed, the most distinguished
attentions. Arriving at Bala Vashee, he was met
by the Musselim, or governor of the place, who
earnestly solicited the honor of entertaining him at
his own palace. The illustrious exile assented, and
a short time passed off in friendly conversation, when
a silikdar entered, and presented to Hallet a firman
from the Sultan for his head ! Hallet, with his usual
self-possession, drew from his bosom his written
protection, bearing the imperial signet, but the Mus
selim, who was all the while acting in treacherous
concert with the executioner, decided against his be
trayed guest, in as much as the date of the firman
for bis death was subsequent to that of his protec
tion. Hallet requested time to inform the Sultan of
his supposed mistake, but the messenger, knowing
well that he acted under orders which wait for no
explanations, took out his bowstring and strangled
him at once on the divan. His head was brought
back to Constantinople, and exposed for several
days to the gathering crowd, at the gate of the Se
raglio ; it was purchased at length for two thousand
piastres by the wife of the murdered man, and bu
ried in this splendid mausoleum. But the rage of

40 CAPTURE OF
his Janizary foes was not yet appeased ; they could,
not allow even to the lifeless head of their imputed
adversary the quiet of the grave, and in compliance
with their insane demand, it was dragged from the
sanctity of its repose, and cast into the blushing
Bosphorus : — and this empty tomb now only remains
to tell where Hallet might have rested in honor and
peace, had he been less wise and virtuous.
From this place, so full of sad suggestions, we
traversed the spot rendered memorable by the pas
sage of Mahomet's ships in his last and decisive as
sault on Constantinople. The harbor, and that sec
tion of the city washed by its waves, had been suc
cessfully protected by an immense chain, stretching
from Seraglio point to Galata. The Turks, conclud
ing it as useless to fret against such a barrier as to
contend with the decisions of that fate recognized
in their creed, were on the eve of once more aban
doning the seige, when this last expedient occurred
to their enterprising commander. A deep valley
sets up from the Bosphorus, separated by another
which opens up from the harbor, by the narrow pe
ninsular swell of Pera. In one night, by the treach
erous aid of the Genoese sailors, who occupied this
suburb, the Turkish fleet was dragged from the head
of the flooded ravine over the intervening ridge, and
in the morning, to the utter consternation of the
Greeks, was found floating before the most defence
less part of their capital. An advantageous posi-

CONSTANTINOPLE. 4J
tion had at the same time been assumed by Maho
met, with his land forces, in front of that portion of
the metropolis which rests on the base of the triart-
gular promontory. Thus assailed from field and
flood, the unequal forces of Constantine had no re
source but to follow his devoted example, and die in
the desperate breach.
Yet when we consider the extent and resources
of the Roman empire, its skill and power in arms,
we are astonished at this easy conquest of its capital
by a tribe of wandering adventurers, issuing in
ignorance and fanaticism from the most obscure
recesses of Asia. But we should remember, in our
estimate of valor and means of defence, the natural
effects of that fatal mistake which Constantine com
mitted in transferring the capital of his dominions
to this distant, though beautiful position. It was like
taking the heart from the centre of the human sys
tem, and locating it in one of the extremities. The
whole empire felt this disastrous removal of its vital
functions, and in its bewildering faintness gave an
ominous token of its final decay and ruin. It should
be recollected, too, that those who fought under the
banner of the Cross, in this last defence of Constanti
nople, were contending with foes who not only out
numbered them three to one, but who were flushed
with an uninterrupted succession of victories, and
who, whether perishing on the field, or triumphing
in the conflict, were expecting heaven as the meed
4*

42 SILVER SOFA.
of their reckless valor. When, therefore, we con
sider the discouraging and deserted condition of the
Christians, and the overwhelming force of their be-
leaguring enemy, we may well admire the resist
ance which they actually offered: we may stand
with reverence and tears over the spot where Con
stantine took his last stand, determined not to survive
the liberty and happiness of his people. Long may
the tree flourish that stands where he fell, a fresh
and green memorial of a patriotism and piety which
none can remember too long, or admire too ar
dently. Proceeding on to the quay of Galata, we took three
or four of the thousand boats that lightly skim its
waves, and passed over to the city of the " Faithful."
Our landing was close to the imperial Kiosk, covered
with an immense field of green cloth, which descends
quite down the white walls, terminating in a scal
loped and gilded outline. In the faint light, which
struggles through a partial screen into the pavilion,
we were shown the silver sofa on which the Sultan
sits, when taking leave of the Grand Vizier, at his
departure with the army on some eventful expedi
tion. It was concealed under a rich covering of
damask, which the guard raised with the cautious
and solemn look of one who is about to' disclose a
slumbering earthquake. There was a time when
its terrors blanched nations with dread, but now it is
like a cloud that has spent its thunder ; still the

sultan's palace. 43
dream of its vanished power will long remain to
haunt the repose of tributary princes.
Passing on, we reached the gate of the Seraglio,
surmounted by a bold massive arch, with an Arabic
inscription on the deep chord, and having on each
side a well-disposed niche, where no statues were
seen, but where death and beauty ought to be per
sonified. This heavy gate, or porte, from which the
Ottoman empire receives its- name, was guarded by
forty or fifty porters, armed with white wands, who,
after being informed by our cavash that we had
come from the New World, allowed- us to pass — a
permission suggested, apparently, as much by their
own curiosity as a spirit of indulgence to ours. In
this extensive enclosure we passed hundreds pursu
ing their assigned duties in the most guarded silence.
They appeared to be familiar with the spot, yet to
be overawed by some mysterious dread. We ob
served here a long range of infirmaries for the sick
and aged domestics of the royal palace that would
have done credit to the humanity of any Christian
prince. Continuing on, we came to the second gate,
guarded hke the first, but with a more scrupulous
vigilance. We should in vain have requested ad
mission, but the Sultan, with his harem, being at the
Beylerbeg castle, a few miles up the Bosphorus, a
small present to the guard enabled us to pass. We
found, on this occasion, what we experienced on

44 sultan's palace.
every other, when under the necessity of resorting
to the experiment, that in the Turkish police any
individual, from the intendant down to the humblest
menial, may be bribed whenever he may consider
his head tolerably safe in his breach of trust. The
second court into which we now entered, presented
a square area of two hundred paces, tastefully laid
out in green plats, intersected by narrow paved paths
and refreshened by the shade of clustering trees,
among which marble founts were casting around
their sparkling showers. Near the Grand Seignior's
treasury, which stands, like a proud self-relying spirit,
lofty and alone, we were shown a gloomy fountain,
where were formerly cut off the heads of Bashaws
sentenced to death ; a quick ceremony, of very fre
quent occurrence, and intimated to the public only
by the discharge of a cannon. The Turks have no
public executions ; the sentence and its mortal pangs
come like the secret spring of the serpent from the
brake. At the end of this court which is surrounded by
arcades, supported by marble pillars, towered, in a
confusion of gorgeous and imposing architecture, the
palace of the Sultan. It has attained its present dis
cordant form and massive dimensions, from the va
rying tastes and vanity of the different princes who
have reigned here, each constructing some new
ambitious appendage, till the proportions of the ori
ginal can neither be sketchednor conjectured. Iti

sultan's palace. 45
sufficiently ample to meet the demands of the most
sumptuous court in the world, and if its splendor
equalled its magnitude, it would be an object of high,
admiration. As it is, its galleries, balconies, belvi-
deres and clustering domes, surmounted with gilded .
crescents, have a fine effect, and the whole mass,
though without the advantages of symmetry, appears
not unworthy of the pomp and power which belong
to the great oriental monarch.
Here each Sultana reigns over her separate
establishment with the brilliancy and authority of a
queen. Of these there are seven, and each is sur
rounded by a blooming circle of fifty or sixty oda
lisques, in which may be found the full beauty of the
Byzantine, the soft graces of the Circassian, and the
richer charms of the Georgian. These are the con
cubines of the Sultan, and share his amatory favors
with their imperial mistresses. These frequently rise
to the dignity and consequence of Sultanas, and in
stances are on record where a poor girl, stolen from
a distant province, and without any thing to recom
mend her but personal endowments, has been the
mother of one destined to represent the prophet of
Mecca, and wear the crown of the Ottoman empire.
The number of the females who compose the
imperial harem, are not to be taken as an infallible
criterion of [the capricious desires which would
seem to demand such a varied indulgence. They
are rather to be considered as a part of the royal

46 sultan's palace.
establishment, indicating its wealth and considera
tion. They would probably occupy their present
situation, even had passion sunk to a pulseless slum
ber in their royal master. Though strictly confined
in this gilded cage, and watched by a vigilance that
never sleeps, their condition in their own estimation,
whatever it may be in the opinion of others, is most
enviable. They associate with it not the slightest
degree of that degradation and reproach which, in
our conception, form its most prominent features.
The Mahometan law casts over them the sanctity
of its vail — and though it makes them the mere in
struments of pride and pleasure, yet it so connects
them with the splendors of the imperial monarch,
that their hearts and hands, were it not a sacrilege,
would be sought by the proudest courtiers in the
realm. This sensual indulgence in the creed of a
Mussulman so closely resembles the fruitions of his
future state, that it is never marred by a rebuking
conscience. It is with him a sparkling tide upon
which he floats to a haven of deeper beauty and a
home of imperishable delights.
The garden, as seen from the heavy gate,
through which we were scarcely permitted to pass,
appeared laid out in luxurious beauty. - Its winding
paths, its marble founts, its fresh embowering shades,
its carpet of living green, enamelled with fragrant
flowers, and sprinkled with mossy seats, beneath the
cool recesses of arching vines,, made it a place that

sultan's palace. 47
might almost have reconciled our first parents to the
loss of Eden. Here the Grand Seignior, with the
froliesome inmates of his harem, laugh, lounge, and
sport, while the poor gardeners fly from their ap
proach to some secluded nook, and bury their faces
in the earth, to escape the suspicion of a furtive
glance at the fair, which would be followed by
instant death. Nor would the fate of the luckless
gardener, in that case, be more unjust and bloody
than that which sometimes befalls the beings upon
whom he might cast the unpardonable profanation of
his eyes. More than a hundred of these gay crea
tures, belonging to the harem of Sultan Mustapha,
were strangled by his successor. In the morning
they were all life and gladness, but at night the
grave had nothing more silent and sad ! Passing
out of the garden, we paused a moment to take our
last look of the celebrated Corinthian column of
white marble, fifty feet high, surmounted by a capi
tal of verd antique, and bearing the inscription,
Fortuna reduci ab devictos gathos.
Under the kind auspices of Commodore Porter,
our Charge d'affaires, to whose hospitable attentions
we already began to be greatly indebted, we had a
fine opportunity of seeing the Sultan. It was in the
Oc-meidan, or field of arrows, where it seems he is
in the habit, on certain days of the year, of practising
at archery ; and this being the day, we repaired to
the spot. The monarch soon arrived on horseback,

48 sultan's person.
surrounded by several members of his court. Observ
ing us, and being informed that we were Americans,
he sent an officer to invite us nearer — an invitation
which brought us within a few feet of his person.
After a few shots from the members of his court, he
descended from his horse, and took the bow, which
he drew with astonisliing energy ; for his third arrow,
the last that he sped, went seven hundred and fifty-
six yards. The distance is incredible, but we saw
it measured, and could hardly be mistaken. It was
nearly fifty yards farther than any of his royal pre
decessors had thrown the shaft. He gave the arrow
to Mrs. R., observing that this was one of their an
cient customs, in which he occasionally indulged.
He inquired of Commodore Porter, who had been ill,
respecting his health, and observed to Capt. Read,
that he should be happy in seeing our men of war
at Constantinople. He spoke in great admiration of
a model of a ship which Mr. Eckford had just sent
to his palace, — tendered us a firman for visiting the
royal Mosques, and ordering some mats t© be
brought, invited us to be seated ; and treated us to
some excellent sherbet and ice-cream. His manner
was very easy and affable, and nothing but the pro
found respect of those around him, showed that we
were in the presence of the Grand Stdtan.
His majesty appears to be about fifty years of
age — his person is stately, with a muscular, firm-set
formation ; his eye is full of fire, his lips betray firm-

sultan's costume, 49
ness ; the prevailing expression of his countenance is
indicative of care, fortitude, and energy. His dress
had no spare folds, or sparkling tinsel. He wore a
crimson cap without visor, fitted close to the head,
and with a low crown surmounted by a crown- work
of purple silk. His coat was a blue round-about,
with a narrow upright collar, and buttoned close up
to the chin. His trowsers were of the same color,
cut after our fashion, with straps running under a
square-toed and heavily spurred boot. His sword,
which hung gracefully at his side, was concealed in
a gold scabbard, having a hilt and belt blazing with
diamonds. His horse was an Arabian barb, and
most richly caparisoned ; the headstall of the bridle
was studded with jewels, and the stirrups of the em
broidered saddle were of massive gold, and a more
splendid horseman than his majesty thus mounted, I
have never seen.
On returning to our hotel, we found that the oc
currence of several new cases of plague in the im
mediate vicinity had awakened an increased degree
of alarm. The guard at the portal had doubled
their vigilance, the fumes of the sweet herb and sul
phur rose in a denser volume, and the lamp beneath
the countenance of the composed Virgin cast a
broader and brighter ray. We determined, after
having secured a goodly repast, to break up our
little encampment, and seek a less exposed position ;
so packing our trunks and delivering them to trusty
5

60 CHANGE OF QUARTERS.
porters, and paying our landlord his thirty shillings
each for the day's repose, we moved off with the
silence and precipitancy of those who have unex
pectedly arrived at the jungle of a couched tiger.
A part of us passed up the Bosphorus to Ortaquie,
where our missionaries had proffered their kind at
tentions, and a part over to Kadiquie, where our
Charge d'affaires had tendered the hospitality of his
mansion. Thus we were once more where death
seemed to have left a narrow breathing space, where
the flying might pause, and the weary might rest.
Yet on retiring to my couch, I heard from the infect
ed tents, pitched on a neighboring hill, the loud la
mentations of those who were bewailing the loss of
their friends. I looked around almost instinctively
for the meek face of the Madonna, but her heavenly
countenance was not there, her shrine had not been
reared, nor the votive flame kindled. But there is
an eye that never sleeps, — a Being to whom the
darkness and the light are both alike, — a Divinity
whose presence ever surrounds us : to Him my
spirit shall look, on Him alone my hope and confix
dence repose.

CHAPTER III.
Visit to tha royal Mosques — St. Sophia — Mosque of Achmet — of Sul
tan Solyman— Tomb of its founder— Mosque of Ostnan — Church
and State — Mausoleums of Ottoman Princes — Antiquities of the At-
meidan-r-Egyptian obelisk— Marble pyramid — Delphic column —
Marcian's pillar— Sports of the Djerid.
The next morning, at an early hour, we started
on a visit to the royal mosques. St. Sophia, a che
rished and noble relic of other times, first enlisted
our attention. It stands on the highest grounds of
the ancient Byzantium, overlooking the imperial gar
dens as they descend, in varied luxury, to the wave.
We entered through a broad portico, having a rich
Mosaic pavement, and communicating with the inte
rior by nine large folding doors of brass, wrought
into ornamental relief. On approaching the centre
we observed no isle, or choir, or protruding gallery,
to break the sublime impression of the vast whole.
Looking up to the stupendous dome, resting in
gloomy gfrandeur upon the towering strength of the
sweeping columns, one is impressed with a sense of
the utter insignificance of his being, and feels awed
into a reverential worship of some present and pre
siding Power. His thoughts 'ascend as from the
centre of some hollow sphere, where there is nothing
beneath to confine them, and nothing around to de
tail} them or their way. No statues weep or smile

52 VISIT TO THE MOSQUES.
in the cloistered twilight ; no image of sanctity or
sweetness gleams, in mockery of life, upon the wall ;
the eye ranges at once, unchecked and unconfined,
from the broad pavement up to the " heaven-sus
pended dome," and the impression is one of delighted
wonder and calm solemnity.
The exterior of this church is less imposing, ow
ing to the enormous piers which have been reared
against it, for its support in the convulsive visitations
of the earthquake : they take from it that self-sus
taining aspect which every edifice of this character
ought to possess, and connect it, in the mind of the
spectator, too closely with objects utterly foreign to
the genius of its architecture. Yet the four mina
rets, in their lofty and delicate beauty, relieve, in
some measure, this heaviness of the main mass. The
marble cloisters which surround it add nothing to its
stateliness or beauty ; though indispensable in the wor
ship of a Mussulman, who connects an ablution of
his person with the purification of his heart. The
day may yet come, when this admired temple, which
tasked, for many years, the labors of its ten thou
sand workmen, the ingenuity of its hundred archi
tects, and exhausted the wealth of a nation, and
which has survived the empire that gave it birth,
may return to the holy purpose of its original conse
cration. It may yet be filled with worshippers, who,
instead of looking to the Prophet of Mecca, will cast
their eyes to that henevolent Saviour whose religion

VISIT TO THE MOSQUES. 53
needs no weapons for its support, but quietly sus
tains itself on its healing adaptation to the wants and
woes of a ruined world.
Leaving St. Sophia, we came to the mosque of
Sultan Achmet, advantageously situated in the Hip
podrome. Its royal founder is said to have laid each
stone of this splendid edifice at an expense of three
aspers, and to have encouraged the work with his
own hands. It stands in the centre of a spacious
court, shaded by trees tastefully arranged, and re
freshed by the showers of constant fountains. A
flight of twelve superb steps ascend, to the broad
vestibule, which is faced with the whitest marble
and crowned with a range of swelling cupolas, sus
tained by a colonnade of polished granite. Six lofty
minarets, ornamented with three galleries, ascend
with their crescents above the great dome, and give
to the whole an imposing and magnificent effect.
The expectations of the stranger, however, are too
highly excited by the external splendor of the mosque,
to be fully realized by its architectural pretensions
within. There is, indeed, the dim solemnity of
space, the undefined charm of colossal proportions,
and the grandeur of the " vaulted dome ;" but there
is not that relieving beauty and richness which
gleam from the pillared walls of St. Sophia.
Passing on, we came to the Solymania, a mosque
well worthy of perpetuating the name and splen
dor of its imperial founder. It was reared from the
5*

54 VISIT TO THE MOSQUES.
ruins of Chalcedon, and if the remains of all temples
and towers could be as advantageously replied, even
the antiquary would have little cause to grieve.
Its form is a square of more than two hundred feet,
with an elevation of walls and domes proportionate
to its vast area. The four columns of Thebaic gra
nite, seventy feet high and each of one entire block,
are in harmony with the solidity and stateliness of
the galleries, which they contribute to support. The
pavement is of white marble, and covered with Per
sian carpets, to which the light, as it meets through
the vermilion of the stained window, imparts a richer
tinge of purple and gold. The spacious court is
ornamented with a double range of galleries, sur
mounted by a succession of twenty eight cupolas,
which are supported by columns of green marble,
while the centre presents a fountain, fresh and salient
as a gushing spring of the infant world.
In the rear of the mosque, beneath the shade of the
evergreen, stands the mausoleum of the royal founder.
It is a beautiful pavilion, constructed of marble and
adorned with a maze of delicate columns. In the
centre repose the remains of the monarch in a mar
ble coffin, beneath a covering of embroidered vel
vet, on which the town of Mecca, from which it was
brought, is represented with singular vividness. At the
head rolls the rich turban, ornamented with a tuft of
heron's feathers, studded with the most precious gems.
Several large tapers are constantly burning around

VISIT TO THE MOSQUES. 55
it, and one individual, at least, may always be seen
kneeling near, and reading the Koran, or praying
for the repose of the soul. The Sultan visits this
tomb at stated seasons, to pay his tribute of respect
to the memory of the departed, and to be reminded
of his own mortality.
Near St. Sophia we were shown several mauso
leums of Ottoman princes, in a style comporting
with the dignity of those whose remains they en
shrine. They are usually constructed with an ap
erture in the centre of the dome, so that the dews
may reach the flowers that bloom around the coffins,
while the continuous windows afford the visiters an
opportunity of surveying, from every position, the
affecting memorials. Large tapers are burning
within, though their light, through the day at least,
is not required by those who are employed to read
the Koran, and offer up prayers for the dead. On
one side of Sultan Mourat, we observed a large
group of carved figures, which we were told repre
sented his hundred and twenty children, strangled
in a day by bis successor. On the other side lay his
wives, cut off with the same merciless celerity. The
spirit of Islamism may beatify the graves that have
closed over the victims of its despotic jealousy, but
this is only a poor atonement for the irreparable in
juries inflicted. An hour of innocent and happy
life is worth an eternity of sepulchral pomp.
We visited no mosque on which the eye rested

56 VISIT TO THE MOSQUES.
with more tranquillity and satisfaction, than upon the
Osmanlie. The entire temple is crowned with a
single dome of magnificent boldness and beauty.
There are no dividing or distorting objects to dis
turb the full sentiment which the harmony of the
whole awakens. One may study it for days and
months, and find his first pleasurable emotions only
the more deeply confirmed. It is the most simple and
finished specimen of architecture of which the capital
can boast. The Valide, though a most superb edi
fice, is far inferior ; its columns of verd antique, jas
per, and Egyptian granite, can never supply its want
of symmetry. Its founder was a female : she had
probably a clearer conception of beauty in the hu
man form, than in the proportions of a temple ; still
her mosque on festivals is the favorite resort, and
blazes from pavement to minaret with its ten thou
sand lights. It is an amiable and perhaps a happy
foible in our nature, that the other sex can take with
them, even in their whimsical errors, the greater
portion of mankind.
The Turks cannot be accused of parsimony, or
a want of taste, in the style of their religious edifices.
The most eligible situations are selected, the encum
bering and contiguous dwellings removed, an ample
space enclosed, which is planted with trees, and or
namented with fountains. From the midst of this
freshness and beauty the sacred temple lifts its dome
light and lofty over columns and walls of richest

church and state. 57
marble. The mosque is then liberally endowed, em
bracing an ample provision for all its officers, the
means of instructing a large number of youth, and the
ability of distributing alms constantly among the
poor. The revenues of St. Sophia are said to ex
ceed seventy thousand pounds : those of the other
royal mosques, of which there are twelve, are doubt
less very considerably less, but still sufficiently am
ple to place them incalculably above all obligations
to the contribution box.
The revenues of these twelve churches, inde
pendent of the funds, which support a hundred and
fifty others in the capital, would, in our country, if
devoted to the same ostensible objects, raise such an
uproar, that one would think heaven and earth were
coming together ! We cannot gather a few pennies,
to send a missionary among our Indians, without be
ing charged with a concerted plot to unite church
and state : and if an act of incorporation be asked
for, though the object be only the maintenance of
religious worship in an alms house or penitentiary,
thousands begin to think that they are witnessing the
last gasp of the Constitution. I am as hostile as any
one can be to a union between our civil and reli
gious interests, but there is just as little sagacity as
courage in trembling as if a lion approached, when
only a timid hare steals through the bushes. The
whole economy of our institutions is such, that they
must be razed to the foundation before this dreaded

58 THE PASSAGE TO CONSTANTINOPLE.
amalgamation can possibly take place. Yet we are
as fearful and abusively jealous, as if it could spring
up with the nocturnal rapidity of a mushroom. They
who forego their present peace and happiness, in
anticipation of evils that may never occur, are as
much to be pitied as they who struggle against cala
mities which they can never relieve. But enough of
our senseless solicitude.
The exquisite productions of the artist, which
once gave a deep charm to the city of Constantine,
have mostly perished under the rude indifference of
the Osmanlie. A Mussulman treats with contemp
tuous disregard all relics, save those which are in
some way connected with his religion. He would
preserve, with his heart's blood, a hair of the animal
that was backed by his Prophet, and barter away a
Venus of Praxiteles for a pipe of tobacco. The stan
dard to which he rallies at this day is the small
clothes of Mahomet ; and moving under this sacred
banner, not a sigh would escape him, though he were
trampling in the dust all that once excited the ge
nius and now sanctifies the memory of Greece and
Rome. The At-meidan, though it no longer retains the
form of the ancient circus, still preserves a few of its
monuments. It is located in the heart of the city,
and now presents an open space of some three hun
dred feet in length, with a breadth of two-thirds that
extent. The first object that here greets the eye is

ANCIENT MONUMENTS. 59
the Obelisk, of Thebaic granite, fifty feet high, of
one entire piece, and charged, from top to bottom,
with hieroglyphics. I felt a most insatiable curiosity
to penetrate the sense of this symbolic language ;
but I might as well attempt to unravel the mysteries
of fife and death. The pedestal contained an inscrip
tion in Greek, and another in Latin, which were not
utterly beyond my depth ; but they merely inform
us that the Emperor Theodosius caused this pillar
to be set up again, after it had lain a long time on
the ground. But the secrets of its origin, of its pas
sage over the wide water, and of its fall, are not in
timated. No one can conceive how a mass like
this could have been upborne by any craft which
then floated the waves ; or how, after being firmly
set up, it could have been thrown down, unless it
Were by the shaking tread of an earthquake.
The marble pyramid, raised by Constantine, son
of Romanus, stands near the Obelisk, and though tot
tering, from the effects of time, still presents its ninety
feet of elevation. Our guide informed us, in illus
tration of its heighth, that a man once jumped from
its top, and descending clear of the base, struck the
ground, which is extremely solid, with such prodi
gious force, that he sunk into it nearly to the knee,
and being killed by the shock, stood there for several
days, a ghastly spectacle to the crowd. But this
was sinking rather too deep, and standing rather too
long for our credulity. I know of no other memo-

60 SPORTS OF THE DJERLD.
rable event connected with this monument I Near
by stands the celebrated Delphic Column, formed by
twisting together three enormous serpents of bronze.
On the heads, as they branched off from the spiral
shaft, once reposed, if Zosimus, Eusebius, and Gyl-
lius be taken as authority, the Platcean tripod at
Delphi. This relic may have been thus dignified in
its day ; the arguments which support its claims are
urgent, if not conclusive. It is well known that
many of the statues and ornaments which once
graced the Delphic temple of Apollo, were brought
to this city by the royal author of its Roman adop
tion, and it would be unreasonable to suppose that
the pulpit of the priestess, whose oracular annun
ciations gave to the spot its sacred celebrity, should
have been forgotten. It would be Hke taking from
the rent tomb of a hero his helmet or shield, and
leaving the trusty blade, with which he won his
thousand battles, to rust unseen and unsung.
The At-meidan is not indebted solely for its at
tractions to its ancient memorials ; the sports of the
djerid render it occasionally a scene of the most
exciting interest. This is a favorite pastime with
the Turkish youth, and one which displays a singu
lar degree of dexterity and skill. The parties,
mounted on the fleetest horses, sta-t from opposite
sides of the square, when each selects his opponent,
and hurls his shaft* with a directness and celerity
that make you apprehend the most fatal conse-

ANCIENT MONUMENTS. 61
quences ; but the exposed individual throws himself
with electrical quickness out of the fine of the djerid,
or, to your still greater astonishment, diverts it with
a motion of his weapon. The whole company soon
appear in the utmost confusion, while each is pursu
ing, or flying from his adversary, darting to the right
or left, or falling on the mane of his foaming steed, to
escape the shafts which are now flying around in
every direction. The squadrons now assume their
original positions ; when a few, the most eminent
and practised at the sport, take the arena, while the
fatal aim and the unexpected escape equally awaken
the plaudits of the spectators. To our pleasurable
surprise on this occasion, no serious injury occurred
to any of the combatants, though, as we were informed,
the amusement seldom passes off without some tra
gical incident. The Turkish ladies, if allowed to
appear unveiled, would undoubtedly witness these
sports ; their presence would enhance the interest,
and perhaps soften down some of the wilder fea
tures. The Burned Column, so called from the blacken
ing effect of the frequent conflagrations that have
happened near it, is another relic to which the stran
ger pays the tribute of a passing glance. It stands
in lofty and solitary grandeur at a slight remove
from the At-meidan, and though reared of porphyry
the elegance and durability of its materials betray
the rude visitations of time and flame. It is no lon-
6

62 ANCIENT MONUMENTS.
ger the monument that rose in fearless splendor to
the exulting eye of Constantine. The wreaths of
laurel, so richly wrought from the precious metals
that encircled it, have disappeared ; and the statue
of Apollo, that once crowned its summit in-stateliness
and beauty, has long since descended to the earth,
under the fiercer stroke of the lightning : but enough
remains still to call up the memory of that noble
Being in whom piety and refinement mingled their
divinest charms.
In the court of a private house, near the bath of
Ibrahim Pasha, we were shown the colossal pillar
of granite which Tatianus erected to the Emperor
Marcian, in grateful acknowledgment of his obliga
tions in being appointed to the governorship of the
capital. Tatianus, it appears, had seen an eagle
brooding over Marcian, sheltering him from the
scorching sun, when he had lain down in the field
and fallen asleep from the weariness of the chase,
and predicted from this omen his future elevation to
the imperial dignity. The slumberer ultimately
gained the coronet, and the prophet went not with
out his reward. Adulation was then, what it is
now, the highway to preferment. A courtier flat
ters his prince, and becomes a privy counsellor ; a
demagogue inflames the rabble, and becomes its idol.
Both may despise the means they employ, and gain,
at no little expense of feeling, the reward pf their
self-degradation. But every man, with the exception

ANCIENT MONUMENTS. 63
perhaps of one in a thousand, ambitious of place,
has his price. Nor would I make even this excep-^
tion, but for the restraints of pride, and a fear of
the significant finger of scorn.
But the existence of the Marcian pillar at this
day would probably have been unknown to the
world, but for the researches of Spon and Wheeler.
It is much to be regretted that the efforts of inquisi
tive travellers have so seldom disturbed the dust of
Constantinople. Beneath the fabrics of the incurious
Turk, undoubtedly repose some of the richest re
mains of ancient art. But they will ever lie where
they now rest, unless disinhumed by foreign hands.
Their development would be attended by no very
serious obstacles in the dispositions of those who
dwell above them ; for a few piasters would pur
chase permission to sift every thing that belongs to
a Turk, save his harem and his grave. Touch the
first, and you will not live long enough to sign your
testament ; or put a spade near the latter, and you
might as well be digging your own grave or knell
ing the death-dirge of your obsequies.

CHAPTER IV.
City Fountains — Artificial Lakes — Subterranean Structures — Ap
pearance of Bazars — Merchandise of the East— Habits of the Fe
males—Sister of the Sultan— Khans of the City— Turkish Bath-
Sale of a Georgian — Condition of a purchased Girl.
The frequent ablutions which the Koran enjoins,
render the Turks peculiarly solicitous on the subject
of water. The copious use of this element is blen
ded with the most vital principles of their religion.
They regard the construction of a reservoir or fount
as an act of meritorious piety ; and the dying often
seek in this form to cancel the crimes of a vicious
life. These fountains are among the first objects
which excite the attention and admiration of the
stranger in visiting the capital ; they occupy the
most conspicuous places, are generally constructed
of fine marble, and are often richly gilt.
As the soil of the city is extremely barren of
springs, nearly the whole supply of water is brought
through tiled aqueducts from bendts, or tanks, in
the mountains, near the shores of the Black Sea.
These high places are the regions of frequent show
ers and springs, whose copious tribute is confined
and preserved in a number of glens, by casting a
permanent mound across their deep channel. The
water thus thrown back forms a pellucid lake ; trees

TURKISH FOUNTAINS. 65
are thickly planted around it ; the mound is covered
with marble, and the whole becomes an object of
magnificent beauty. It is death for a man to injure
the mound, maim one of the trees, or take water
from the bendts. On our excursion to Belgrade, we
visited several of these woodland reservoirs : they af
ford a distant, but fresh and wholesome retreat from
the dusty atmosphere of the city, and among any
people of less indolent habits than the Turks they
would become favorite resorts. But the silence of
their green shade is now seldom broken, except by
the song of the early bird and the footsteps of the
passing pilgrim.
These bendts are not indebted for their design or
construction to the ingenuity or industry of the
Mussulmen. They originated in the provident wis
dom of the Greek emperors when the increased
population of the city rendered a greater supply
of water necessary. The same commendable fore
sight was also the source of the vast cisterns which,
though now in ruins, are still objects of admiring
wonder. Of these costly capacious structures but
two remain, that can convey any adequate idea of
their original vastness and splendor. One of these
is now dry, and partially filled with earth, but it still
presents the spreading arch of its dome, sustained by
six hundred marble columns, each column consisting
of three, rising one above the other. It has the ap
pearance of a superb subterranean temple, and there
6*

66 TURKISH FOUNTAINS.
is now little to oppose this idea but an assembly of
silk-twisters who flit among the columns, plying their
task in the spectral twilight of the place. Unfortu
nately some of our company got entangled in their
yarn, and they made the vaulted roof ring with the
denunciations of their frightful anger. We appre
hended for a moment some act of personal violence ;
but being well armed, were able to pass up without
injury. The other cistern still answers its original in
tention. We descended to it by a narrow ffight of
steps leading down from a small trap door in an
obscure private house. By the light of our torches
we were able to trace the vast sweep of its circle,
with the arched roof supported by three hundred and
sixty columns, that have a very singular effect, rising
in stateliness and gloom out of the dim and motion
less lake beneath. The incurious Turk, whose
dwelling has been stupidly reared over the entrance
of this reservoir, wondered what there could be
about it to compensate us for the exposure and trou
ble of the descent. He remarked, without any ap
parent surprise, that the hundreds and thousands who
availed themselves daily of its water, through the
medium of pipes leading down into it, were wholly
ignorant of its existence. They knew, it would seem.
that water could be obtained by performing a cer
tain mechanical operation, but beyond this, their
curiosity never extended !

COVERED BAZARS. 67
The cistern has never been repaired, or had the
least care bestowed upon it, and owes its preserva
tion entirely to its freedom from exposure, and the
durability of its material. It has been thus neglect
ed and forgotton merely on account of its entombed
location. Had it been placed above ground, where
it could have met the vulgar gaze ; the vanity of
this singular people would have led them to cherish
its smallest pebble, and throw around it a profusion
of the richest gilding. Were St. Sophia, with its
glowing minarets, to sink merely below the earth's
surface, it would soon be covered up by hasty dwel
lings, whose inmates would think as little, and per
haps know as little of what was beneath them, as an
Arab of the glittering mine, above which he has
pitched his wandering tent.
The covered bazars present an imposing assem
blage of long arcades, which are constantly thronged
by a crowd of females, who move about, making
their little purchases with an air of stillness which
would lead you to suppose that they were pur
chasing the habiliments of the grave for some dear
deceased friend ; when, in fact, they are only buying
a tiny bottle of the otter of roses, or some trifling
ornament that may heighten their personal charms,
or they may be stealing away, under a shopping
pretext, to some place of assignation, where the ter
rors of the sack are to be encountered, for the sake
of the most transient gratification.

68 COVERED BAZARS.
How the preliminaries of these criminal appoint
ments are ever arranged between the parties, is a
mystery that I can never fully unfold ; nor is their
development very essential to the intelligence or
virtue of the public. No feature in the face of a
Turkish female is seen in the street, save the eye,
and that is so shaded by the visor, that you cannot
tell whether it lights a countenance that has the
bloom of twenty, or the gravity of fifty years upon
it ; and as for her shape, her loose robes place even
its outline beyond conjecture. Yet under all these
inevitable embarrassments, and with a strangling
grave in the Bosphorus before her eyes, she occa
sionally has one whom to love is guilt. This may
be dictated in part by that spirit of resentment to
which the female heart becomes keenly alive when
the being who ought to cherish her, and make her
his sole pride and trust, squanders his affections
upon unworthy objects, leaving her in solitude, to
that reproach which, in this strange land, a childless
woman must encounter. Errors of this kind may
generally be traced to some inexcusable forgetful-
ness or treachery in our own sex ; and I am only
surprised that they do not more frequently occur, in
a country where polygamy is legalized, and where
the female domestics of the household, with all their
youth and beauty, are at the will of their master. It
is requiring too much of human nature to expect that
under these provocations, and with no moral re-

COVERED BAZARS. 69
straints save the voluptuous admonitions of the Ko
ran, delinquencies will not occasionally be found in
the party most sensitive to injury, and alive to pas
sion. Yet such lapses here are extremely rare.
But to return to the bazars : — The exhibition of
these shops, in the splendor of their articles, is per
haps unsurpassed in the capital of any other country.
You conceive yourself in the labyrinths of some great
Fair, where all the rich, gay, and beautiful things
of a realm are exposed for sale. Yet when you
come to inquire for some of the most simple and es
sential articles, they are frequently not to be found. If
you inquire for a hat it cannot be produced ; but if
you ask for a turban, one will be handed you
that has jewels enough in it to make a prince begin
to calculate his resources. If you ask for a coat,
it cannot be procured ; but if you suggest the sub
stitution of a flowing robe, one will be presented
with ermin upon it befitting the dignity of a monarch,
or the sanctity of a pope. If a lady were to in
quire for a Vandyke or bonnet, her wants could not
be gratified ; but if she should bethink her of an
Indian shawl, one would be unfolded large enough
for the mainsail of a small ship, and of a material
and workmanship sufficiently rich and exquisite to
strike a whole community into a fit of whispering
envy. If she were to inquire for corsets, the milli
ner, so far from being able to produce the article,

70 TURKISH COSTUME.
would not probably be capable of comprehending
the nature of her wants ; for there is not such a thing
in Constantinople, except those which were worn
for a short time by the attendants of the Sultan's
sister. This princess, having been informed that the
article of dress alluded to, contributed very much to
the beauty of the female form, sent an order to Paris,
and imported a large package of them, for the more
privileged maids who attend near her person. But
the corsets were found too small, or those who were
to wear them too full of habit, so an edict was issued,
prohibiting, under severe penalties, the use of any
food beyond a dry cracker or two a-day, just enough
to keep soul and body together, till the shrinking
form should come within the beautifying instrument.
But the lacing, with its appendages, awakened still
louder complaints than the emaciating edict, till the
princess, wearied with sighs and entreaties, deter
mined to let nature take her course. The corsets
were consequently laid aside, and the girls permitted
to go as unconfined in their person, as her highness
is said to be in her morals. This last laxity heeds
not the attempts of the zone, or any other con
straints, save those of a delicate moral sense ; and
these, if once profaned, can seldom recover their
vitality and power. Those who would enjoy the
purity of virtue in any portion of their after life,

TURKISH COSTUME. 71
should preserve it now ; for neither penitence nor
priest can cancel the haunting recollections of past
crime and degradation. Nulla reparabilis arte
Lcesa pudicitia est deperit ilia semel.
The khans of Constantinople present a secular
feature, in the spirit of Islamism, well worthy of re
gard. These are immense store-houses, designed
for the accommodation of foreign merchants, of every
nation and religion, who may resort to this place for
a sale of their goods. They occupy these buildings,
of which there are no less than one hundred and
eighty, during the term of their residence, free of
rent ; and find in them a comparatively safe reposi
tory in those terrible conflagrations which occasion
ally afflict the capital. These khans owe their
construction to the wise policy of the different Sul
tans, and form one of the few redeeming exceptions
to the ordinary results which flow from their fright
ful exercise of arbitrary power. Even the most dark
and irresponsible despotism is not, therefore, with
out some strong points of relief.
This city, in consequence of these hospitable pro
visions, bas become the emporium of the East.
There is no article of necessary comfort, or prodigal
luxury, in the orient, with which it is not supplied.
The caravans which move this way, with a slow but
sure progress, bring with them the silks and teas of
China, the muslins of Bengal, the shawls of Cashmire,

72 PUBLIC BATHS.
the gems of Golconda, and the gold and ivory of
Africa. Nor have the discoveries and increased
facilities of nautical enterprise and experience essen
tially diminished that vast and restless tide of com
merce which flows through the heart of Asia.
The camel is still the ship of the desert, and
bears forward his precious burthen with a perseve
rance and fidelity never to be realized amid the
fickleness of winds and waves. Mahomet conferred
a substantial benefit on mankind, in the fanatical
favoritism which he bestowed upon this noble ani
mal ; for the camel has ever since been looked upon,
by all true Mussulmen, as possessing claims to a
kind and humane treatment which it would be im
piety to disregard. Indeed a lesson of humanity
may be taken by the most considerate nation in
Christendom, from the treatment of the brute species
among the Turks.
The city is provided with a hundred and thirty
public baths, constructed and furnished in a style of
great liberality and elegance. They are the resort
of all classes ; who, for a very trifling expense, enjoy
here one of the very few luxuries which contribute
to health and long life. Though with a noviciate
like myself the kneading and disjointing operations
of their baths, so far from producing agreeable sen
sations, excite a serious apprehension for one's phy
sical integrity. It appeared to me, that if I was so
fortunate as to escape suffocation from the steaming

PUBLIC BATHS. 73
vapors, it would only be to have every joint irrepara
bly dislocated, rubbed and rolled into a nerveless and
shapeless mass. I have no symmetrical beauty, Hea
ven knows, to spare ; but we do not like to have this
mortal tenement, however deficient in comeliness
and grace, wrenched and ruined before its time. But
I survived the breaking and remodelling process ;
and taking a few sips of strong coffee, and a few
whiffs of a pipe charged with opium and tobacco,
was wrapped in a blanket and laid on one of the
couches with which the bath is provided ; and then,
the sleep which followed, in lightness, repose, and
freshness, has no equal, unless it be those infant slum
bers before age has hardened our palpitating sen
sibilities. I felt, for several days, like a new being:
it seemed as if the clinging weariness of years had
been cast off, and that I had got back again among
the sallies and impulses of childhood. I cannot but
admire the Turkish bath, it is the true aqua vita ;
and the Prophet of Mecca manifested his deep saga
city in blending its use with the rites of his creed.
From the freshening enjoyments of the bath I
started off, with the Armenian guide, for the Aurat
Bazar ; where, instead of robes and weapons, they
deal in beauty and blood. The only being who there
appeared to excite any great degree of interest
among the purchasers was a young Georgian, sur
reptitiously taken, several years since, from her na
tive province, and brought to this city, where she
7

74 SALE OF A GIRL.
was purchased by a Jew ; who, to enhance her va
lue, placed her in a situation where she had acquired
many pleasing, personal accomplishments. The vio
lent death of her attentive proprietor had, perhaps,
hastened her disposal ; at least, it was the cause of
the sale's being more public than is usually the case
where an individual, so sweetly recommended in
her charms, is to be purchased. She appeared to
be about fifteen years of age, yet, at that period, to
have attained her full stature, and a maturity of form
which after years may confirm but not improve.
She had on an extremely thin and pliant robe, which
every breath of the breeze that was stirring carried
against her form, displaying its rich and graceful
proportions. Her carriage was free, easy, and win
ning, and betrayed a retiring consciousness of her
exposed condition. There was something in her air
which seemed to evince a slight sense of humiliation
and sorrow ; yet, so far from injuring her attractions,
it gave them a cast of extreme delicacy and sweet
ness. Had she been trained exclusively in reference
to this occasion, and taken the deepest interest in the
issue, it is impossible to conceive in what respect
she could have heightened the impression which
her youth, beauty, and artless demeanor created.
Several of the Turks present appeared very in
tent on her purchase; they watched her slightest
motion with that yearning fondness which one re
veals when surveying a fascinating object that is

SALE OF A GIRL. 75
only just beyond his possession. They presumed
not to lay a hand even on the borders of her dress,
or to lift the long thin veil that would have quite
concealed her beautiful face, had she not permitted
the ruffling air now and then to carry it partially
aside. The female servants that attended, her stood
near by in respectful silence, and evident grief, at
the thought of their separation from their young
mistress. My eyes were so attracted to the rich
flow of her chesnut hair, as it floated down her
shoulders in long luxuriant festoons, and to the swim
ming softness of her large blue eye, which her stirred
veil occasionally disclosed, that I did not, at first,
notice the excitement which a commencement of
the sale had created among the by-standers. A
number of offers were made, rising above each other
in quiet succession, till the last, reaching twenty-
seven hundred dollars, created for some time a
breathless pause, when one of the company, stepping
to the salesman, said something in a tone altogether
inaudible, and the auction of charms closed. It was
instantly rumored that the individual who had made
the last and successful offer, was an agent of the
Reis Effendi, who intended to make a present of
this beautiful Georgian to the Sultan. This ap
peared to reconcile, in some measure, the unsuccess
ful competitors to their disappointment ; though they
turned away from the spot with the look of one who
has lucklessly lost an invaluable treasure.

70 ' SALE OF A GIRL.
The future Odalisque of the imperial harem, with
her attendants, immediately disappeared, and may»
perhaps, one day, be the mother of a prince capable
of raising her to the highest dignity and influence.
Such was the fortune of the bashful girl presented
by Veli Effendi to the Sultan Mustapha. She be
came the mother of Selim, who afterwards mounted
the Ottoman throne. What young lady of any am
bition, with the prospect of such an elevation before
her, would not sooner undergo the transient embar
rassments of a courteous auction, than pass through
one of our matrimonial lotteries, and perhaps find
herself at last inextricably in the possession of one
incapable of appreciating her gentle worth, or false
to the confidence of her unsuspecting heart. I ad-
i vise all our young ladies not to marry ; the hazard
is too great, and the gain, in any event, too small.
No lottery for money, with such a vast disproportion
of blanks to the prizes, would be countenanced for a
moment ; and why should one be less incredulous
or distrustful when the happiness or wretchedness
of a life is pending ? Let them resolve conclusively
/ on a single life ; there will even then be folly and
; misery enough in the world. But there is no use in
lecturing on this subject ; the globe will turn round
on its axis ; and young people will get married, and
old ones too! This reminds me of a wedding to
which we have just been invited by a young Mussul
man, who tells us he is to wed in a few davs the

SALE OF A GIRL.- 77
most beautiful lady in Constantinople. I wish it
were in my power to catch a few of the glowing
metaphors with which his imagination teems as he
dwells on the beauties of her form and face. But I
can scarcely approach them :
Her eye is all one kindling ray,
And seems as it were given
To light the loveliest things that play
Between the earth and heaven.
So pure and limpid is its light,
So tremulously fair,
Methinks the sweetest star of night
Hath rose in glory there.
Her voice is like the silver lay
Of distant mountain streams,
That whispers as they lapse away
Their music through my dreams.
Her cheek is like the infant rose
Of light transparent hue,
Where every timid leaflet shows
The color melting through.
Her locks are like the raven's wings
Gemmed with the drops of night,
Each ringlet o'er her bosom flings
A flood of tender light.
Her step is like the wild Gazelle's
As pausing in its play,
It lists the camel's merry bells,
And fleetly bounds away.
7#

CHAPTER V.
Teriakis, or Opium-eaters — An experiment with the Drug— Its effects
on the Imagination— Grandeur and horror of its Dreams— Walls
of the City— Intentions of Russia— Grave of Ali of Yanina — Traits
of this fierce Pasha— Treachery connected with his Death.
Being exclusively in search of curiosities, our
guide took us to a row of coffee houses, near the
Suleymanie, which are the favorite resort of the Te
riakis, or opium-eaters. The number of devotees
to this drug of delicious delirium has of late very
much diminished ; not that there is less misfortune
or wretchedness to be soothed or forgotton, nor that
the Koran has received a severer construction from
the Mufti, but wine, which ever maketh the heart of
man glad, has been clandestinely substituted in its
place. Whether the intellect, morality or health of the
community has profited by the change, I leave to the
decision of those who have had wider opportunities of
witnessing the effects of both. My own conviction
is, that if a man will take to stimulants, the juice of
the poppy is as harmless as any other source of ex
citement ; and then it has this strong recommenda
tion, it never makes a man foolish, it never casts a
man into a ditch, or under the table ; it never
deprives him of his wits or his legs. It allows a man
to be a gentleman ; it makes him visionary, but his
visions create no noise, no riots ; they deal no blows,

EFFECTS OF OPIUM. 79
blacken no one's eyes, and frighten no one's peace.
It is the most quiet and unoffending relief to which
the desponding and distressed, who have no higher
resource, can appeal.
I should want no stronger evidence of this, than
the immediate effects on those who came to the
place where we were now sitting, to procure their
daily allowance. The change which diffused itself
through the countenance, limbs, and gait, was like
the resuscitation of the dying to the energies and hap
piness of a fresh life. You could hardly persuade
yourself that the man who now moved before yon
with a light elastic tread, and an eye kindling with
secret rapture, was the same who a short time since
approached with a faltering, feeble step, scarcely
able to sustain himself upon his cane, and the arm of
a less withered friend, while every feature seemed
settled in that unrelieved despair which might make
a word of hope sound like a mockery. Such was the
change, such the total renovation produced, that one
ignorant of the depression and despondency into
which this dreaming, delicious excitement, if unre
newed, must ultimately sink, might have supposed
that the tree of life had been discovered, and the im
mortal ambrosia of its fruits enjoyed. But as weari- ,,
ness will the sooner overtake the forced wing of the
eagle, so depression will only the deeper weigh down
the heart that has thus been too elated. The even .
stream pursues its way in cheerfulness and light, \

80 EFFECTS OF OPIUM.
through smiling valleys to the deeper wave of the
ocean and the lake, while the mountain torrent
that foams from the cliff, though there it may have
worn all the hues of heaven, only plunges, perhaps,
into some wild and sunless glen, whose sohtude is
never cheered by the tints of breaking day, or the
song of early birds.
Few men, however, pass through life without
testing some source of promised health and happi
ness beyond the quiet motion of the heart. My
imagination was once so kindled by the perusal of a
little book called the " Opium-Eater," that I resolved
to put its pleasing assurances to a practical test.
So, sending to an apothecary's shop, I procured two
enormous doses of the precious drug. One was
taken by my young companion, who had become
equally interested in making the experiment, the
other by myself.
My comrade began immediately to feel extremely
particular about the stomach, and soon in a retching
agony parted with all his anodynical expectations.
My portion stuck fast as original sin ; and I shortly
lapsed into a disturbed slumber, in which it appeared
to me that I retained my consciousness entire, while
visions passed before me which no language can
convey, and no symbols of happiness or terror re
present. At one time I was soaring on the pinions
of an angel among the splendors of the highest hea
ven, beholding at a glance the beauty of their un-

EFFECTS OF OPIUM. 81
veiled mysteries, and listening tb harps and choral
symphonies over which, time, sorrow, and death
have no power ; and then my presumption was
checked, my cleaving wings, like the waxen plumes
of Icarus, were melted away, and I fell down, down,
till caught in the bosom of a thunder cloud, from '
which I was again hurled, linked to its fiercest bolt,
upon the plunging verge of a cataract, that carried
me down, frantic with horror, into the lowest depth
of its howling gulf.
Thence again I emerged, with the placidity and ;
power of Neptune over his troubled realm, and .
driving my watery team over the excited bosom of
the ocean, harmonized its elements into the deep
bass it sustained in the bursting anthem of the infant
world. And then with the fleetness of a disembodied
spirit, I seemed to float around just between the in
cumbent circle of the blue heaven and the sea, dis
cerning within upon the surging plain the motion
of innumerable ships skimming the wave with the
lightness of the swallow, while without the circle I
beheld, far down in the twilight and lurid gloom of
an immeasurable gulf, the wrecks of worn-out worlds.
Still I floated on upon tiie frightful verge of the
circle, till coming around near the north pole I saw
its steadfast star fixed in the darkened change of '
death ; other planets were bending over it ; and when
they had sung its funeral hymn, they lowered it into
a grave so dark, so fathomless and still, that the

82 EFFECTS OF OPIUM.
agonies and convulsions of expiring nature could
not disturb its sepulchral sleep. While thinking of
the dismayed mariner, rolling his eyes in vain to find
his undeviating star, an iceberg with its mountain
mass of frozen torrents came rolling on, and catch
ing me in one of its dripping shelves, bore me
through seas lashed by the hurricane, convulsed
with the war of the whale and sword fish, and
where the serpent, struck by lightning, lay troughed
between two waves like a huge pine prostrate among
the hills.
Being benumbed and paralyzed by the stiffning
ice, I fell from my tumbling lodgment, and de
scending through the sea, was carried by the wave
of a submarine current quite within a little grotto,
reared of coral and lined with pearls, where a mer
maid was gently kindling a fire, beneath whose re
viving ray I soon felt each frozen vein and limb
slowly tingling back to life — when, as if to reclaim
my bewildered thoughts, and soothe their delirious
excitement, this daughter of the deep, raising her
harp, struck one of those soft strains whose liquid
flow melts into the heart like fragrant dew into the
bosom of the folding rose.
But scarce had the last note of this sweet min
strel died away into the listening stillness of peace,
when a call, loud as the summoning trump of the
archangel, sent its rending thunder through the hol
low caverns of the astounded ocean and the rent

EFFECTS OF OPIUM. 83
tombs of the shaking earth, starting even death it
self from his sleep. The sheeted dead went up
from their watery graves to stand on the sea, while
the earth, from precipice to plain, from shore to
mountain's brow, was covered with the shrouded
myriads that had left their couches of clay.
The sun with a changed, despairing aspect dis
appeared, leaving a huge darkened chasm in the
heaven ; the moon spun round and round, and slowly
receded from view, leaving another fearful blank in
the blue vault ; the planets fell from their places,
and were quenched as they sunk into the lifeless void
beneath; and darkness in a thick palpable mass
filled all space, save where the forked lightning, ar
rested in its course, still preserved its terrific form
and brightness, and save the lingering light of some
loftier star that contended with its doom. The
courses and powers of nature were suspended still
and motionless ; the mariner heard his relaxed sails
fall against the idle mast, the breaker cease to lift its
warning voice over the fatal reef; while the sea-bird,
unable again to reach the wave, rested upon his im
movable pinions ; the curling wave lay half broken
on the shore ; the torrent ceased to plunge from its
wave-worn steep ; the war-horse kneeled down and
died ; the monarch in his capital, discrowned, stood
pale and speechless ; the peasant in his field called
aloud on his forgotten God; while the imploring

84 EFFECTS OF OPIUM.
shriek of nations went up like the last wail of a
ruined world !
The agony is o'er j nature her debt
Has paid; the earth is covered with a clay
That once was animate, and even yet
Is warm with an existence reft away
By Him who gave j it were but yesterday
This clay peopled a happy universe
With beings buoyant, beautiful and gay ;
But now alas ! — of all things the reverse,
'Earth is their winding sheet, and darkness palls the hearse !
These lines were engraven on my heart at the
time by the departing spirit of my dream ; and I
awoke, after having been lost to all the realities of
this world for two days and nights. But O ! the
faintness, the thirst, and delirious weakness of that
waking moment ! I look back to it as a man, who
has been skating over the frozen bosom of a lake,
turns to the yawning chasm which he has miracu
lously escaped ! I could not stand or sit ; and even
in a most inclined posture, respiration itself seemed
an effort beyond the gasping exhaustion of my frame.
I should have turned on my pillow and died, but for
the kindly efforts of one whom I can never love too
much, or remember too long. Let no one test, like
me, the dreaming ecstacies and terrors of opium ; it
is only scaling the battlements of heaven, to sink
into the burning tombs of hell !
Leaving the resort of the Teriakis, from whose
forbidden habits, so oblivious of real sorrow, my
egotistical episode took wing, we passed out of the

WALLS OF THE CITY. 85
city, and coursed its triple wall. This defence,
though formidable in its day, is now in a neglected,
decayed condition. The bramble and briar fill
the fosse ; the serpent and the lizard lurk in the
rents of the ruined wall ; and the climbing ivy hangs
its festoons from the tottering towers. An enemy,
provided with heavy artillery, would be able to force
a passage at any point.
It is singular that the Turks, who appear to place
so much reliance in batteries, should have neglected
them in the very place where they are the most ur
gently demanded. They have carefully defended
every approach to their capital by water, and left
every access by land almost unobstructed. The
wall might have easily been repaired, and rendered
impregnable ; they have cut off Christian heads
enough to fill all the rents of time ; but relying for a
defence more upon the terror of their arms, than the
impenetrable properties of rocks, they now find them
selves, in their shattered and decayed strength, at
the mercy of their enemies. Russia can at any time
attach Constantinople and European Turkey to her
immense dominions, and defy all the sovereigns of
the continent to restore their balance of power.
That this will eventually be her conduct, she has
already more than intimated in her encroaching dis
positions : she has stepped from the Dniester to the
Dnieper, from thence to the Danube, and her next
stride will be to the Bosphorus. This measure may
8

86 PASHA OF YANINA
be delayed for a time by the diplomatic interference
of other powers, and the absence of a motive suffi
ciently powerful ; yet when the seat of the Ottoman
empire shall cease to serve her as a sort of neutral
outpost, subservient to her wishes, and bound to her
interests, it will be forced into Asia ; and may per
haps be compelled to gather up the remnants of its
premature age and imbecility where it first cast
aside the swaddling bands of its savage infancy.
Arriving in our rambles near the Silivri Kapousi,
or gate of Silyvria, our attention was caught by the
singular position of several tomb-stones, crowning a
small mound of earth near the way-side : on the mar
bles we found the epitaphs of Ali Pasha and his three
sons, simply declaring their titles, and that their
heads were cut off. This brief Turkish mode of
despatching a man's history requires a little explana
tion. Ali was governor of Yanina, where through
many years he had been amassing a fortune, and
consolidating a power which he apprehended might
render him obnoxious to the Porte. To prevent
being taken by surprise, he placed at Constantinople
a confidential agent, whose duty it was to advise
him of the dispositions of the Grand Seignior. Some
thing, however, occurred to shake the confidence of
Ali in the fidelity of his agent, and he commissioned
two Albanians, with whom he had entrusted de
spatches to the Reis Effendi, to finish their business

PASHA OF YANINA. 87
at the Capital, by the death of this false confidant.
They delivered their despatches, received the com
munications which they were to return to Ali, and
rode up, with every demonstration of friendship, to
the gate of their intended victim. But the wary
Albanian, perhaps from the suggestions of his con
science, suspecting their intentions, instead of meet
ing them frankly at the door, as was his custom,
called from an upper window for any instructions
they might have from his master ; when instead of
a few harmless papers, they sent him the hurried
contents of their pistols, which fortunately took only
a slight effect, and then hastened upon their return
with Tartar speed.
The whole affair was immediately laid before
the Sultan, who eagerly seized upon it as a pretext
for deposing Ali. A firman to that effect was ac
cordingly issued, accompanied by the excommuni
cation and anathema of the Mufti : but the Pasha of
Yanina preferring, very naturally, his situation to
the bow-string, refused a compliance ; and the re
sult was, a declaration of war on the part of the Di
van. Ali, after a series of engagements, in which he
maintained his high reputation for valor and skill,
was compelled to take refuge in his aquatic and
strongly defended fortress, after the loss of his three
sons and many of his most faithful adherents. To
convince his enemies that he was not to be taken
alive, and that they were not to profit by his death,

88 PASHA OF YANINA.
he took with him, into his retreat, all his treasures,
which were of immense value, and placed under the
whole a large magazine, that only waited the kind
ling match. But his antagonist, sternly resolved to
secure his submission, or destruction, informed him,
through his silidhar, that he must capitulate at dis
cretion, or he would come himself and light the train.
Ali, who till this moment had never manifested
the slightest fear of death, who had fought his hun
dred battles, and faced the last grim messenger in a
thousand forms, seemed now to recoil from his des
perate purpose, and manifested a disposition to pre
serve his life at the expense of his treasures, dignity,
and power. This last measure was in direct con
tradiction to every act of his long life. To be con
sistent, he should have defied the malice of his foes,
fired the train himself, and cast his blackened re
mains among them with taunt and scorn. He had
really nothing to live for ; his power had departed,
his children were dead, and his life was faintly flick
ering in the socket — yet he could not bear its violent
extinction. So true it is, that conquerors, except in
the heat of the conflict, will frequently cling to life
with a most pusillanimous pertinacity. Napoleon
could rush into the cannon's mouth on the burning
bridge of Lodi ; and, after his defeat at Waterloo,
accept the dishonorable boon of a few wretched
years in St. Helena. He should have died on that
field, and never lived to see his brave companions

PASHA OF YANINA. 89
shot as common traitors, for having gallantly es
poused his desperate cause. The ghost of Ney may
well have startled him in his solitary slumbers : it
was, perhaps, the shadowy visits of this betrayed
general that drew from the exile those exculpatory
and criminating inuendos which injured the dead
without benefiting the living.
On the force of a pledge, from Hourchid Pasha,
his adversary, to use his utmost influence in procur
ing from the Sultan an act of oblivion, Ali consented
to surrender his treasures, and retired with his little
band to a small citadel on another island of the lake.
He here received, while the dispositions of the Porte
were being ascertained, every token of respect and
kindness, which his previous rank and present con
dition could suggest. Among the distinguished per
sonages who waited upon him with their sentiments
of profound regard, was Mohamed Pasha, governor
of the Morea. He appeared particularly solicitous
to contribute to Ali's comfort, pressed many little
delicacies upon him with the most affectionate con
cern, and tendering him pledges of eternal friend
ship, rose to depart ; but, as Ali was returning the
parting salutation of his friend, Mohamed plunged
his yategan through his heart, and he fell dead at his
feet ! The Pasha of the Morea was applauded by
the Turkish government for the ingenuity of his con
duct ; while the head of his poor victim, following
those of his three sons, was brought to Constantino-
8* $

90 PASHA OF YANINA.
pie, exposed to the exulting multitude, and finally
deposited beneath these stones.
Thus Ali, whose life had been one of craft,
subtlety, and deceit, who made treaties only to violate
them, and proffered protection only to betray, who
was Mussulman or Christian, Turk or Greek, as his
interest or his anger dictated, fell at last himself a
dupe to the shallowest stratagem. He might have
schooled the world in duplicity, and yet was most
credulous when he must have known his protector
was a traitor, and his friend a disguised assassin.
He was brave, undaunted, and unsubmitting to the
last drop of his blood ; he had hewn his way to
empire and renown, through the solid ranks of his
foes ; he had never paused in his career, or deviated
in his course from apprehension of peril, or consider
ations of personal safety ; yet in the evening of his
days, when life had nothing more to proffer or pro
mise, he grasped at the fleeting empty shadow, and
supplicated an hour's wretched reprieve. I some
times think that true courage is to be found only in
connection with stern moral principles. It may even
then sometimes waver ; but as in Cranmer, it will
put the hand that would falter first into the flame !

CHAPTER VI.
Caloyer and his deathless Fish — The seven Towers— Imprisonment
of Foreign Ambassadors— Arabian Story-teller — Habits of the
Mussulman— Birds of the Bosphoms^Objects of a Turk's human
ity — The great Cemetery of Scutari.
At a short distance from the grave of Ali we
were shown the ruins of the Balukla, or church of
Fishes, which had its origin, in a legendary incident
of the most childish and incredible character. When
Mahomet was making his final attack on the city, a
messenger having informed a Caloyer of the Greek
monastery, which then occupied this spot, and who
was engaged at the time in frying some fish, that the
beleaguring foe had made a fatal breach in the wall,
the incredulous monk declared, he would as soon
believe that the fish would spring out of his pan,
and come to life again ; when, as the tale runs, the
fish instantly leaped from the pan, and falling into a
vessel of water that stood near, swam about as if
neither hook, fat, or fire, had ever been near them.
To commemorate this miracle, and stamp its
truth upon the skeptical dispositions of after ages,
a church was erected over the spot, an annual festi
val instituted ; while the fish, being carefully placed
in a little reservoir, within the pale of the sanctuary,
continued to swim about, undying and undisturbed,

92 THE SEVEN TOWERS.
till the breaking out of the late Greek revolution.
The church was then, owing to its peculiar sanctity
with the Vebels, levelled to the ground ; but the sa
cred fish fortunately escaped : not, however, through
the mercy of the Mussulman, but their own invulner
ability. A Caloyer, who has built himself a shelter
in the ruins, pointed them out to us, narrating their
veracious history with all the solemnity of a Plato,
discoursing on the immortality of the soul. We did
sot attempt the vain task of disturbing his belief, by
exhibiting our own incredulity, though we saw some
minnows in a small stream near by, so very like
those in the reservoir, that a Yankee, in olden times,
on the force of such resemblance between himself
and his accidental acquaintance, would have inferred
a degree of consanguinity sufficiently near to war
rant him in prolonging his visit for six months.
Leaving these ruins, we proceeded on to the
Yedi Kauleler, or Seven Towers, situated in the
angle of the city, which rests on the Sea of Marmora.
This imperial castle, though quite formidable and
imposing in appearance, as you approach by water,
loses its lofty frown as you suddenly turn in upon it
from the shore. You look upon it more as a dun
geon than a fortress, as a place better calculated to
confine a criminal than ward off an enemy. But we
had not the honor of penetrating its recesses in
either capacity. The inner gates of the castle were
shut against us, and have been closed to all strangers

THE SEVEN TOWERS. 93
since the gallant knight of Malta found means to
make his escape. The custody of this intrepid ene- '
my was held in such importance by the Porte, that
his escape cost the keeper of the castle his luckless
head. So we saw not the cell in which Osman was
strangled, nor the chamber where Kaphler met his
doom, nor the winding way where none retraced his
steps, nor the sculptured despair of Phaeton, struck
by thunder, into the waves of Eridanus ; nor the
chiselled rapture of Venus, gliding along by the torch
of Cupid, to see her sleeping Adonis : but we con
tented ourselves with drifting about over the ground
where twelve thousand of the turbaned combatants
sacrificed their lives in subduing this stronghold of
Byzantine power. Since that day time has been
slowly working its ruin : its bastions have crumbled,
its ordnance ceased to menace the foe, and the tow
ers bowed themselves to the storm. Still it looks
sternly on the sea ; and, like a falling giant, inspires
apprehensions which it never can enforce.
Foreign ambassadors, on the slightest suspi
cion of a rupture with their respective courts,
were unceremoniously lodged in these towers, as
hostages, for the good behaviour of their fellow-
countrymen, during the impending struggle ; a brief
mode of securing civility in war, and advantage in
the terms of peace. How the Christian powers of
Europe ever submitted to such an outrage on their
dignity and honor, is a question that can be answered

94 ARABIAN STORY-TELLER.
only on the maxim, that nations are like individuals,
where arrogance and presumption frequently enjoy
the respect due only to superior merit. A nest of
corsairs, at Algiers, received for ages a tribute that
would have been denied with insult and disdain to
any dynasty in Christendom, The truckling and
submissive demeanour of ambassadors, representing
the most powerful courts in the world, before the
Divan, was a humiliation and' disgrace that will ever
be quoted by the Mussulman with taunting pride
and exultation. But governments which affect the
haughtiness of the dictator with the courteous and
refined, will frequently play the sycophant with
barbarians. Turning the Seven Towers, and passing on
through a dense population of industrious Armenians,
we came to a range of coffee-houses, opening on the
Marmora, and presenting an air of luxury and re
pose, quite in harmony with the beauty and softness
of their situation. In the centre of marble seats,
whose curling ascent was shaded by the sweet
foliage of the(£?Ieander and orange, a sparkling foun
tain cast up its jetting shower, that returned again
to its source, like a frolicsome bird to its bough.
Yet so gentle was the lapse of its waters, as not in
any degree to disturb the Medha, or story-teller,
that was weaving his tale of Eastern adventure
to his turbaned hearers. His hearers, who were
very respectable in numbers and personal appear-

ARABIAN STORY-TELLER. 95
ance, were some of them sound asleep, others were
in that floating condition between wakefulness and
slumber, in which one knows all that is passing,
without comprehending any one thing distinctly ;
while the rest were inhaling the fumes of the pre
cious weed, seldom lifting their eyes from the ground,
never exchanging a word or look, and preserving,
through every incident of the tale, the same imper
turbable gravity of countenance.
The Medha appeared of Arabian extraction, of
small statue, and with eyes quick and twinkling.
The firmness with which his lips were set, the stern
severity into which his features occasionally fixed
themselves, and the fire which ever and anon flashed
from under his clouded brow, indicated a spirit des
tined for a bolder and higher bearing than the mere
amusement of the fickle and stupid crowd. But it
would seem as if some strange vicissitude, some
dark disastrous frown of fortune, had brought the
eagle down from his wild element to the more tame
and quiet scenes of earth. But neither the indignant
breathings of his broken pride, nor the fiery romance
which kindled along his story, could extract from his
audience even the tribute of a startled look: they
were mute and motionless as statues that resemble
and commemorate the dead. We seized an oppor
tunity, presented by the termination of a very ani
mated passage, and gave the most tremendous burst
of applause in our power. This seemed for a mo-

96 TRAITS OF THE TURK.
ment to startle the sleepers, who looked round, felt
if their arms were at their side, and then gradually
sunk away again into their lulling repose.
A Turk is one of the most harmless beings in the
world, provided you do not thwart his interest or
inclinations. Give him his pipe, coffee, and dish of
kebab, and he will let you have all the rest of the
world unmolested ; provided you do not, in your
universal scrambling, cast too prying a glance at his
harem. He has become tired of war ; indeed the
battling disposition seems entirely to have departed
from his genius ; he takes the field now only from
stern compulsion, and fights as one whose soul is
lingering behind, among the soft dreams of his
hearth. He looks upon the achievements of his an
cestors as sufficient evidence of his own courage and
energy ; and shelters his indolence under the burn
ing panoply of their fierce memory. Untutored to
the arts of peace, and a stranger to the refined ex
citements of the scholar, he gives himself up to the
luxury of a listless inactivity, and moulders down to
a grave where will soon repose the pride, pomp, and
power of his nation. Nor can the most dark pic
ture of his ruin now avail to rouse him ; he resolves
every calamity, past, present, and prospective, into
an absolute dispensation; and enjoying the present >
leaves the future to its irremediable doom.
But to leave the Mussulman, with his pipe and
doctrines of destiny, and come back to ourselves,

BIRDS OF THE STREAM. 97
who are old and valued acquaintances, whatever
may be the opinion of the world ; for, after all, there
are few things we more ardently love and respect
than ourselves. A man without this self-esteem is
like a balloon without its rarified air ; it has not the
levity brilliantly to ascend, or the substance to re
main usefully below. Tendering a small present to
the Medha, for his story, which none of us could
comprehend, but which seemed to claim for its au
thor something more than our empty applause, we
procured a boat, well manned, and started for our
lodgings up the Bosphorus.
On our way we encountered several flocks of
those small birds which fly incessantly back and
forth "between the Euxine and Propontis. They have
never been known to alight, to pause, or deviate in
their course : they reach the waves of one sea, wheel
about, and return to the waves of the other, where
they wheel again, and so pass up and down the cur
rent, like hapless ghosts on the shore of the Stygian
stream. It has been supposed, by some of the more
considerate natives, that they are the spirits of those
who, in a fit of causeless jealousy, have cast their
innocent wives into this strangling tide ; and that
they must, in expiation of their crime, drift about
above these graves of guiltless beauty till the revi
sions and awards of the final day. I would that all
proe to harbour distrust where no cause exists,
and to punish offences which are merely imaginary,
9

9» BIRDS OF THE STREAM.
Gould see these wretched, unresting birds : even the
prospect of such a punishment would be enough to
make them pause before they accuse, and linger long
before the holiest ties of earth were rent asunder.
I detest the jealous miscreant who prowls about
himself, in search of forbidden pleasures, and comes
home only to turn his hearth-stone into a tomb ! — ¦
who spreads sorrow and shame through the dwell
ings of others ; and then, as if to cancel his crime,
immolates the happiness of a wife, whose only fault
has been a too indulgent and tender regard for his
honor. If it is possible for the devil to be disgusted
with any of the odious beings driven into his realm,
it must be with such a foul, leprous wretch as this.
Such a monster ought to have a hell by himself!
But to come back to things less repulsive ; we
passed on our return great numbers of the white gull,
quietly cradled on the water, and so very tame as
scarcely to move out of the way of our boat. This
tameness results from a kind of sacredness which the
Turk casts over the life and plumage of this bird.
No one is allowed to injure it, or even disturb it,
except on some good and lawful occasion ; and should
you kill it, a more fearful penalty would follow than
what befell the ancient mariner, for the death of the
albatros. The little prisoner of the cage is also an
object of warm sympathy with the turbaned man; he
will purchase its freedom at a high price, and as the
captive flies away from his confinement, feel all the

BIRDS OF THE STREAM. 99
pure and hallowing satisfaction of the real Sama
ritan. How singular the channels in which his sym
pathy runs ! He will liberate a canary with a heart
almost breaking with compassion, and then lop off
the head of a human being with as little compunc
tion as you would clip the top of a cabbage stump.
Nor is this compassionate regard confined to the
feathered species. Ever since Mahomet consented
to part with the skirt of his coat sooner than disturb
the cat that was slumbering upon it, this animal has
received from his followers the tenderest treatment.
Hundreds of them are fed at stated days in the spa
cious court of the mosque of Sultan Achmet, from
the proceeds of a fund established for this special
purpose. And the dog here has not only all the rights
of citizenship, but many other privileges which Chris
tians have never been able to obtain. Though a late
Grand Vizier, finding these four-legged gentry be
coming rather too numerous for the salutary propor
tion of the different classes, ordered, under the pre
text of some insane symptoms, several thousand of
them to a hospital, where medical aid was to be em
ployed for their recovery; but the physician was
privately instructed to administer a dose that should
settle the question of their disease by killing them at
once. The canine sufferers, however, died with
much more ado than the true Mussulman, who kisses
his most unrighteous and unexpected death-warrant,

100 BURIAL GROUND.
and bo Ws his head to the bowstring without a mur
mur. This was a stratagem full of peril to the Vizier,
and though sternly dictated by a scarcity of provi
sions, yet had it not been, for a time, carefully con
cealed from the populace, might have cost him his
life. The ingenuity of a bloody artifice will fre
quently, among this singular people, kindle such an
admiration for a man's genius, as to induce his ene
mies to spare his life, so that his highness might possi
bly have escaped in this form. But, be that as it may,
stratagem with the Mussulman is the same grand
resort for killing dogs and exterminating nations.
That the end sanctifies the means, however corrupt,
base, and disingenuous is one of the cardinal doc
trines upon which the Ottoman throne pillars its
strength. A dark and dense grove of the cypress, stretch
ing from the eastern shore of the Bosphorus far away
over hill and valley, informed us that we were now
passing the last resting place of the Osmanlie. The
mournful forest, through the purpling twilight which
now shaded the landscape, appeared in its intermina
ble length to break the very boundary of the hori
zon and cast its gloomy shadows into some realm be
yond. It has been made to extend itself through this
long line of spectral solitude, upon the strength of a
presentiment among those who throng the opposite

BURIAL GROUND. 101
shore, that they will one day be forced to relinquish
their European possessions, and return into Asia,
from whence they came. They therefore enjoin upon
their surviving friends that their remains shall be
laid here, where they may rest with a better hope of
being undisturbed, in any event that may betide in
after times.
The dark procession may be seen through every
hour of the day, moving with muffled oars across
the water, and slowly winding its way up a narrow
path, termed the ladder of the dead, and moving on
to some new grave in the distant verge of the grove,
where the relic is to rest, a new cypress to be
planted, and coronals of flowers cast on the fresh
sod, and hung around the turbaned stone. Thus one
accession of graves and sable shade has succeeded
another, till this domain of death has become more
populous than the vast city itself teeming with its
countless multitudes.
Hers lay side by side, in one promiscuous sleep,
the monarch of unrivalled power and splendor, and
the humblest menial that trembled in his train ; the
man whose genius towered to heaven, and he whose
thoughts scarcely survived their birth ; the aged
bowed under the weight of years, and the infant
just expanding into life ; the statesman smitten from
his lofty, perilous post, and the assassin who dealt
the unsuspected blow ; the warrior whose trampling
steed- shook thunder from his mane, and the new
9*

102 BURIAL GROUND.
recruit who recoiled from the gleam of his own
weapons ; the Dives of purple and gold, and the
Lazarus who lay at his gate ; the libertine of lust
and promise, and the erring one whom he left be
lieving and betrayed ; greatness and littleness, splen
dor and poverty, purity and pollution, are thus
mingled and massed together in a wide undiscrimin-
ating grave. Nor does the sad spectacle stop here ;
it points, with melancholy presage, to the clustered
dwellings which swell from the opposite hills. The
voice of health, and the songs of merriment, may
now echo through the halls of that sumptuous city>
and mingle their notes of gladness with the hymn
of the wave, as it greets the enchanted shore, but
the day is not distant when they, from whose hearts
these joyous accents break, will be brought hither,
pale and speechless, wrapped in the winding-sheet
and shroud, to swell this crowded sail, and widen
the forest that darkens the dreary domain. So that
not only they who now rejoice in the light of the
sun, but generations yet unborn, may continue to be
sepulchred here, till the Judgment trump unex
pectedly shall summon the quick and the dead. It
will not be the contending Prophet of Mecca, whose
insignia will then be revealed in the changing heaven,
but He whose mission was one of kindness and
love, and who mingled his tears with his blood!
Alas for him who meets this Saviour as an injured
friend, and a forgotten God !

CHAPTER VII.
Navy yard and national Ships— Memory of William Eckford — In
troduction to the Capudan Pasha— Powers of his Office— Valley
of Sweet Waters— Repose of the Scenery — Party of Ladies —
Conflagration of a Village— A Greek Girl and her blind Father-
Moral effects of the Plague— Fires in the Turkish Capital.
One of the cool and refreshing retreats which
invitingly spread away from the Ottoman capital, is
the valley of Sweet Waters. The most advanta
geous approach to this quiet and beautiful spot, is
by water ; we chartered for the purpose a cuique
with four strong oarsmen. Turning into the Golden
Horn, and passing Galata, which still betrays the
massive architecture of the Genoese, we soon came
to Ters Hane, from the deep and capacious docks
of which the naval armaments of the Porte go forth
to range the Black Sea, and intimidate the Mgean
Isles. It is singular that this people, with advantages
for the construction of a navy unequalled in the
world, and with every motive which their love of
conquest and plunder .could suggest, should have
neglected through centuries of disputed power this
most essential auxiliary. And even now their Navy
is little more than a floating mass of unwieldy, un
organized strength, drifting into gulfs to be stranded
upon shallows, or blundering upon rocks to strew
the wider wave, or tumbling into conflicts to be

104 NAVY YARD.
captured, sunk, or blown in burning fragments
against the sky.
Passing under the stern of one of the huge ships
which survived the battle of Navarino, we landed and
were introduced to the Capudan Pasha, by our wor
thy countryman Mr. Eckford, who has since passed
from his wide sphere of enterprise and usefulness ;
but whose virtues will long be held in cherished re
membrance. The cloud that once obscured his fame
has long since departed without leaving a shadow to
point to its transient vail. Suspicion has blushed at
the error it committed, and accusation taken the tone
of eulogy. With a mind of the widest compass, a
genius of great boldness and originality, and a spirit
elevated and expansive, he broke upon the eye of
the Turkish nation like a resplendant star. They
watched his course with an interest they rarely pay
to intellect ; and mourned with an untutored grief
when death veiled from their sight this object of their
wonder and admiration. Alas ! he will appear no
more ! but the triumphs of his skill will still float
the ocean ; and the welcome breeze will long whis
per upon the ear of the mariner the music of his
name. But I must resume the story of our introduction
to the Pasha. He appeared to be not far from sixty
years of age, of a noble muscular formation, with a
long beard and thick locks, both white as the driven
snow, and a hardy countenance, lit by an eye that

NAVY YARD. 105
still flashed with all the fire of his younger years.
We found him seated upon an ottoman, in one of the
large saloons of his princely palace, and smoking as
composedly as if all the anxieties of his perilous of
fice had passed away with the vanishing vapors of
his chibouque. He received us with an air of grati
fying cordiality, ordered us pipes, and commenced a
rambling conversation, which touched upon all things
without penetrating any. Having discoursed of
winds, woods, and waterfalls ; tides, tempests, and
the moon ; in short, of every thing save woman,
with whom the Turk has nothing to do beyond the
precincts of his harem, we sipped another cup of hot
coffee, and rose to depart ; the Pasha assuring us as
a farewell compliment, that the Americans were the
greatest people on the globe, and we assuring him,
in return, of the unparalleled magnificence of the
Mussulman. Thus we filed off through a long train of atten
dants from the presence of one, who, in a period of
national hostilities, has only to wave his hand from
the balcony of his high window, and the heads of a
thousand captives will roll in the sand ; who main
tains, in peace and war, the splendor of a prince ; who
speaks with the voice of authority in the decisions of
the Divan ; who wields the total force of the Turk
ish navy, and enforces his will as a supreme law
over all the islands and maritime ports of the Otto
man dominions : yet who, amidst this frightful accu-

106 NAVY YARD.
mulation of power, is so ill-informed as to believe
that the East, to its utmost verge, bows to the cres
cent, and that America is an island recently disco
vered in the vicinity of Great Britain, with an em
peror to govern and vassals to obey.
The means of advancement to his high post
have little connection with sound merit, or any one
sober qualification. They lie mainly in the capri-
eiousness of favoritism, the force of intrigues, and
the power of bribes. Still, with all this ignorance,
fanatical fierceness, and daring recklessness of dis
position, will sometimes supersede, in a measure, the
necessity of higher and nobler qualities. Hassin Pa
sha, whose footstool was a crouched lion, and who
filled the world with the terror of his name, express
ed at Tchesmi the utmost extent of his naval skill
and professional attainments, in blowing up his own
ship, for the sake of destroying that of his Russian
adversary. The force of his character was like that
of the battering ram, blind and destructive, and
moving with the same power against a bastion and
a bramble. We made the round of the navy yard, where
several hundred Greeks were toiling for a few paras
a day ; where a number of ships were assuming, on
their stocks, something like symmetry and propor
tion; and where many more were rotting in the
docks, each sufficiently rude and ancient in aspect
to be identified with the hulk of Noah's ark. Re-

SULTAN'S HORSES. 107
joining our boat, we passed up the harbor, and en
tered the Lycus, an inactive stream, formed by the
near confluence of the Cydaris and Barbysses of the
ancients. Between the waters of these classical
rivulets lies an extensive and fertile plain, to which
the plough is a stranger, but where the gay horses
of the Sultan snort to the breeze, and prance the sod,
with that innate love of motion which seems to defy
the coming infirmities of years. They are brought
to this spot, in the teeming freshness of the spring*
with great parade and pomp ; the grand master of
ceremonies leading the way, the monarch himself
witnessing the ceremony, and the populace invoking
the blessing of Alia upon the liberated charger. The
Turk almost adores this noble animal ; nothing can
stand higher in his affections, unless it be the claims
of his Prophet, and the pleasures of his harem. Sul
tan Mahmoud had his favorite steed interred in the
great cemetery of Scutari, under a splendid dome,
sustained by columns of the richest marble. This,
to say the worst of it, was quite as rational, and
vastly less insulting to human nature, than the con
duct of a Roman emperor, who conferred upon his
horse the consular and pontifical dignities. Mon-
archs who have nothing but the gratification of pride
and caprice as motives of action and principles of
conduct, are frantic and foolish just in proportion to
the extent of their power.
Taking the narrow channel of the Barbysses*

108 VALLEY OF SWEET WATERS.
and gliding up its reedy current, flowing through a
succession of receding meadows and encroaching
mounds, we reached at length the object of our cu
riosity, the valley of Sweet Waters. This inviting
retreat lies cradled between a circling range of hills,
which shelter it from the rude visits of every cours
ing wind, and give to it an air of the deepest seclu
sion and repose. The outline of this natural barrier
presents all the pleasing and impressive variety of
easier slopes and bolder swells, the retreating nook
and the obtruding bluff, the green velvet of the vale
spreading up each gentler acclivity, and the dense
foliage of the forest waving wildly above.
Looking to these hills, some new beauty, some
yet undiscovered charm, is constantly developing it
self to the eye. Here a thick shade invites to its
recess the startled hare and timid bird ; while there
the less feathered elevation presents its smooth dome,
upon which the sun light rests in mellowed richness ;
and over the whole a varying complexion constantly
1 spreads itself, changing through a softer and richer
diversity of hues than those which imbue the dying
dolphin, or mingle in the magic of the bow that spans
the dropping cloud. Beneath lies a carpet of thick
and delicate verdure, enamelled with flowers, all
wild and sweet, and refreshened with the shade of
the orange and vine — here clustering into an arbor,
and there winding off into a tempting avenue, while
the sparkling streamlet, rushing in a slight cascade

VALLEY OF SWEET WATERS. 109
over a flight of marble steps, lends beauty and music
to the whole.
I could not but feel, while reposing in the quiet
ude and green depths of this sweet valley, a disincli
nation ever to mingle again in the tumult and strife
of the world. I felt willing to leave all its envied
honors and intoxicating applause to others, only ask
ing for myself, that here my peace might not again
be disturbed, and that nothing should ruffle a dream
of the soft Being that might, at least in imagination,
breathe in my bower, and delicately deepen the fra
grant fascinations of the spot. The beauty of her
who dwells on the green banks of my native stream,
rose on my memory, and this heart flowed again to
its sweetness, as the distant wave swells to that orb
whose serene influence nor clime or cloud can bind.
I was roused from the reverie in which my
thoughts began so unconsciously to wander, by the
dashing oars of a kirlangish, gliding up the stream of
the valley, and landing a number of Turkish ladies.
They were closely veiled in their long caftans, and
attended by a person of Numidian complexion, hea
vily armed, and performing the office of the most vigi-
lent duenna, without the sympathies of either sex.
They leisurely filed off from us toward the seclusion
afforded by a denser group of the olive, but still as they
receded, in spite of their inflexible keeper, cast fre
quently the furtive glance behind. Another boat soon
entered the valley, bearing a number of richly clad
10

110 VALLEY OF SWEET WATERS.
Turks, who, as the solemn voice of the muezzin sum
moned them to prayer, landed, laved their hands and
arms to the elbow, and kneeling down, with their
faces turned towards Mecca, prostrated themselves
to 'the earth. The females, who at a slight distance
beheld this worship, appeared not in the smallest de
gree to partake of its spirit. They were engaged in
culling the flowers, tasting the fruits, and chatting of
a thousand things unknown to us. Perhaps this impi
ous indifference to the devotions of the hour results
from a spirit of resentment towards the Prophet, for
having assigned them so low a place in his Paradise ;
scarcely allowing them admission, and wholly su
perseding the necessity of their presence, by the
richer charms and brighter eyes of the Houries.
I really think that theirs is a hard case ; after
submitting on earth to the rivalry of several equally
legitimate claimants to the connubial favors of the
same man, it might have been expected that the au
thor of the Koran, in the allotments of a future state,
would have allowed them the blessings of an undivided
love ; or, if this was incompatible with the perfection of
his heaven, that he would at least have installed them
in their former privileges. But strange to say, he has
introduced into their places a new order of beings,
supposed to be endowed with superior attractions ;
and has left them the perilous task of crossing the
pit of perdition, upon a hair bridge, into some inferior
state, where the utmost they can expect, is an end-

VALLEY OF SWEET WATERS. Ill
less widowhood, or the uninteresting companionship
of some poor Christians. Really, I think a Turkish
lady should be excused in not embracing Islamism ;
for it deprives her of her just rights, both in this
world and the next. But, in solemn verity, it is
among the anomalies of the human conscience, that
a set of doctrines so sensual and absurd should ever
have obtained its serious sanction. It can be ac
counted for only on the supposition, that this religious
censor may be so blinded by the passions of the in
dividual as not to discern objects distinctly, and
commit the error of the dim-eyed patriarch of Tad-
mor, who mistook the obscene vulture for the chaste
bird of paradise.
On our return from the valley, while approach
ing Galata, our ears were statled by a cry which
here carries consternation to thousands. Vangen-
var, the terrific cry of fire, rolled from the tower of
Anatasius, and gathering volume and force as it
went on, drowned all other voices and sounds in the
tumultuous streets. It was some time, in the univer
sal hurry and dismay, before we could ascertain the
direction of the flames. They proved to be among
the dwellings of St. Demetrius, a Greek town, crown
ing one of the hills which lie to the north of the
navy yard. We hastened that way, and ascend
ing an elevation which swells from the suburbs of
Galata, had full in view the terrible spectacle. The
fire had broken out in the northern verge of the

112 BURNING OF A VILLAGE.
town, and a strong wind sweeping at the time, from
that quarter, the flames had already been cast over a
frightful extent of dwellings. Still the devouring
element, at every fresh rush of the wind, leaped
farther on, while in each pause the falling roof and
tumbling wall mingled their crackling and crushing
sounds with the cries of hundreds, making their fran
tic escape. The whole town was soon in conflagra
tion, and the flames, as they wound up over the
summit of the hill, presented at one time, through
the twilight of the hour, a towering pyramid of fire,
and then again as the eddying currents broke away
in violent gusts, the less ponderous materials were
carried off in burning and threatening confusion,
resembling more the flaring missiles sent from the
mouth of the volcano.
The inhabitants fled to the open grounds which
surrounded the devoted town; some of them, whose
flight had been less precipitate, bringing with them
a few articles of their furniture ; while others had
not saved a blanket to protect them from the heavy
night that was now setting in. In this forlorn multi
tude, we saw at every few paces the wretched
mother, gathering her little group about her, and
calling each by name, to assure herself again that
no one had been left behind ; and then seating her
self on the cold ground, clasp her infant to her
breast, trying to protect it from the chilling dew,
beneath the narrow covering of her neck, while

BURNING OF A VILLAGE. 113
upon its unconscious cheek dropped her silent tears.
Some of the children, too young to understand the
anxious nature of her distress, or to know that they
had no home to return to, were still playing with
the toys they had brought from the nursery, or
pointing with glee to the flanie as it fringed the
evening cloud. While the sister, a few years older,
would try to check their playfulness, and constrain
them into an apparent sympathy with their poor
distressed mother.
At the sheltering side of a small mound, a little
retired from the crowd, we met with an old man,
leaning tremulously on his cane, and listening to the
replies of one who stood close to him, in all the
touching sweetness of feminine beauty and youth.
The old man was blind, and his young daugh
ter, (in a soft, agitated voice,) was telling him the
story of their escape, its difficulty, and by what
means they had been able to effect it " I must have
perished in my chair," said the father, " had you not
come home just at the moment you did." " I was
away," explained the girl, " with some of my com
panions in the burial ground, where you know we
go every Saturday to carry fresh flowers. When
I heard the cry of fire, I instantly ran home, and
thought at first that I should be able to get some of
the men to take away a few of our goods, but they
were all carrying their own, and the fire was so
near I had only time to catch up this little casket,
10*

114 BURNING OF A VILLAGE.
which has your purse and my gold ornaments in it,
and to take you by the hand to lead you off at once,
for you did not seem to know, father, how dangerous
our situation was." "No," said the old man, "I
knew it not my child ; I heard the cry, but did not
suppose the fire was so near. I am glad you thought
of the casket ; but I fear, Therissa, there are but
very few sequins in it, for you know the other day
it was nearly empty, and the chest has not been un
locked since." " There is enough," interrupted the
daughter, in a tone of the gentlest encouragement,
" to get us the means of subsistence for a few weeks,
and then there is my necklace, my bracelets, and
ear-rings ; these can be sold, and they will help us
on some time, at least till I can find a situation
where I may procure something for us both to live
upon." Here she dropped her small hand into the
casket to feel for the trifles that were to relieve them
in the present emergency, and then anxiously with
drawing it again, took out each little article, one by
one, to the last — but neither purse nor jewels were
there ! a shadow fell on her sweet face ; and the
tears trembling for a moment on the long eye lash,
fell, unperceived by the blind parent, upon her nerve
less hand.
In the hurry of the moment she had brought
away the wrong casket ; yet she would not reveal
the mistake to her poor father, for fear of utterly
overwhelming a heart already prostrated by misfor-

BURNING OF A VILLAGE. 115
tune. Silently pressing upon her the few piasters
which the exigencies of the day had left, we turned
to depart, fully resolved — at least it was so with
myself — never again to entertain a murmuring or
desponding sentiment while the craving hunger of
this poor frame could find the coarsest crumb for its
relief !
After an hour of severe walking we had nearly
reached our home, and it was quite in the evening ;
but the image of that sweet girl kept recurring to
me with such force, that, at last, I persuaded the
guide to accompany me back. We found the dis
mayed groups much as we had left them ; discovered
the spot where we had parted with Therissa, but she
was not there ! We inquired for the beautiful girl
who had the blind father ; they all knew whom we
meant, but no one could tell where she had gone.
We searched through other quarters, among other
groups — went to the neighboring dwellings, which
the flames had spared, but not a trace of her could
we obtain. The longer we searched, and the more
we inquired, the more anxious I became to find her,
and my solicitude increased as the probability of
success diminished. At last the guide gave over,
declaring the search hopeless. I could not believe
it ; I thought him, for once, faithless and stupid, and
half accused my own eyes of a bewildering blind
ness. I could see her in my imagination most dis
tinctly — still standing close to her father — feeling

116 EFFECTS OF THE PLAGUE.
again in her casket for the jewels — and, amid her
unobserved tears, locking up, in her heart, the secret
of their loss ! I wished most deeply that my watch
were there, and felt a strange aversion to it because
it was not. It still kept the time faithfully, as before,
but this could not reclaim for it my regard ; I would
have made it now as useless to myself as it was to
her ; and yet it was not simply to make her this gift
that made me so unwilling to relinquish the pursuit ;
other feelings, strange and indefinable, lent their
force. But all were of no avail, I was forced to give
her up ! If there be such a thing as love in this world,
some of its soft vibrations, at that moment, trembled
over my heart !
I have seen suffering and sorrow in almost every
degree and form, but never encountered a spectacle
of such extended and unrelieved wretchedness as
here presented itself. Not only had the hundreds
around me been deprived of their dwellings and
scanty furniture, but they were suffering from the
real and apprehended horrors of the plague. There
was no community that would increase their present
exposures by affording them an asylum : for one of
the first effects of this terrible scourge is an unnatu
ral indifference to the fate of others, and a selfish,
engrossing anxiety for personal safety. It is a pes
tilence which most truly " walks in darkness ;" and
its approaches are so mysterious and inexplicable,
and its visitation so fatal, that the sympathies of the

EFFECTS OF THE PLAGUE. 117
human heart appear to be bewildered in the general
dread, to be paralyzed in the stunning consternation.
Men become like a desperate crew escaping from a
sinking wreck, where each, with frantic force, appro
priates to himself the plank or oar that comes with
in his grasp. It was this excess of calamity, this
overpowering dismay, that, in the fatal retreat of the
French from Russia, induced the soldier, naturally
a generous being, to leave his exhausted companion
to perish in the snow, and to close his ears to those
affecting cries for succor, which only the dying can
utter. Every hill and valley without the walls of Con
stantinople and its swelling suburbs was shadowed
by tents, in which the victims of the plague had been
forced to take refuge. Every breeze, as it passed
over the great city, came loaded with the wail and
lamentations of the survivors over their dead com
panions : yet the multitude moved on, pursuing tVeir
individual ends, with an eagerness and directness
which, so far from being disconcerted, seemed to be
increased by the general dismay. They appeared
to exonerate themselves from all the claims of sym
pathy, affection, and kindness, on the score of their
own liabilities. They scarcely noticed the hearse as
it went past, simply because each one apprehended
that he might possibly be the next over whom its
pall should be spread. I have ever observed that a
common danger, so peculiarly calculated, as we

118 EFFECTS OF THE PLAGUE.
should suppose, to make the heart enter directly into
the feelings, anxieties, and despair of those around,
only renders it the more callous, selfish, and cruel.
A man who is walking himself upon thin ice, will
seldom do more than turn a glance to those who
have fallen through.
It is no wonder that a fire in the Turkish capital
should awaken the most intense and unlimited alarm.
The buildings are usually constructed of an extremely
inflammable material ; their continuity is broken only
by slight alleys, or streets, so narrow that you may
leap over them, from one projecting balcony to ano
ther. There are no engines for extinguishing the
flames, and no means of arresting their progress, but
the tardy process of levelling the contiguous dwell
ings, so as to insulate those already in conflagration.
This, however, is practicable only in the earliest
stages of the fire ; the opportunity is generally al
lowed to pass, and the flames roll on, as unbroken
and unimpeded in their progress, as if they were ca
reering over one of our western prairies. Thus the
whole city, or that section of it lying to the leeward
of the point where the fire first makes its appearance,
is laid in ashes. Talk to this strange people of en
gines and organized companies to prevent or curtail
these disasters, and they roll up the eye, in utter in
credulity, or shake the head, in disapprobation, as if
some wicked innovation upon their venerable usages
had been recommended.

EFFECTS of the plague. 119
It is the most difficult thing in the world to effect
a change of conduct in the Turk : he associates his
minutest action with his religion ; and looks upon
every deviation from the example of his ancestors as
a criminal departure from the spirit and precepts of
his Koran. He will therefore take no lessons from
the ingenuity and discoveries of others ; no instruc
tions from the advanced intelligence and improve
ments of the age ; nor will he suffer even his mis
fortunes to make him wiser or better : he is too vain
to be taught by others, and too indolent to teach him
self. Like the dim bird of Egypt, whose stupid stare
is taken for the glances of wisdom, he appears to be
only the more bewildered by every increasing ray
of light.

CHAPTER VIII.
Beauty of the Bosphorus — Tragical Associations— Tower of Maho
met — Godfrey's Tent — Janizary Surrogee — Village of Belgrade —
Circle of Greek Girls- Superstition of a Dervish— Simplicity of
Religion — Man's last Sleep.
I have faintly sketched a few of the charms
which brighten over the valley of Sweet Waters ;
but what pencil can paint the splendors of the Bos
phorus, as seen from the Giant's Mount, rolling with
exulting force between its hills of living wildness
and beauty ! Looking upon this noble stream, you
feel that your eye is resting upon a tide that will still
be rushing on with unabated strength when the sun
shall hail the earth for the last time. You feel, that
whatever changes may darken and disfigure the
globe, work the ruin of cities and the destruction of
nations, you have full beneath your entranced vision
what no marring vicissitude can reach — an embodied
power, purity, and loveliness, which time cannot im
pair or man deface. You experience a strange, in
describable thirst to blend yourself with a creation
so pure, so triumphant, so exempt from the weari
ness, wo, and death, which follow fast upon all hu
man hopes and pretensions : you long to mingle the
intense elements of your being with the rejoicing
spirit of these waters, that you may find an escape,

BANKS OF THE BOSPHORUS. 121
in this etherial union, from the vanities and ills of
your mournful lot.
But your admiration is not confined to the
stream itself, the banks that embrace it partake
largely of your homage. They rise from the wave
in a succession of forest-feathered steeps, broken
and beautifully relieved by retreating slopes and fer
tile glens, while in each of these greener and gentler
spots, some princely palace, or compact village
gleams forth, half buried in the verdure that trails the
surrounding heights. As you wind around the bold
bends, or glide into the circling coves, of this mighty
current, objects of yet unseen and still deeper beauty
constantly disclose themselves to the eye, till you
imagine yourself passing through some enchanted
region, where every step enhances the power of the
captivating spell. It would seem as if Nature in
some capricious prodigal humor had placed here the
loveliest features of Europe and Asia in close rivalry ;
and then, to avoid the alienations which the decision
of the Dardanean shepherd created, had cast at once
their charms in mingled and mirrored sweetness upon
the bosom of the Bosphorus. "I have seen," says
Gyllius, " the banks of the Peneus, and the shady dell
between the Thessalian hills of Olympus and Ossa;
I have seen, also, the green and fruitful borders of
those streams which flow through the ruggid moun
tains of the Median Tempes ; — but I have beheld
nothing more lovely than the vale through which the
11

122 BANKS OF THE BOSPHORUS.
Bosphorus rolls its waters, adorned on either side,
by softly swelling hills and gently sinking dales,
clothed with woods, vineyards, and gardens, and rich
with a gay variety of shrubs, flowers, and fruit trees."
But the Bosphorus derives an additional interest
from the tragical incidents of which it has been the
blushing witness. It has been made the grave of
suspected beauty beneath nearly every mansion that
//crowns its steep shores. Hundreds in all the life
and power of charms, scarcely yet matured into their
fullest richness, have here been consigned, by a blind
and remorseless jealousy, to an unwept and unhon-
ored bier. Could the depths of these waters reveal
the secrets that have been darkly committed to their
silent trust, they would murmur up a tale that might
chain the ear of millions in shuddering sympathy.
This stream too has been to the battling legions of
the East what the fatal bridge of sighs has been to
the solitary captive — a passage to unavailing tears
and indignant despair. Over it passed the countless
hosts of Persia in their suicidal invasions of Europe.
Their unburied bones, which once whitened the
Thracian plains, have scarcely yet ceased to excite
a ghastly dread in the benighted pilgrim. Over this
stream too passed the Vandal and Goth to devastate
the fairest portions of earth, and lay waste the most
precious monuments of Genius. Over it also crossed
the banded followers of the Prophet to welter in the
blood of the Christian, and extend an empire that is

VISIT TO BELGRADE. 123
now falling asunder of its own weight and weak
ness. Our excursion to the valley of Sweet Waters
was followed by one of equal interest up the Bos
phorus to the Black Sea, with diversions to Belgrade,
and the Giant's Mountain. At an early hour we were
in our cuique, plying the stream with six steady oars,
and were soon sweeping past the spot where rest
the remains of the brave Barbarossa. The first
rays of the sun were gilding the mausoleum that
rises in stately beauty over his dust, and each leaf
and rose seemed bending towards his grave with the
tribute of its tears. A short interval more, and we
were opposite the Tower of Mahomet, where the
standard of the Prophet secured its first strongly
fortified position in Europe. The tower now be
trays the crumbling effects of time, and has nothing
strikingly fearful about it, save a low and gloomy
entrance, most significantly called the " gate of obli
vion," for none of the many noble criminals that have
crossed its fatal threshold have ever revisited their
homes ! a cannon has been discharged to announce
the moment of their death, and this has been the
only comment accorded to their bitter end. The
last sting that tyranny can give is realized by him
who sinks beneath the instrument of the executioner
in a solitary dungeon, without a friend to listen to
his dying words, or witness his last moment.
Doubling a bold bend of the shore, we now shot

124 VISIT TO BELGRADE.
into a rapid pass of the stream, called the Devil's
Current, and running with the celerity of a mill-race.
But why the quickness or turbulency of its foot-step
should place it under the jurisdiction of the evil one,
I could never learn. It would seem as if all the dif
ficulties and deformities in the physical and moral
world, too, are to be packed off on the poor devil, as
if he had not troubles and crimes enough of his own.
This is a very easy, but a very unjust mode of rid
ding ourselves of blame and responsibility. Our vir
tues are our own, but all our sins the uncommisera-
ted devil must answer for. Satan may well com
plain, and write his remonstrance on the burning
bars of his prison.
Passing on, Buyukdere soon opened upon us,
stretching along a broad and glittering strand, with
a steep back ground of hanging gardens and impend
ing shade. This is still the summer retreat of fo
reign ambassadors ; a place where they deign to lay
aside a slight portion of that extreme etiquette so
ridiculously absurd, annoying, and senseless. Could
those who insist upon these nice formalities only
create a respect for them, there would be some apo
logy for their existence : but what can be more fu
tile, when, with all the advantages of station, they
cannot raise them above satirical contempt. The
fop, who ribands his own coat, may be the admira
tion of children, but not of men.
Leaving our boat, we called for horses, and were

VISIT TO BELGRADE. 125
soon under a ten-knot speed for Belgrade ; a rapid
ity of motion not very replete with comfort to one
unaccustomed to the clumsy construction of the
Turkish saddle. I expected to leave some of my
limbs, if not my head, on the road, for the plunge
of the animal was like the strokes of a trip-hammer
on the redoubling anvil. We soon entered an exten
sive green valley, in the centre of which stands a
plane-tree of the most stupendous dimensions, form
ed by the solid and symmetrical union of seven »
some twenty feet from the ground ; while, nearer
the root, the separate members were sufficiently
apart to enclose a space that might accommodate a
small tea-party. But this spot, it appears, has sterner
associations than those connected with a twilight ter-
tulia. Here rested the chivalric Godfrey on his fran
tic expedition to Palestine ; here reposed his battling
legions, full of enthusiam, piety, and plunder. Their
enterprise was like themselves, a kindling compound
of reckless adventure and religious frenzy. In their
zeal to rescue the holy sepulchre, they forgot the
first precepts of Him who there set the seal of his
divinity to the meek and patient spirit of his religion.
They forgot the declaration, in which their own fate
was strikingly prefigured, " they who take the sword
must perish by the sword."
The valley gradually narrowed to a ravine ; and
proceeding on, we passed under the lofty arch of an
aqueduct, connected with the mountain lakes which
11*

126 VISIT TO BELGRADE.
supply the great capital with water. Here striking
into a thick wood, our surrogee suddenly halted for
us, whispering that he heard the snap of a rifle,
muttering something about brigands, and drawing
one of his heavy pistols, instantly darted into the
thicket, from which the ominous sound had proceed
ed- But it was only a Greek sportsman and a
pigeon ; both of whom we frightened and sundered
so far, I doubt if they ever meet again. Recover
ing our path, and descending a steep hill at a rapid
step, the horse of our protector tripped, and threw
him over his head a good duelling distance. His
turban rolled one way, his pistols another, with his
yategan and pipe between. We hastened to proffer
assistance, but the Janizary gathered himself up with
out aid, replaced his turban and weapons of death,
and without uttering a word to man or beast, re
mounted with the composure and solemnity of one
who had deliberately alighted to do homage to the
genius of some consecrated spot. How many, reared
under a more moral and refined system of education,
would have lost their patience and sobriety in a
paroxysm of rage ? The most wise and polished
may gather some lessons of practical wisdom from
the deportment of a savage.
We now broke within the environs of Belgrade ;
a small, ruinous, and half-deserted village ; totally
unworthy, in itself, of the pains we had taken ; but
which has circumstantial attractions of a high order. It

VISIT TO BELGRADE. 127
is embosomed in a vast forest, and through the green
glades commands a view of the bendts, or small lakes,
which fill the mountain glens, and so terminate the
vista as to leave an impression of still continued
beauty and brilliancy. This quiet spot, in which you
feel yourself far removed from the strife and clamor
of the world, was the favorite retreat of Lady Mon
tague ; over it her genius has cast a spell that wilf
survive the last relic of its ruins. The dwelling
which she inhabited has crumbled ; the flowers and
fruit-trees which she planted have perished ; but the
brook, by whose melodious margin she strayed, still
murmurs its music, and still attracts the listening bird
to where it tells its bubbling tales. The monuments
of human skill may cease as memorials of our being,
but the tablets of nature are imperishable.
A circle of Greek girls, frolicking under the clus
tering shade of some dark chesnut trees, now drew
our attention. We approached them carelessly, as
if bound to some object beyond, and commenced our
sociabilities by inquiries, such as the most honest and
ignorant would put to the most child-like and timid.
Thus we gradually drew them into conversation,
and insinuated ourselves into their confidence and
good graces, till we ventured to produce our colla
tion and invite them to join us. The younger cast
their flashing eyes upon the older for assent ; which
being given, we were soon seated on the green grass,
and were happy to find in our wallet a number of

128 VISIT TO BELGRADE.
little nick-nacks well suited to the occasion. I have
never been at a. banquet that I so much enjoyed, as
this most simple, rural refreshment : not merely that
exercise and excitement had imparted a keener rel
ish, but the place where we were, its gentle recollec
tions, its seclusion and quietude, the stream that rip
pled past us over its pebbly bed, the whispering leaf
above, and then, the bright beings before us, so un
touched by sorrow, so full of joyous life — all made
that hour one that will never cease to preserve its
brightness among the darker memories of my heart.
But for these green spots in the desert of life, we
should almost become weary of our pilgrimage, and
sigh for that rest where the summons to unwelcome
toil never comes.
We returned to Buyukdere, found our cuique
with its strong oarsmen ; and gliding up between
the banks of the Bosphorus, which here present a
continuous line of bristling batteries, passed into the
Black Sea. This vast expanse Of water derives its
forbidding name from the dark storms which fre
quently gather over its bosom. We did not tempt
the distant wave ; but like Jason, our great nautical
exemplar, kept near the shore — he in search of the
golden fleece — we of the sympligades ; and if a
huge mass of black rock, crowned with an altar-
piece, and washed by the dark waves of the Euxine,
could be worthy of even our adventure, then we
were not without our reward. Making a short cir-

VISIT TO BELGRADE. 129
cuit, we re-entered the ocean stream, and descending
as far as the foot of Giant's Mountain, debarked,
and labored up that difficult and widely command
ing elevation. On its summit stands a chapel of the
Whirling Dervishes ; a sect who would fain make
us believe that the true way of getting into heaven
is to whirl round like a top, and that the quicker the
motion the more rapid the advancement, and the
greater the attainments of the individual in sanctity
and devotion. In harmony with the reasonableness
of this whirling faith is the accredited statue of the
Giant, whose stupendous attitude furnishes a befitting
name for the mountain ; and who is now regarded
by the giddy brotherhood in the light of a patron
saint. He could sit, said the principal, on the top
of this high mount, and lave his feet in the Bospho
rus, or step across that broad current into Europe
at a single stride ; and then, as if to remove the pos
sibility of doubt from our minds, pointed us to his
grave near the chapel, and which, though it em
braced little more than his head, was fifty feet in
length. He went through this narrative and demonstra
tion, with the solemnity and decisive composure
that would become one who had been forward and
measured eternity, and come back to instruct poor
short-sighted mortals on the infinities of time and
space. — Quite a theological metaphysician ! — And
quite as rational too as a thousand others, who are

180 SIMPLICITY OF RELIGION.
constantly sending their vagrant theories into the
uttermost recesses of heaven and hell ! It is only
to be regretted, that human hopes and fears should
in any degree be suspended upon such wandering
fantasies, it would seem as if religion were to be
made the plank, upon which every drowning theo
rist might cast his wild conjectures from the verge
of his bubbling grave. Why not let religion be what
its Divine Author has made it, — a plain system of
moral duties, coming directly home to the business
and bosoms of men? The Bible itself, in every
thing that concerns the obligations and happiness of
man, has no mysteries : and he who turns away from
its simple undisguised truths to the speculative theo
ries cast around it, is as much to be pitied and won
dered at, as the mariner who should neglect the
constant sun, and endeavor to determine the position
and bearings of his ship by the fickle light of a
vagrant comet !
It was a late hour of the evening, when we
reached the house of our friends, Messrs. Dwight
and Goodell, at Ortague : they received us with a
warm heart, and a welcome hand. They are men
who will ever enjoy the esteem and confidence of
those who may have the pleasure of their acquaint
ance. Their liberal, enlightened views, their fideli
ty to the great cause of missions, and the influence
they are exerting in the education of the young,
reflect great credit on themselves and attest the

SIMPLICITY OF RELIGION. 131
wisdom of the American Board in the selection of
such agents. We joined them in their domestic de
votions — ever a delightful scene, but especially so
in a land like this, — and retired to rest. How myste
rious is sleep ! we sink calmly into it from the agita
tions of the day, and find its repose the deeper, for the
very weariness we have experienced. What will
it be when the tumult of life is over ? for a sleep
still more profound and impenetrable awaits man in
the grave !
But on that sleep in rending thunder,
The last archangel's trump will break j
The sinner, in despair and wonder,
From out his silent death-dreams wake !
His grave still gaping near the stone,
That signal-sound hath overthrown.
With fear and wild amazement smitten,
His eyes to heaven for mercy roll,
But meet, in flaming letters written,
The sentence of his ruined soul :
His only hope a frightful death
Within the lightnings' blasting breath !
This may not be. With sceptre riven,
Grim Death now yields his empire up ;
Nor proffers more the unforgiven
The solace ol his lethean cup :
His glory, power, and trophies fled,
He stands himself among the dead !
O Savior ! when that fearful morning
Reveals tbee on the coming cloud ;—
The last deep trump, with signal warning,
Piercing the slumber of my shroud, —
And earth and sea have parsed away,
Be thou this trembling spirit's stay !

CHAPTER IX.
Sultan's attendance at Mosque — Royal Barges— Worship of the
Mussulman— Assemblage of Turkish Ladies — Their personal Ap
pearance—Social Amusements — Early Education — Matrimonial
Alliance — Ruling Passion — Conjugal Traits.
We went on Friday, the Mussulman's Sabbath,
to witness the ceremony of the Sultan's attendance
at mosque. The solemnity was to take place, as
the Reis Effendi kindly informed us, in a sanctuary
on the Asain shore of the Bosphorus, a short distance
above the imperial palace. We found the spot pre
senting a scene that would have much more interest
ed a painter than a religious fanatic; a stately grove
of luxuriant foliage, encompassed on one side by a
retreating range of hills, and on the other by the
ever sparkling flow of the " ocean stream," in the
centre a mosque of small and delicate dimensions,
with two lines of national troops, forming a curved
avenue to the quay ; — in one section gathering
groups of men exchanging their earl)r salutations and
lighting their chebouques, — in the other, coteries of
the Fair alighting from the araba, or stepping from
the cuique ; — in the back ground a display of pran
cing steeds gorgeously caparisoned — the whole form
ing a mingled pageant of pomp and prettiness, gra
vity and gayety. It was a miniature representation

SULTAN AT MOSQUE. 133
of Mahomet's heaven, save that the houries are to
be more lovely than their mortal sisters, and the re-
embodied Mussulman more majestic than in this
perishable mould.
The eyes of those on the strand were now turn
ed down the stream, for around a projecting bluff of
the shore a barge came sweeping up, rivalling the sun
beams in the splendor of its decorations. Thirty-two
strong-limbed men, dressed in white, and so as to ex
pose the muscular formation of neck, arms and chest,
with their close caps of red, were at the oars, an
officer of rank at the gilded helm, while beneath a pa
vilion of purple and gold, and on a sofa of flashing
gems, with wandering eye and easy attitude, sat his
imperial Majesty. This barge was followed by two
others, impelled each by twenty-four oarsmen, dis
playing like the first an airy lightness, a rich profusion
of gilding, a canopied stern, and bearing the high
est dignitaries of the court. The royal barge came
slowly and gracefully up to the pier, when the mo
narch, in a dark flowing robe, and with that air of
solemn dignity so natural to the Turk, stepped forth ;
the multitude received him with a low submissive in
clination of the head, the troops by presenting arms,
and the priesthood with a burning censer that filled
the grove with its fragrance. The. beautiful Arabian,
to be honored on this occasion, was now lead near,
with his jewelled bridle, and glittering saddle swell
ing from its embroidered housings, with a Pasha at
12

134 SULTAN AT MOSQUE.
each golden stirrup, and another at the bit; and thus
his Majesty mounted, moving on through the military
lines that walled each side of the winding path to the
mosque. Here he disappeared from us ; for even
the Reis Effendi, who had assigned us the most ad
vantageous position on the ground for witnessing
the ceremonies to this point, could not presume upon
'the forbearance of those around him so far as to in
vite us, during the time of worship, within the pale
of the sacred edifice. The members of the court, and
then an assemblage of officers of different ranks, fol
lowed their sovereign. The service must have con-
sited of little more than a succession of silent prostra
tions and inaudible prayers ; for though we approach
ed close to the mosque, not a sound or voice was to
be heard from within ; a heart that had despaired of
mercy could not have been more silent. It was as if
the dead were slowly rising in their shrouds, and
bending to the stern majesty of death.
Nothing, as I have had occasion to experience,
can be more impressive than this wordless worship
of the Mussulman. There are, with him, no affected
tones of humility, no confident accents of Pharisaical
assurance, no irrepressible ecstacies over cancelled
sin, no smothered agonies over unforgiven guilt. His
emotions are all calm, concentrated, and deep: he
kneels and prays as if there were no being in the
universe, save the high and inscrutable One, whom
he addresses. When the hour of prayer arrives, he

SULTAN AT MOSQUE. 135
permits no embarrassments connected with the pre
sence or dispositions of others, to deter him from his
devotions ; he asks no permission to be devout, offers
no apology for his creed, proposes no compromise
with levity or prejudice ; but immediately withdraw
ing his mind from all visible objects, bows himself to
the earth, and breathes forth his supplications from
the silent depths of his absorbed spirit. Let the
Christian, who stands in such awe of the opinions of
others, or whose piety so nicely consults occasions,
that he can never be devout except in the church,
look to the Mussulman : his unfaithfulness and pusil
lanimity must be put to the blush by the deportment
of one who acts under the impulses of a mistaken
but consistent and firm faith. And yet, to the dis
honor of Christendom, it must be confessed, that
were a follower of Christ to be as punctual and un
compromising, in the discharge of his religious du
ties, as a disciple of Mahomet, he would scarcely be
tolerated, he would be regarded as a stern fanatic.
But what is it that makes religion in a Mus^
sulman fanaticism in a Christian ? Can a sentiment
change its character by changing its name ? Does it
forfeit all claims to tolerance and'esteem by a transi
tion from the turban to the cross ? Let those prone
to denounce, as a feverish enthusiasm, the little ear
nestness sometimes found in the Christian, answer
these questions. The religion that came from Hea
ven — to be papular in this world — should be divest-

136 TURKISH LADIES.
ed of its sanctity, life, and sternness ; it should be
represented as a young and beautiful female, softly
yielding up her life, the composure of a dying dream
on her sweet face, and her angelic person already
dressed in flowers for the grave ! There would then
be a romantic affection for her innocence, reverence
for her virtues, and tears for her gentle worth. Even
Satan might then, perhaps, half forget his antipa
thies. And to tell the truth, some of our preachers
appear already to have nearly attained this exquisite
method of giving popularity to their themes. Their
sacred sketches have every thing that pertains to this
lifeless picture, except its delicacy and beauty — they
have death without its loveliness !
This vein may be good, but it is bearing me too
far from the objects and incidents of the occasion ;
we will come back to the Sultan, whom we left de
voutly engrossed in the mosque ; and who, the short
service being concluded, returned to his barge in the
same solemn pomp that he had left it, and then de
scended the Bosphorus to his serai. The troops
filed off towards their barracks, in the vicinity of
this palace ; the men soon disappeared ; some over
the water, and others through the green glades of
the encircling hills, so that only the ladies remained.
To be thoroughly credited, I should now send off
these fair, romantic beings, in little groups, as they
came ; but this would not be as the facts occurred)
and I prefer being distrusted in a truthful, than be-

TURKISH LADIES. 137
lieved in a mendacious, picture. I say the ladies
remained, and a more gay and light-hearted assem
bly than they presented seldom meet
In field or grove, by river, fount, or fell.
They were chatting, laughing, sipping sherbet, cast
ing their flowers and arch looks at each other, while
the rallying pleasantry and repartee went back and
forth, quick as the glance they had kindled. Here
a group might be seen listening to some merry tale,
and constantly breaking its light thread by some
pertinent, facetious, or totally disconnected thought.
There a less gleeful circle, sprinkled with a touch of
sentiment, might be seen beating time with their small
taper fingers to the soft airs of a guitar, in the hands
of a young Circassian, and responding, in every look,
to the light or troubled tone of the trembling string.
Yonder another group might be seen gathered around
one, their superior in years, who was telling to each
her inevitable fate, in the flowers she had brought.
You might see the young enthusiast, as her happy
destiny was declared from the symboled oracles
of the mystic leaf, look up as if this vision of future
good were already within the ranging rapture of her
eye. Sometimes the enchanted leaf spoke only of
evil, misfortune, and sorrow ; and then the gentle
interpreter— touched with pity for the broken hopes
of a heart yet so young and confiding — though unable
to work back the spell or unwind the fearful thread,
would yet extend her counsels into other leaves, till
12*

138 TURKISH LADIES.
she detected some better promise, that would come
up like a bright bow on the dark cloud. While in
another circle still one might be seen negligently
permitting her unfolding caftan to display some
costly and rare article of dress, which her innocent
vanity could not conceal : another discovering, as if
by accident, her necklace, the richest gift in her mar
riage dower: a third, with the same apparent ab
sence of intention, revealing the sprig of diamonds
that glowed on the glossy fulness of her hair, as it
lay coiled up over a sunny brow, unshadowed by
years or care : a fourth, without seeming to know it,
affording to those around a curious glance at some
slight singularity in the shape of her costume, and
which she knows will apologize for its departure
from the sanctions of long and fixed habit, by more
fully betraying the rich graces of her form.
Here a group of children might be seen, among
the shells and pebbles on the rippling verge of the
great stream, hushing their laughter and holding their
breath, as a white gull came floating near them — for
they are taught to regard this bird with a sort of reli
gious reverence — but as the aquatic visitant depart
ed, their merriment would break out with a greater
freshness and force for this temporary suppression.
The old female domestic, whose duty it appeared to
be to preserve them from harm and improprieties,
seemed to care but little how loud they laughed pro
vided the gull was not near ; but the moment this

TURKISH LADIES. 139
mysterious bird made his appearance she shook her
head, and all were hushed again. Sometimes one
of the younger ones would neglect her signal, but in
stead of getting angry, she would whisper something
in its half-attentive ear so full of meaning, that the
little fellow would be among the last to renew the
sports. But what surprised me more than this infantine
superstition, or any of these harmless rivalries in an
exhibition of personal ornaments, or even the fond cre
dulity inspired by the sibyl, was the general indiffer-
enee shown towards those concealing appendages,
which I had supposed formed the first and last requi
sites in the costume of a Turkish lady. The visor was
not worn, and even the white veil, as if unfaithful to its
trust, refused at times its partial protection, so that the
rapid limner, especially if unobserved or permitted by
others, might have caught the conscious face, with all
that nature had harmonized and kindled there. The
unlawfulness of my presence appeared to be covered
by the presence of Mrs. R. and two other American
ladies : without this protection, I should never have
ventured on such forbidden ground; and consequently
this sketch, to the infinite loss of the gentle reader,
would never have been written ! But knowing the cu
riosity of the ladies under whose eye this page may
some lime or other fall to be such that they would ex
cuse a temporary sacrifice of dignity for the sake of a
few novelties, I consented on this occasion to act in the

140 TURKISH LADIES.
capacity of a servant ; and followed my queenly mis
tresses about with the most unqualified submissive-
ness and obedience. Never did a shadow follow a
substance with a nicer docility and exactness of mo
tion. You would have said I was formed but
to obey — to live in the happiness which my meek
and unhesitating devotedness of disposition might
secure to the heart of another — and that if only a
married man, my hearth must be the very shrine of
domestic quietude and harmony. What a pity all
these good qualities for a husband should be lav
ished upon one incapable of appreciating their value.
Yet I consent that ladies govern, for they do it
so gently, so sweetly, so unperceived by those whose
submission is the most entire, I would not exchange
their dominion for that of any other order of beings.
It comes upon us, though in the substance, yet not in
the shape and color of authority, and is so blended
up with affection and endearment, that it seems more
like a charm than an absolute control : it is all soft
ened and mellowed down like that tender power
which belongs to the queen of night, serenely ascend
ing over the swelling bosom of the enamored ocean.
Let this figure, so bold and broad that any append
age can only dwindle away its magnificence, conclude
this profound and extrembly pertinent paragraph,
a paragraph which I think gives me a special claim
to the particular regard of those whose supremacy
it not only recognizes, but defends. It is much bet-

TURKISH LADIES. 141
ter to be frank on this subject, and acknowledge
ourselves at once at the feet of beauty, than like
some, to deny the position till openly detected in it,
and then, with awkard grace, start up, brush the
dust from the knee, and to the amusement of every'
spectator, assume the self-sufficient air that would
become one who had never knelt.
I was sketching a few of the little diversions, in
which the lightness of character in a Turkish lady
makes its escape. Her amusements, though in them
selves frivolous, are yet covered with a freshness of
feeling that gives them an interest beyond the more
studied pastimes of her sex. It is like childhood
among its flowers, before higher and less attainable
objects have fevered the mind. She is sportive, but
her sportiveness has heart in it ; she is capricious,
but her caprice is dear to her, at least for the time
being ; she is imaginative, but the visions that float
through her mind cast their light or dark shadows
upon the very current of her life. She connects a
mystery, a meaning and force with the slightest in
cident that crosses her path, her feelings or her
fancy. Were a flower that she has nursed to drop
untimely from its stem, she would see in its wither
ed leaves the perished beauty of some fond hope ;
or were a bird to light at her lattice, and carol one
of its sweeter lays, she would hear in its music the
whisper of some event that is to brighten over the
flow of her coming years ; or were a form of youth

142 TURKISH LADIES.
and manly beauty to advance upon her dream, she
would trace in this pleasing visitant the lineaments
of one destined to bless her with his permanent love.
All the delicate phenomena of mind, and all the
slight variations of the changing year, have for her
a significant language. The dream that soothes her
pillow, the vision that breaks her rest, — the streamlet
that moves with its silver voice, the current that
rushes with its shaking footstep, — the spring break
ing the chain of winter, and summoning forth the
diffident flowers, the autumn, blighting their beauty
and gathering them to the tomb, — the light zephyr
that scarcely wakes the strings of her slumbering
harp, and the heavy wind that comes loaded with
sighs from the deep bosom of the forest — are all, to
her, tokens and oracles ; they are the interpreters of
events that betide her future experience ; for her
unlettered and unpretending philosophy ranges but
little beyond the simple persuasion that,
" Coming events cast their shadows before."
These slight indications all point to one object, and
to the good or ill of which this object must be the
source. This single, engrossing, and eventful object
is Love. Aside from this she has no solicitude, no
fears ; beyond it she has nothing to anticipate, and
short of it there is nothing to desire : it is to her the
sole charm that makes the earth lovely, that lends
music to its thousand voices, and fills the face of
nature with light. Break this single spell, and her

TURKISH LADIES. 143
existence becomes a blank ! It is no wonder, there- \
fore, with these sentiments, that she should train her
self to the caprices of her idol ; that she should
mould herself to the very shape of the passion exist
ing there ; and that this devotedness, so earnest and
entire, should at length render her own heart as
vivid and ardent as the object of her worship. The ;
mirror, held to the sun, collects not only its light,
but its heat.
In all the perplexities and promises of this devo- '
tion, in which her heart trembles like a star betwixt
night and day, she has essentially no teachings but
those of nature. She has no philosophical analysis
of the sentiment she must awaken, no practical
exposition of the means she must employ ; she has
never, perhaps, once read the early history of an
attachment, or pondered for a moment the circum
stances that give it maturity and strength; she is
left entirely to the instincts of her untutored heart ;
she moves upon the force of her own feelings ; she
obeys each impulse from within ; if these bear her
wrongly, she casts the failure upon her destiny, and
reconciles herself to the calamity — as the dying do
to death — because it is inevitable. The seclusion to
which the habits of her nation consign her, deprive
her of all those opportunities, through which, in
other lands, youth and beauty obtain their triumphs.
She never openly encounters the face of the one
upon whom her fancy or affections may have lighted ;

144 TURKISH LADIES.
she never meets him at rout, or ball, or masquerade ;
she never breaks upon his presence in the frequented
way, or timidly crosses his solitary path ; she may
never exchange a word, a glance, or smile with
him, at the hearth of her father ; she may not even
betray her feelings through the attentions of a
younger sister ; nor once touch her harp to those
notes upon which affection would linger — and pro
longing — linger still. Yet she will not despair ; the
rose which she entrusted to a confidential hand may
perchance reach his breast ; the rich face, and over
powering eye, which she stealthfully unveiled at her
lattice as he passed, may have sunk into his heart.
If she wins the object of her credulous regard, and
can succeed in confining his ranging affections to
herself, she repays his fidelity by a devotedness the
most intense and entire — a devotedness which sta
tion cannot dazzle, or poverty chill, or rival under
mine — a devotedness which lives on through all
changes, and is still green and fresh amid the frosts
of years. If she becomes a mother, her offspring engrosses
her solicitude from its birth. She nourishes it at her
own breast, lulls it to sleep with her own soft voice,
bends fondly over its cradled rest, suppresses the
pulsations of her own heart to listen again, and
ascertain if its breathings be clear ; and when it
awakes, hers is the first face that its young eyes
meet. She watches in it each expression of dawn-

TURKISH LADIES. 145
ing intelligence ; garners up in her very soul each ten
der growth of thought ; exults as she views it catch
ing a knowledge of objects around; and when it
stretches to her its little arms, and smiles up into
her face its look of infant love, she clasps it to her
breast with that yearning ecstacy which only a
mother can feel.
If a change betides its playful spirit— ^-if sickness
comes, she is near to watch its first tokens of
approach, to ward off, or allay, the weight -of its
visitation : she trusts this difficult and delicate office
to the patience and fidelity of no one : she pours the
simple cordial, or applies the soothing application
with her own hands ; unremits her assiduities through
the wearisome day, and continues her anxious vigils
through the long night. The color may fade from
her cheek, her spirit droop, and her strength fail
amid these watchings, but she still clings to the side
of her stricken child, forgetting her own life in her
tender solicitude for that of one to whom her ma
ternal anguish has but just given existence. If the
dread event, which her fears foreboded, finally steals
on apace, and the pulsations, scarcely perceptible
now, become still fainter and fewer, and the mortal
change spreads itself so coldly over that once warm
face, she presses again its unbreathing lips ; doubts
for a moment if it be death ; and then yields to her
bursting, irrepressible grief! Her child is borne by
friendly hands to its short and slight grave in the
13

146 TURKISH LADIES.
cypress grove: she soon follows in loneliness to
linger near it, to think over what it was ; what it
might have been to her ; and to weep. She plants
the aromatic shrub, with the earliest and latest flow
ers of the year, about its rest ; and, by the gifts
which she brings, tempts the birds to hover there,
and lighten with their songs its lowly sleep. 0!
tell me not that mother, Christian though she may
call herself, who is a stranger to these feelings ; who
can read her Bible, hear its lessons of maternal
obligation, and then abandon her helpless infant to
the care of one who has no interest in it, if it lives,
and no grief for it if it dies. Give me rather the
simple, the uneducated wife of Osmanlie, who at
least has this virtue, she nurses and rears her own
offspring ; she will not desert it from any sugges
tions of pride, personal ease, or selfish gratifica
tion. And the son whom she thus rears into youth and
manly promise, repays her solicitude and care in the
depth and fidelity of his filial affection. He can
never be happy while she is wretched ; he can never
smile, and she be in tears ; and if misfortune Comes
upon his father's house, he places her, so far as it
may be in his power, above the reach of its evils :
he becomes to her what she has been to him —
a kind, assiduous, and devoted guardian : and when
she is called to pay the debt of nature, and his will
ing offices can go no further, though forbid by his

TURKISH LADIES. 147
stern creed to wear the demonstrations of wo, yet
there is a grief in his heart which all the sable sym
bols of sorrow can never express. Ah ! the human
heart will always leap kindly back to kindness ! This
bereavement may occur, as it often does, in childhood:
time may allay the sensations it awakens, and other
objects enlist the sympathies of the individual ; yet
in after years the affections may travel back to the
event, and seem to realize afresh the irreparable loss.
" My mother ! when they told me thou wert dead
Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed?
Hovered inspirit o'er thy sorrowing son,
Wretch ev^Pthen, life's journey just begun?
Perhaps thou gavest me, though unseen, a kiss;
Perhaps a tear, if souls can weep in bliss !
I heard the bell tolled on thy burial day,
I saw the hearse that bore thee far away,
And, turning from my nursery window, drew
A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu !"

CHAPTER X.
The Mussulman in his treatment of his Mother — in commercial trans
actions — in private life — in a public station — in misfortune — in the
disguise of his feelings— in attachments to ancient usages — in an
ignominious death.
The affection of the Mussulman for his mother
is a most amiable and redeeming trait in his charac
ter : and it the more surprises us, that a plant of so
much sweetness and beauty should be found in such
an ungenial and unfavored soil. It might be expect
ed where the Sun of righteousness had cast his be
nign beams ; we might justly be shocked not to find
it in a disciple of Him who, as he hung on the cross,
bent his last look of love to her who had yearned
over his infant slumber. Alas ! how changed the
scene to Him from all that it then was ! Instead of
those fond encircling arms, an agonizing cross ! in
stead of that soft and soothing hand, a crown of
thorns ! instead of that cherishing caress, the bloody
nail and spear ! instead of that meek, maternal kiss,
vinegar and gall ! instead of that deep and overflow
ing heart, the coldness and bitterness of mockery !
instead of that countenance filled with tenderness,
light, and love, a departed God and a darkened world !
Yet in the very extremity of this change, when the
last pangs of its cruelty and agony were upon him,

TRAITS OF THE TURK. 149
the Sufferer forgot not the future condition and hap
piness of her whose cares once so sweetly availed
him. But this transcendent example of filial piety
and attachment has, perhaps, never been unfolded to
the Mussulman : he is devoted and constant, even
without the sacred incentives which, it conveys — it
is for those who call themselves Christians to ponder
and admire, walk away and forget. But that cal
lous being, to whatever creed he may belong, who
can forsake his mother, who can forget the sorrows
and anxieties of her who gave him birth, and nou
rished his unrequiting infancy, is a dishonor to his
name, a burning blot upon human nature ; the earth
which he treads and disgraces, might in justice deny
him the sanctity of a grave.
Another redeeming trait in the character of the
Mussulman, is that spirit of honesty which pervades
his commercial conduct. His naked word is as safe
as a bond, though guarantied by penalties severe as
those exacted by the mercenary Jew of Venice. If
reverses defeat his just intentions, and he becomes
unable to meet your full demand, he lays his last
farthing at your feet : and should fortune smile upon
him again, he considers your claim, at whatever dis
tance of time, still obligatory and paramount ; any
other conduct would, in his eyes, be fraudulent and
base. If situations are reversed, and you become his
insolvent debtor, he will not shut you up in a prison,
and deprive you of the means of supporting your de-
13*

150 TRAITS OF THE TURK.
pendent family, as we do in our Christian land ; he
will exonerate you for the time being : but if you
subsequently acquire, or inherit, the means of liqui
dating his claim, he expects it at your hands : and if>
in your abundance and his penury, you refuse it, it
fwill not be safe for you to dash past his hovel in your
gilded carriage.
If you purchase a horse of him, which he war
rants to be sound, and free of vicious habits, you
may confidently rely upon that animal's taking you
to your journey's end within the reasonable time con
templated, and without a broken limb. And if you
sell him an animal of the same noble species, as un
exceptionable, and he finds him otherwise, he returns
him to you, and expects you to take him back : not
as an act of gratuitous kindness and consideration,
but as an act of mere justice : and if you refuse to
do it, you may expect from him the treatment which
a knave deserves from the hands of an honest man.
He will look upon you much as Adam may have
looked upon the devil when the fatal fruit had opened
his eyes. Or if you enter his bazar, to purchase any parti
cular article it may contain, instead of deluging you
with an ocean of words about its excellent qualities,
he simply says, good ; and it is ordinarily safer for
you to rely upon his declaration, than the decision
of your own eyes. I speak now of the pure Osman
lie, pursuing the rare vocation of a merchant, unsus-

TRAITS OF THE TURK. 151
tained and uncorrupted by station : for, place this
same individual in power, intoxicate him with ambi
tion, and, though he may not then defraud you in a
bargain, yet, to meet the exorbitant demands of a
superior, or to secure some darling object of personal
aggrandizement, he may oppress you ; he may levy
upon your property, till your patience and ability
are both exhausted. Ambition and state necessity
appear to confound his vague, moral distinctions,
and to deprive him of those restraining checks which
in private life he recognizes and obeys.
Nor is this surprising, when we consider the tex
ture and source of these restraints. He is honest in
his dealings, not mainly because a want of this up
rightness would involve a moral culpability, but be
cause it would imply a sordid meanness of soul, be
neath his dignity and self-respect. Pride, self-esteem,
and a regard for his reputation, take, with him, essen
tially the place of a moral sense ; and secure from
him, in his private relations to society, the practice
of many important and commendable virtues. Far
be it from me to condemn an action that, is good in
itself, because its motive is not the purest offspring
of conscience : my simple object is to exhibit the
true character of the Mussulman, and to show why
this same individual in one situation is humane and
upright, and in another cruel and unjust. It is ow
ing, mainly, to the practical substitution of secular
and self-regarding motives, for the stern, unvarying

152 TRAITS OF THE TURK.
decisions of a quick, enlightened moral sense. The
man who invariably listens to this voice from with
in, is the same, whatever changes may occur in his
outward condition. No apologies of station, no ex
emption from the censures of others, nor even the
ability to set the opinions of mankind at defiance,
can exonerate him, in his own eyes, from the sacred
obligations of virtue, humanity, and justice.
But the Turk does not act under these imperious
restraints, he does not recognize their existence ; his
morality springs from a different source ; he is go
verned by motives which fluctuate with his condi
tion, and seem to lose their force as he ascends in
the scale of despotical power. He will practise, as
a general, what he condemns in the humble subor
dinate ; and applaud the Sultan for an act, which, if
committed by a private citizen, would curdle his
blood with horror. He is prone to believe, when an
action, highly criminal in itself, flows from high, ir
responsible authority, that there must be some great
end in view, by which it is redeemed and sanctified.
In this spirit, though naturally humane, and averse
to the infliction of what he may deem unnecessary
pangs, he justifies the massacre of a thousand citizens
in a revolted province, to overawe and intimidate
the rest, and prevent, perhaps, a still greater effu
sion of blood. In the same spirit he justifies that
impenetrable duplicity, especially in public men and
their agents, to which he may, perhaps, himself fall

TRAITS OF THE TURK. 153
the first victim. He regards it simply as the means
of effecting a result that may cancel its turpitude.
This power of dissembling is one of the most
prominent and fearful traits in his character. It is
so profound and entire, that the greatest adept in it
frequently finds himself in the very snare, the intri
cacies and meshes of which he has spent his life in
studying. The perfidiousness through which Ali of
Yanina came to his death, is a forcible illustration
of this fact. He had a hundred times successfully
concealed his dagger beneath a kiss, and was at last
blinded and betrayed by the same artifice. You
may bring a Turk before his superior ; he may there
be loaded with the most heavy and unjust accusa
tions ; flayed with the most cutting invective !
scorched with the most burning sarcasm ; yet not a
word or look betrays the indignant conflict within.
He is as meek, silent, and patient, as the most sub
missive martyr ; or rather, he seems to stand in
statue-like insensibility : but when the day of change
and retribution comes, he will reveal upon you the
vengeance of a deep and cherished wrong! You
may scale his harem, dishonor his house, wound
him in the very quick of his sensibilities, and he
may meet you the next day at ihe caffena, quietly
smoke his pipe at your side, and perhaps solicit you
to walk with him ; but if you consent, you go out
never to return ! And the yielding object of your

154 TRAITS OF THE TURK.
criminal passion, equally unwarned and unapprised,
will follow your lifeless body, in a sack, to her grave
in the Bosphorus.
Or suppose, in a less exceptionable shape, you
should induce him to accompany you to Naples;
and you introduce him into the theatre, into the very
centre of its magnificent architecture and gorgeous
decorations — a place of which he has not the slight
est conception — and now the curtain, that conceals
the ballet, suddenly rises ; the orchestra bursts into
full harmony ; and two or three hundred young
females, with only the apology of drapery upon their
soft forms, float in concert to the swelling richness
of the music. Though a revelation of all the
houried beauty of Mahomet's heaven could not sur
prise him more, yet not a muscle moves, not an emo
tion disturbs the saturnine gravity of his counte
nance. This ability to vail the feelings, so power
ful in the working of good and evil, so essential in
avoiding the mistakes of momentary embarrassment,
and the committals of unconcealed anger, is not
entirely the effect of education, for it has never been
manifested in any nice degree of perfection, except
by orientals, with whom it has become, whatever it
may have originally been, in a measure constitu
tional. It is a trait of character that may justly
interest and amuse the innocent, and alarm the
guilty. The serpent rarely coils himself for the

TRAITS OF THE TURK. 155
timid heel of the passing traveller, but for that pre;
sumptuous foot which comes rustling and trampling
too near his solitude.
The equanimity with which a Turk bears 'mis
fortune is a lesson to many who may be his superiors
in every other kind of wisdom. He may be reduced
at once from affluence to poverty ; the tempest, the
flame, or a plundering edict of his emperor, may strip
him of his last piaster; but instead of looking around
for a halter, or sullenly sitting down to madden over
his destitute condition, you may find him perhaps in
a few days selling the bowl, the stem, or the amber
mouth-piece of the pipe ; carrying the whole of his
little capital in one hand, and with the other adjust
ing his consolatory chibouque.
Yet he is the .same dignified, uncringing being
that he was before, and considers his claims to re
spect not at all affected by his new and humble occu
pation. He connects no reproach with his poverty,
and will not tolerate the contemptuous look which is
prone to follow the frowns of fortune. Let those
who dispute the good sense of his deportment, take
to arsenic, leave their families to the charities of
strangers, and go the fearful journey 'before their
time ! They have not the resolution and fortitude
of men on whom heaven has set its highest impress.
They are examples of that weakness and vanity
from which our nature is not entirely exempt. But
the man who thus wickedly sneaks out of the world,

156 TRAITS OF THE TURK.
deserting his responsibilities, and betraying the trust
reposed in him by the Author of his existence, is un
worthy of being sepulchred in company with those
who have struggled with adversity, lived with re
spect, and died with honor.
There is not in the Turk, as many have been
led to believe, a real contempt for learning. He
has been induced to discourage it, from a just ap
prehension of the innovations it might introduce
upon his ancient and venerated customs ; he looks
upon these transmitted usages as something sacred ;
he connects them with the highest splendors of his
nation, the loftiest triumphs of his religion, and sub
mits to a departure from them with clinging reluc
tance. It is not the elegance of the fez, or the rich
ness of the coiled cashmere, that makes him love the
turban ; it is because his ancestors wore that turban,
because they fought and bled beneath it, because
they bowed with it upon their venerable, toil-worn
brows towards Mecca. He still wears his belt, his
yateghan, and pistols, not because they are mounted
with jewels and gold, or for fear of surprise from
an assassin, but because his forefathers wore them,
because those great men, who have now gone from
the earth, and whom he is left to represent, appear
ed at the hearth and on the field, at home and abroad,
in these weapons of pride and trust. He refuses to
relinquish h s flowing robe, not that a simpler and
less ample habit would not answer its purpose, but

TRAITS OF THE TURK. 157
it is the mantle that fell from the prophet-spirit of
his father. With these feelings, it is not surprising that he
should wish to avoid coming in contact with those
nations, who have not this filial reverence, and with
whom every novelty has a new charm, that he should
watch with a jealous eye the spirit of change that
is abroad, that he should discountenance the arro
gance of untried experiments, that he should discour
age the innovating tendencies of impatient know
ledge, that he should wish to keep the orb of science
upon the dim horizon of his mind, if in its bright
and burning ascent it must melt away the chain that
binds him to the graves of his ancestral dead.
The violations committed upon these sacred at
tachments, by the innovations recently introduced
under the royal signet, have shaken the Ottoman
throne to its base ; they have disturbed the confi
dence of the Mussulman in the piety and wisdom of
his sovereign ; and it will be an unexampled exhibi
tion of forbearance or weakness in the nation, if this
representative of the Prophet does not yet pay, with
his life, the penalty of his presumption. You may
trifle with the good man's property, and even sport
with his reputation, but you must not touch the
sanctity of his respect for those who have it no
longer in their power to make their own defence.
There is no affection so deep as that hallowed by
the grave ; no attachment so profound as that on
14

158 TRAITS OF THE TURK.
which death has set its seal ; for all that we there
discover, remember, and mourn, is goodness without
its faults, wisdom without its errors.
The calmness with which a Turk makes up his
mind to die, the composure with which he bows to
the hand of the executioner, though innocent of the
crime alleged, are among his distinguishing charac
teristics, and may be traced to the evenness of con
stitutional habit, and those sentiments of submission
instilled by his education. He is taught from his
earliest years to suppress, or at least conceal his
emotions — to preserve a calm exterior, whatever
may be the agitation within ; so that ere long he
resembles a stream moving on with a bright, un
broken surface, though gloomy and pointed rocks
darken and disturb its bed.
He is taught to consider his personal services, in
peace or war, in the discharge of a civil trust, or in
the perils of the tented field, ever at the call of his
sovereign, that the preservatio nor sacrifice of his
life is submitted to measures which he must not
arraign, or to events upon which fate has set its
unalterable seal. When, therefore, death presents
itself, whether in the burning breach, or on the sink
ing deck — whether in the shape of disease, or the
firman of the Prophet's vicegerent ; he submits, like
one who feels that his days are numbered, and that
tears, regrets, and dismay are alike unavailing.
When charged with a crime, of which he is ut-

TRAITS OF THE TURK. 159
terly innocent, and he is required to make restitu
tion with his life, he breathes no angry remonstrance,
no humiliating supplication ; he may whisper of a
mistake, and ask a delay : if that be denied, he casts
an appealing look to his God, and submits. And
there may be no one feature, in the circumstances of
his death calculated to inspire him with fortitude, or
a spirit of submissiveness. There may be no respon
sible tribunal, as in other lands, to sit in judgment
upon his alleged offence — no jury, bound to render
an impartial verdict, and ever disposed to the side o1
mercy — no witnesses with whom pity nearly melts
away the stern obligations of an oath — no counsel,
whose professional ambition lies in the acquittal of
his client — no solemn and formal delicacy of the fatal
sentence — no prison of preparation and possible par
don — no prints promulgating previous virtues, and
deprecating the rigors of inexorable justice — no lin
gering visits of unweaned friendship and affection —
no consolatory assurances of the pitying priest — no
gathering and breathless multitude around the last
scene — no reconciling tears of sympathy, or half-
formed threats of deliverance — none of those pre
ludes and appendages which, with us, smooth the
way to a death of ignominy, aud make the obituary
of the hapless victim to be read and wept over by
commiserating millions.
He meets his death comparatively alone — none
to counsel, none to console. The headsman comes

160 TRAITS OF THE TURK.
to him in the street, or the field, as the chance may
be, and presents the fatal firman : asks him if the
name on that dark scroll is his : he can only see
enough to discover that it is ; for his eyes are with
his bewildered thoughts, and they are at that home
which is to see him no more ; with that devoted wife
who will long look through her doubting tears for
his return ; and with those children now to be left
without a father ! The executioner, knowing nothing
of the guilt or innocence of his victim, but knowing
that he acts under orders that admit of no delay, tells
him to kiss the mandate of his sovereign and submit.
He brings it to his lips, kneels, and bares his neck ;
the scimetar flashes through its quick circuit ; the
sinking body and severed head fall together ; the
countenance, for an instant, betrays the parting
pang: the eye twinkles a moment, then closes in
everlasting night ! How sudden, how appalling this
transition ! Life, light, and all the busy promises of
hope exchanged, at once, for the silence and perpe
tual darkness of death !
Were life a taper, that, if quenched, could be re
lit, we might with less dread undergo the darkening
change ; but there is no Promethean spark that can
rekindle, if once extinguished, this vital flame.
Henceforth only remain the shroud, the winding
sheet, and the worm ; we are never more to be what
we have been — never to come back to this varied
world. It is this unreturning thought that fills us

TRAITS OF THE TURK. 161
with dread ; the thought that we shall never come
back to those whom we left here, so faultless,
so beautiful, and young ! that we shall never again
revisit this green earth — never stray among its founts
and flowers — never hear the glad voices of the
waking grove, or the sweet dirge of the murmuring
shore — never see the fresh morn break forth in
breathing beauty from its purple pavilion, or the
evening star go up upon its watch. It is this that
strikes a saddening chill to the heart, and makes us
shrink from that untried hereafter. Happy he who,
in this hour of final and lonely departure, hath the
presence of Him whose countenance lights up that
desolate way ; who, in the earnest of his own tri
umph over the powers of darkness, and in the assu
rances of his unfailing love, hath taken .
" from Death its sting,
And from the Grave its victory."

14*

CHAPTER XI.
The life coveted by a Mussulman — Stillness of a Turkish town-
Inferences of the stranger— Love of show — Capabilities of the
Turk— His conjugal habits — Inconsistencies in his character.
Like the undisturbed quietude of bis last sleep, is
that life most coveted by the Osmanhe. He delights
in a state of perfect quiescence ; he loves to lounge
upon his ottoman ; sip his moca, trifle with his chi
bouque, and let the world without wrangle and rave
as it may.
Whatever may be his vocation, this inertness of
disposition is seldom overcome, or forced even into
a temporary activity. If he is a merchant, and there
are fifty customers at his counter, impatient to be
served at the same moment, he will attend to them,
one at a time, leisurely, as if there were but a single
person there, and as indifferently as if it were of no
interest to him whether that individual purchased
any thing or not. If he is a mechanic — a cordwainer,
for instance — he will drive the last peg in the heel
of a boot, for which you may be waiting, just as de
liberately as he took the first stitch : or, if he is a
boatman, his oars will dip the wave just so many
times in a minute, and no more, though your business
may demand the most pressing haste : or if he is a

TRAITS OF THE TURK. 163
physician, and your child is dying, he will still finish
his pipe, then perfume his beard, then direct respect
ing his dinner, and then, with a slow, measured tread,
walk forth in quest of his young patient, who, pro
bably, ere this, is beyond the reach of human as
sistance. These measured and indolent habits are so pro
minently characteristic of a Turkish town, that the
stranger half persuades himself of his arrival in a
community exempted, by some benevolent provision
of nature, from the necessity of labor. He walks
through the streets — they are all silent, save now and
then the slow stroke of some smith's hammer, or the
nodding blow of some carpenter comes upon his ear ;
but these sound strange and out of place as the
mattock of a sexton, breaking, among old tombs, the
close mold for some new grave. He finds, at the
frequent coffee-houses, whatever may be the hour of
the day, large and numerous groups of bearded men,
sitting, slumbering, or smoking in the shaded courts ;
so composed, so wordless and still, that only the
lulling note of the fountain prevails over the whisper
of the light leaf above. And if he joins them — yield
ing to the infection of the quiet spot — he may be the
better able, on his departure, to decide between the
comparative merits of those who, in his own land,
assemble to exchange thoughts, and perhaps high
words ; and those who here meet to exchange sleepy,

164 TRAITS OF THE TURK.
good-natured looks, with here and there a dissatis
fied flea.
If he walks into the country the same air of soli
tude and stillness prevails ; not a ploughman's voice
or a huntsman's horn disturbs field or grove ; the
bird sings unmolested on its native tree, the green
earth lies unfurrowed, and even untrod save by the
Tartar Janizary, who moves between one town and
another lonely as a ghost between its sepulchre and
the deserted house where it once dwelt.
He returns to the city, looks about him again,
finds that the inhabitants eat and drink as in other
communities ; asks whence they obtain their bread,
meat, and fruit ; is told they are brought from a dis
tance ; but observing as few evidences of capital as
industry, he inquires for the means to purchase these ;
the Mussulman rolls up his eye and says, God is great.
This is the only reply his question wins, the only so
lution he can obtain for his perplexing problem :
and he begins to think, in spite of Malthus and every
one else, who has written on political economy, that
mankind might subsist without labor, or at least
that one half the toil which now wearies the world,
might be advantageously escaped. In this latter
opinion he would not be so very erroneous, for if our
wants were to be nicely and impartially examined, it
would be found that a major part of them are artificial ;
and that neither their existence, nor gratification is

TRAITS OF THE TURK. 165
essentially promotive of our dignity, virtue, or hap
piness.
/. The truth is, we are the slaves of our own pride,
the drudges of our own greatness ; the valets of our
own vanity : we are constantly brushing and polish
ing furniture for others to look at ; collecting fardels,
which others are weak enough to envy, and we fool
ish enough to transport ; like a tortoise, we carry
our house upon our back, strutting and staggering
under its weight : that poor animal, however, carries
his as a protection from the elements or his enemies ;
we carry ours to show what a huge building we
have got. We leave nothing behind that can swell
our present importance, whether the future may have
any want of it or not ; resembling a snake, who
should be found carrying along his last year's skin —
a thing that is never seen ; the wiser serpent has left
that glittering, but now useless envelop at the brier,
bramble, or brake, where he cast it off. The tad
pole, as it becomes a more respectable frog, casts off
the incumbrance of its tail ; but we are so in love
with every thing that has once touched us, that we
should still be wearing our swaddling bands, were
it not that our bodies had swelled beyond their di
mensions ; and some of us might be seen carrying
about our cradles, as they would no longer be able
to carry us, were it not for the wants of the little
fellows who have come into the world since. I do
think, of all the animals that move on two legs, or

166 TRAITS OF THE TURK.
four, or no legs at all, man is the most vain and os
tentatious. I will not except even the peacock ; that
bird simply displays the beauties conferred by na
ture ; but we frizzle, frauzle, and paint !
I ask pardon of the fair painter, to whom nature
has been so niggardly in the bestowment of charms,
that she must resort to these artificial attractions ;
and I promise, if she will excuse me this once, not
again to give offence, even in the most distant insi
nuation, though her rouge rival the blood-gushing
cheek of the doll : — en passant, they bleed this little
infant of the nursery miss in Paris : I passed a shop
in the palais royale, in which they were applying
the lancet to one of them at the time ; a young belle
standing near declared she thought the dear little
thing would faint ; I did not think so, but I thought
there was as little affectation in her apprehensions
as there is usually in the alarms of a lady of fashion.
She shrieks if a cricket stirs from its crevice, and
if a mouse were to make its appearance, she would
scramble to the top of Babel, and drown half its
languages in her screams ! But I am offending
again, notwithstanding my promise to be silent. Be
i careful how you confide in a person, who has once
,' deceived you ; for he is like a lake, that has worked
a passage through its sandy barrier ; you may repair
the breach, and think the element safe, but it will
probably work its way out again.
But what have lakes and lies to do with Turks

TRAITS OF THE TURK. 167
and their towns ? Nothing, I thought when I began
that sentence, but upon reflection, nothing is more
common among them than both. They are fond of the
water in every shape, from the puddle up to the
ocean, and practise deception so adroitly, that the
deceiver himself is often the fool of his own false
hood. There is no species of vice, or villany among
them, the secret knowledge or successful practice
of which is long confined to a particular class ; it
soon becomes public property, like a newly invented
method of ensnaring game, among savages. But a
wicked artifice, whatever may be the morals of a
community, to avail its inventors, must be a covert
and extremely limited monopoly ; for a general
knowledge and privilege will either destroy it by
exposure and rebuke, or defeat its advantage by
competition. The thief now seldom solicits at your
door, in the character of a poor houseless stranger,
the boon of a night's lodging, because other mendi
cants of his profession, to whom you may have ex
tended the charity of your hearth, have pre-admon-
ished you of a remarkable proneness in the frater
nity to depart in the night, and leave your money
drawer, or chest of plate, greviously deficient.
I was sketching, if my memory serves me right
ly, the indolence of the Turkish character. This
appears to pervade, with a leaden, listless effect, his
whole being, like that deep drowsiness which over
takes the weary and exhausted. Yet he is capable

168 TRAITS OF THE TURK.
when a great emergency demands, of shaking it off,
and of undergoing incredible fatigue and hardship.
The man who to-day appears only equal to the task
of moving his idle person from one lolling sofa to
another, may perhaps to-morrow be seen mounted on
his impatient charger, dashing through night and
storm, over desert wastes, to meet an enemy, where
the vigor of his right arm must cleave his way to
victory. Or if he has some private wrong to be
redressed ; if some object of personal revenge ap
peals to him ; if the suspected person who profaned
his harem has fled, he will pursue him over burning
plains, through pathless forests, by the frowning pre
cipice and the darkened torrent, with an enduring
unwearied impetuosity of spirit, at which the very
tempest might pause and wonder.
The capability of this great and sudden change
shows that he is not the effeminate, enervated being,
that his calmer hours would indicate. It evinces
also his temperance in those indulgencies which un
dermine constitutional force ; for excesses of this
nature leave nothing upon which energy can rally
or sustain itself; the man becomes like a piece of in
tricately organized machinery with its main spring
broken. A libertine squanders the summer and
autumn of life while it is spring ; and with suicidal
folly digs a grave between himself and the only
object which, in his estimation, makes existence a
blessing. One of the first fruits of his darling pas-

TRAITS OF THE TURK. 169
sion is this precipitancy, which makes him overleap
his own enjoyments ; which makes the past with
him a delirious dream, the futureabl a nk ; and which
brings over him the chilling night of his days, while
his morning star still sings upon its first watch.
But the Turk, notwithstanding the licentious sanc
tions of his creed, is yet comparatively temperate
in his pleasures. He is cool and calculating in his
indulgences : his noble constitution is a capital ; he
spends the interest freely, but will not encroach upon
the principal. He is not therefore a sensualist to the
extent that many suppose, who draw their inferences
from the polygamous features of his social condition.
The Koran allows him all the variety to be found
in a fourfold state of wedlock ; but he very seldom
avails himself of this quaternary indulgence. His
means may not permit it ; or his affections for one
already his own, may render him indifferent ; or if
he has married into a powerful family, the fear of
giving offence, and thus forfeiting an expected inher
itance, or defeating some scheme of personal prefer
ment, restrains him. So that with all these restrict
ing agencies, and the politic suggestions of a passing
that seeks to preserve its strength, he may not per
haps be as much given to excess as many who live
under a system less latitudinarian in its matrimo
nial and moral code.
The character of the Turk is like his own beloved
Stamboul — a mass of singular incongruities. There
15

170 TRAITS OF THE TURK.
is scarcely one feature, of a meek or gorgeous beauty
that is not approached by some countervailing de
formity. He loves and venerates his mother, and
strangles his wife upon a whisper of jealousy : he
tolerates you in the exercise of your religion, and
bowstrings a convert from his own ; he is magnani
mous in the forgiveness of one enemy, and implacable
in the persecution of another equally deserving his
generosity : he loves his children when young, and
forgets them when they have grown up : he re
lieves a stranger in distress, and turns a deaf ear to
a brother in misfortune : he washes his hands, kneels
and prays, and then, like Pilate, delivers up the inno
cent : he plunders a province, and then goes on a pious
pilgrimage to Mecca : he liberates a caged bird, and
dungeons a human being ; he is honest and upright in
the bazar, and a deep dissembler in the divan : he is
a republican in private life, and a despot in power:
submissive to those above him, and arbitrary to those
beneath : he kisses his death sentence, and charges,
his very bones to rumble their remonstrance in the
grave. He is temperate in the indulgence of his ap
petites, and yet lives mainly for their gratification :
he believes in destiny, and yet beheads a general
who has lost a battle, or an admiral who has been
driven by a tempest on the rocks : he believes in
amulets, charms, and the fascinations of the evil eye,
and stoically puts on the apparel of one who has
died with the plague : he prides himself on the state-

TRAITS OF THE TURK. 171
liness of his person, the dignity of his carriage, the
taciturnity of his lips, and then goes to the deformity
of a natural cripple for medical counsel, and the bat-
tology of an idiot for a divination of his dreams.
Such are a few of the incongruities which dis
figure the character of the Mussulman ; and they
are mainly traceable to defects in his social and moral
condition. He lives under an economy of accident,
caprice, and blind impulse. There is no enlightened
conviction, no paramount obligation, no philosophical
test, no pure and lofty principle — such as the Bible
furnishes — restraining, elevating, and binding into
one harmonious whole the wishes, resolves, and con
duct of the man. He is like a ship at sea without an
indicating shore, without a polar magnet, and hold
ing her course by the fickle light of every wandering
star. Such will ever be the condition of individuals
and nations where the Bible does not shed its pure and
constant light. The past is an evidence of the fu
ture. Greece banished and recalled, murdered and
immortalized, her best sons. She reverenced the
dictates of philosophy, and obeyed the impulses of
vanity : she disdained the protection of foreign alli
ances, and neglected to preserve a systematic organi
zation of her own strength: she despised the power
of her ruthless invaders till they were already tramp
ling on her shrines ; and then rose, like one in a dy
ing delirium, only to betray her desperation and des
pair. Rome decreed her victors a triumphal arch

172 TRAITS OF THE TURK.
to-day, exile or death to-morrow. She execrated
tyranny with her lips,'and wove with her own hands
the shroud of her liberties : she plundered the world
of its dearest treasures, and then, like the huntsman
going to the jungle of the cubless tigress, proposed
terms of perpetual amity. She fluctuated between
her own duty and valor, and the fidelity of the mer
cenary — between the stern obligations of patriotism,
and the suggestions of effeminate ease, till she found
too late that her sceptre had departed, and even the
possibility of retrieving her errors had gone for ever !
The Ottoman power by the same fickleness, blindness,
and passion, is now falling in ruins. It has not the har
mony, the inherent energy, or auxiliary aid that can
long preserve it from dissolution. It is like an enor
mous raft afloat upon troubled waters, and fas
tened by ligaments too slender much longer to hold
together its tossing and wrenching parts. It will fall
asunder, and Russia will be the strong floodman to
gather up the drifting spoil.

CHAPTER XII.
Destruction of the Janizaries — Means employed to effect it — Their
final deportment — Features in the present Government of Turkey
— Character of Sultan Mahmoud — Spirit of his Reforms.
The present feeble and distracted condition of the
Turkish empire has not resulted, as many have been
led to suppose, from the sudden destruction of the
Janizaries. Had that body retained the patriotism
and vigor which once animated and nerved them,
their absence might truly be deplored by every
honest Osmanlie. But they had ceased to possess
these commendable attributes ; they had become in
solent and refractory — a terror to the throne, and the
hearth of the quiet citizen. Yet there was an unspar
ing precipitancy in their fate, that must awaken senti
ments of commiseration. Nor can we help feeling
a bewildering respect for the daring and defying
spirit that flashed through their despair.
They had long stood the firm refuge and defence
of the empire ; they had impressed the terror of
their arms upon the dynasties of Christendom ; they
had won a thousand victories, and as often dictated
the conditions of peace ; they had displaced Viziers,
deposed Sultans, and set aside the Pashas of the pro
vinces at will ; they had recently consigned Selim
to a bloody shroud, and given the present monarch
15*

174 POLICY OF THE SULTAN.
to understand that he owed his inviolability to the
simple fact of his being the last of the Othman line,
of an age sufficient to reign. Occupying this posi
tion, and sustained by these proud recollections, they
were naturally intolerant of any innovations that in
fringed upon their privileges, or diminished their con
sideration. Mahmoud saw clearly that he must raise
the quick hand of ruin against them, while he had
the power, or submit to become the passive instru
ment of their caprice. He preferred his own life
and independence, to their domineering sway ; and
planned their destruction with a true Machiavelian
policy. He thinned their ranks, by sending them, in small
detachments, into the Morea ; expeditions in which
they were intentionally unsupported, and from which
they never returned : to the remainder he addressed
himself in a different form ; to the avaricious he prof
fered gold ; to the ambitious, preferment ; to the re
fractory he applied the bowstring ; till, by these well-
adapted devices, the commander in chief, and a num
ber of the master spirits of the order, were brought
firmly into his interest. The fetva for the organi
zation of a new and distinct army, now made its ap
pearance, and produced the expected result. The
Janizaries instantly rose against 'it, denouncing the
spirit of its provisions, and demanding the heads of
those who had counselled their sovereign to this dis
respectful act ; and threatening, in the event of its

POLICY OF THE SULTAN. 175
not being immediately rescinded, to force the gates
of the Seraglio.
But Mahmoud was prepared for this alarming
issue. The forces which he had been secretly collect
ing, in anticipation of this event, now surrounded the
Et-meidan, in which the Janizaries were assembled.
An order for the death of the insurgents, under the
sanction of Ulema, was issued ; the standard of the
Prophet unfurled from the dome of the imperial
mosque ; and all faithful Mussulmen called upon to
support its sacred cause against the violence of im
piety and treason. The Janizaries soon saw that
their condition was hopeless, their mistake irretrie
vable : yet they determined not to disgrace the me
mory of their fathers by any relenting tears, or una
vailing supplications. They forced their way over
many of their dead companions to their barracks,
where they shut themselves up, sternly resolved to
abide the terrible issue. From this retreat they
could not be forced ; and at evening orders were
given to fire their last refuge ! The burning pile
sent up its fitful flashes though the long night ; and
the next sun dawned upon a smouldering mass of
embers, bones, and blood ! Those who had escaped
the tumult and carnage of the Et-meidan were hunt
ed down in every section, street, and alley of the
city. They were betrayed, overwhelmed, cut
to pieces ; and their mangled bodies cast into the

176 POLICY OF THE SULTAN.
Bosphorus, till that mighty current became literally
choked with the dead !
Thus perished, in a day, one of the most formi
dable orders of men known to this or any other age.
Their achievements are interwoven with the highest
splendors of the Ottoman name. Their watch-fires
were kindled from the mountains of Asia to the cen
tre of Europe ; and their war-song seems still to
echo from every torrent and steep. Their chivalric
valor, their unshrinking hardihood, and contempt
of death, will long disturb the sober pen of history,
and furnish themes around which the spirit of poetry
will hover, and catch the romance of its wildest
flights. The more sanguine among those who joined in
anathematizing and overwhelming the Janizaries,
believed that their absence would diminish the sys
tem of corruption that had begun to assume an alarm
ing aspect in every department of the government.
But these expectations have proved illusory. Injus
tice, venality, and extortion have never been more
rife than at present. There is not an office in any
branch of the administration, from that of Grand Vi
zier down to that of the most petty cavash, which
may not be purchased ; and when thus obtained, be
converted into an instrument of oppression and fraud.
Nor does the monarch encounter any considerable
risk of loss in this universal auction of places ; for if

POLICY OF THE SULTAN. 177
the incumbent fails to meet his contract, it is an easy
thing to send him the bowstring : or, if he is able,
by grinding the face of the poor, to liquidate the ex
orbitant obligation, it is equally for the interest of
the Sultan to strangle him into heaven, and sell his
place to another ; who is to pay for it, like his pre
decessor, with his gold and his blood. Yet, even on
these terms, there is no want of bidders : hundreds
of the highest talents and deepest sagacity in the
realm aspire to the situation of Visier ; though this
office is worth but three years and a half of life, that
being the average time between the instalment of
the aspirant and his violent death. In Turkey, at
least, the path of ambition lies up a perilous steep ;
he who climbs is sure to fall, if not in gaining the
elevation, yet in his first Idok from the summit.
The whole revenue of the state is secured upon
a system of legalized oppression. Every agent of
the government, civil and military, retains his situa
tion by his capacity at intrigue and extortion : he
systematically plunders those beneath him, to bribe
those above. This system of violence and fraud has
reduced the fairest portions of the Ottoman dominion
to barren wastes. It has withered agricultural enter
prises, and driven the hopeless husbandman in de
spair from his fields. It has made the village that
once thronged with a busy and happy population, a
ruin and a grave-yard. It has left to hills and val
leys that once rang with the song of the corn-reap-

178 POLICY OF THE SULTAN.
er, only the flapping wing of the owl, and the deso
late cry of the hyena. The pilgrim pauses on his
solitary way, and doubts if man ever dwelt there :
but the remains of a cypress grove, still gloomily
guarding the dead, tells him that his foot presses a
sod once trodden by thousands more cheerful and
contented than himself. Such are the fruits of ty
ranny ; such the results of a despotism established
by conquest, and upheld by cruelty and corruption ;
such the condition of a nation whose leaders blind
themselves and their subjects to the loftier light and
influences of the age — who suspend civilization, ar
rest the human mind, and seek to repose, in self-
complacent stupidity, upon the summit of their power.
There was a time when the present Sultan
might have essentially ameliorated the condition of
his subjects. The destruction of the Janizaries left
him at liberty to prosecute those wholesome and
efficient measures of reform, in which the wise and
benevolent Selim perished. But Mahmoud is evi
dently deficient in the higher and nobler qualities
which befit a sovereign. He is, seemingly, inca
pable of comprehending, with vivid force, the real
position, interests, and resources of his vast domin
ion ; and much less is he capable of moulding its tem
per and energies to the spirit of the times. His po
licy is far behind the age in which he lives, and im
measurably short of the exigencies which now press
upon his distracted councils. His reforms, if they

POLICY OF THE SULTAN. 179
are worthy of the name, have effected little more than
a partial and obnoxious change of costume. He has
been shaping the shadow instead of the substance :
he has disguised the hectic flush of the patient, in- -
stead of eradicating the vital disease. It is of no
moment whether a man fights beneath a turban or a
helmet — whether his standard be the soup-kettle of
the Janizary, or the more graceful folds of the wav
ing banner. The speed, or distance of the ball, is
not determined by the exterior polish or rudeness of
the ordnance. The genius and habits of a people
are not revolutionized by any change in the drapery
that conceals their person. The moral and intellec
tual qualities of a nation may remain unaltered,
through every variation of costume, from the effem
inate robes of a Persian prince, to the blanket and
moccasin of the American savage.
The capital error of Mahmoud has been, in di
recting his reforms to the garb and outward conduct
of his subject — the great fountain of character and
action has remained untouched. This source of sen
timent and impulse is beyond his sagacity ; his ma
gical wand cannot reach it. He may chase away
the spectre that hovers about the grave, but he can
not go down and tranquillize the disturbed sleep of
the pale occupant. The lights of science, and influ
ences of education, which alone can change the cha
racter of a people, have only flitted across his dreams.
They have never entered vitally and deeply into

180 POLICY OF THE SULTAN.
any plan that he has proposed, or formed even an
essential appendage to that system, which he has
pursued with an indiscriminate, unrelenting rigor.
His great scheme appears to have embraced but
little beyond the consolidation of an absolute unre
lieved despotism. And it is a singular fact, that
just in proportion as he has lowered the rights and
liberties of his subjects, he has descended himself, in
the awe, respect, and fear of foreign princes. Ty
ranny in an enlightened age carries down the oppres
sor with the oppressed.
The day has passed when the blind dictates of
irresponsible power can be rendered palatable, even
to the Mussulman. He begins to ponder over the
absolute tone in which he is addressed from the im
perial pavilion ; and he will, ere long, begin to ques
tion the authority under which the Capijee acts, before
he permits his head to roll from his shoulders, like
an idle top from the hand of youth. But when he
once begins to respect himself, and dares to assert
the rights instinctive in a rational and responsible
being, consequences of indescribable magnitude must
follow. He is not the tame and submissive being
that easily retraces a step once taken ; or overlooks
on irreparable wrong, that the impenitent offender
may ha-s e an opportunity of repeating the enormity.
When he has once risen in defence of his loftv and
aggrieved nature, no threats, perils, or tortures,
will be able to break his resolution, or drive him

POLICY OF THE SULTAN. 181
from his purpose. He will stand, if surrounded and
overmastered, unshrinking, like an Indian chief among
his tormentors, leaving no recanting word or look
to dim his stern memory.
Not only will the tyranny that weighs him down,
be shaken off, but with it must pass the onerous chain
of ecclesiastical authority. The sanctions and obli
gations of his religion are indissolubly connected
with temporal power ; this is the root from which
they derive their life. This power has never existed
but in an absolute form; it can accommodate itself to
no other mode of being ; its very genius is to be
supreme and irresponsible ; so that the same effort
which lifts the Mussulman above the broken fetters
of his despotism, will place him on the ruins of his
religion. The sceptre and crescent, altar and throne,
will sink together. It would not, perhaps, be a mat
ter of regret, were this catastrophe to occur without
delay. For out of this chaos some new system might
perhaps emerge, in which the rights of human nature
would be respected, and the precepts of Christianity
not wholly forgotten. Islamism is the grave of in
spired truth and liberty.

16

CHAPTER XIII.
Departure from Constantinople — Plain of Troy— Ancient remains —
Opinion of travellers — Arguments of a lady — Vigils of a night on
the plain— Visit to Helen's Fount — Ruins of Alexandria Troas—
A gloomy Greek — Mental tortures.
The reader will, perhaps, be a little surprised to
find me so suddenly at this distance from Constan
tinople. It is natural for us, on leaving a place to
which we may never return, to pay a farewell visit
to those objects that have struck most deeply into
the heart ; and to experience, at the parting moment,
some of those feelings, so tenderly told, of the poor
criminal who gave his wife and children a last em
brace — Then fitted the halter, then traversed the cart,
And often look'd back, as if loth to depart.
But never went a dismayed culprit from his cot
tage, under the stern mandates of law, so hurriedly as
we left the shapeless city of our short residence. We
had scarcely time to catch a glance of its minarets,
as they sunk behind us in the bosom of the Marmora.
A case of the plague had occurred in the very house
in which a portion of us were residing. We had
been, for some time, narrowly and nervously dodg-

PLAIN OF TROY. 183
ing death ; and we now determined on flight, not
withstanding the admonition of Horace,
Mors et fugacem persequitur vinim.
Casting our effects, and a few such edibles as the
nearest huckster's shop could furnish, into a little
Levantine brig that lay idle at Galata, we jumped
on board ourselves, and made all sail to a stiff breeze,
fortunately prevailing from the north ; our passage
through the Propontis, and down the Dardanelles,
was too quick and palpitating for note or comment.
It was like the speed of the flying fish, striking from
wave to wave, in its escape from the pursuing dol
phin. But as the most violent grief is usually the
shortest, so the most sudden and paling panic is ge
nerally of the least duration. The sight of Achilles'
tomb, Ida, and the plain of Ilium, seemed to make
us forget the fatal contagion which we had just been
shaking from the suspected folds of our garments.
No one examined again the state of his pulse, felt
under his arms for the frightful bubo, or sought the
fuming antidotes of the sulphur match. Our con
sternation was changed into an antiquarian rapture ;
and I really believe, if the Scamander had been a
solid stream of plague, we should, nevertheless, have
tracked it to its source. Such is the spell cast on
the soul by that dim spirit of romance which wings
its way through the voiceless twilight of ages.
Think me not, reader, threading my way along

184 PLAIN OF TROY.
the reedy banks of this classic stream, with the vain
purpose of locating anew the city of Priam, or of
giving reasonableness and force to the localities as
signed to it by the conjecturing fancy of others. I
would as soon follow up the course of the Euphrates,
with the expectation of determining the site of Eden.
That garden of innocence smiled forth, the fairest
feature of the infant world, and then with the hopes
of man passed away. At half the mighty interval
which stretches between that primal hour and this,
the towers of Ilium rose and fell ; the splendors of
their perished pride have been embalmed in the verse
of Homer ; but the harp of a holier inspiration hath
hymned the fragrant beauties of man's first abode.
There is not now to be found on the plain of Troy
a single relic of art that can be satisfactorily identified
with the ancient city ; not the fragment of a col
umn, arch, or frieze of its architecture : not a hewn
block of marble or granite, that has any evidence of
so high an antiquity. How, indeed, can we expect to
find what was utterly lost to the learned more than
two thousand years ago? The imperial Roman
sought in vain for the slightest vestige of the Trojan
city. He could subdue the world, bend the strong
and intractable things of earth to his purpose, but he
could not detect, with certainty, one stone that once
reposed in the walls of the Phrygian capital. The
victor of Macedon could drive his triumphal car
from Balbec to the Rhine, and survey, with self-

PLAIN OF TROY. 185
appropriating pride, the monuments of Egyptian
strength and Grecian skill ; but in his devoted pil
grimage to the reputed tomb of Achilles, was forced
to doubt if ever rested here the ashes of that heroic
Greek. The learning and curiosity of that acute,
inquiring age, were exhausted in a futile search after
one relic of all the objects over which the blind min
strel had cast such a bewildering charm. Troy was
then, what it now is, and what it ever will be, a
splendid uncertainty.
The island of Tenedos, the mount of Ida, and the
waters of the Scamander, may narrow down the range
of the localizing conjecture, but they cannot designate
the exact positions. The curious traveller will never be
able to certify himself that his present footstep presses
the consecrated spot; that here stood the palace
of Priam, and there rose the impregnable wall. A
self-confident La Chevalier may, perhaps, be able
for a time to pursuade himself, and many others,
that Bournabashi has actually usurped the site of the
ancient citadel, that the fount which springs near it
is the same in which Helen was wont to gaze upon her
fair image, that the mound which he burglariously
entered, is the very one that entombed the bones of
him who drew Hectdr, chained in death, to his cha
riot wheel. But then some less credulous Bryant,
or investigating Hobhouse, will spring up to dissipate
this satisfactory illusion, and restore objects to a
more reasonable ambiguity. Or perhaps a Lady
16*

186 PLAIN OF TROY.
Montague may come along, with a loose translation
of the great Poet in her hand, and be able to discover
at a glance not only every topographical point ex
actly as delineated by the heroic muse, but the utter
absurdity of a doubt or belief that deviates from her
own convictions. But her imagination, like that of
, her sex generally, will be found extremely impatient
of her lagging facts, and her conclusions so far in ad
vance of her investigations, that an ocean might roll
between with either verge unbroken.
I beg pardon of the fair reasoners for this insin
uation ; it was not intended. For after all, nothing
so much diverts me, as the argument of a lady. She
never wearies you with a long train of closely con
nected sequences, but springs at once to her conclu
sion, like a bird to its tree, not caring whether sub
stance or shadow, fact or fancy, fill the interval. And
if you are not able to see exactly how the grand in-
" ference flows from what precedes, she will not
drill you back through every link of the ratiocinative
chain, over which her imagination has darted, but
resting in her quick conclusion, kindle it up with
such a play of bright thought and enthusiastic feel
ing, that you determine to forego all doubts and dis
turbing questions, and nestle there with her in the
same delightful conviction. Now and then her fond
mistakes may perhaps be the source of impolitic
conduct and subsequent regret. But happiness lies
so much in the mind, so much in the uncertain pro-

PLAIN OF TROY. 187
mises of hope, so much in the persuasion of being
what we are not, and in a partial blindness to our
real condition, that generally this acquiescing belief in
her pleasing and visionary opinions, is the more fe
licitous course. We thus avoid the darkness of a
thousand doubts which could not have escaped a
more investigating spirit, and derive pleasure from
a vast multitude of objects, which a less credulous
philosophy could never have detected.
This unfailing disposition to rise above present
calamity, to promise a day of better things, to strike
out rays of light from the hard and flinty realities of
life, is one of the most precious and endearing traits
of the female character ; and is more deeply promo
tive of domestic contentment and cheerfulness, than
all the pondering, prying, and investigating dispo
sitions that ever entered the human mind. The
nursery-tale, which teaches the child that he may
find silver spoons at the glittering base of the rain
bow, if he can only overtake its fleeting form, has
caused more happiness in this world, than any one
sentiment broached by the astute schoolman. But
what has the logic of the ladies to do with the pres
ent aspect of the Troad ? Nothing, I thought at the
moment ; but upon reflection it is the sole cause of
this beautiful blank in nature. For if Helen had
looked deeper into consequences, she would never
have forsaken the hearth of Menelaus to follow the
fortunes of Paris. The princes of Greece, in that event,

188 PLAIN OF TROY.
would not have risen in arms, and consequently,
Trojaque nunc stares, Priamique arx alta manares.
Our visit to the Fount of Helen involved me in
an accident sufficiently serious to endanger the con
tinuation of this journal. My companions had
mounted the indifferent steeds which the cavash of
the Pasha of the Dardanelles had pressed into our
service — for this'subaltern enforces his master's will
without the least regard to the inconvenience or in
jury it may inflict. To escape the heavy plague of
these animals, and move in a manner more in keep
ing with the classic associations of the spot, I pro
cured an araba — a car resembling that of Achilles,
as represented in ancient sculpture — to which were
harnessed — but here the parallel ceases — a pair of
buffaloes, recently taken, as I should think, from the
woods. Having secured around the interior of the
araba several baskets of provisions, consisting of
boiled fowls, bread, and salads, with a jar of Hibla
honey, a few flasks of milk, and a dozen of London
porter, I attempted the construction of a covering,
¦which was easily effected by means of osiers and
evergreens, bent and interlaced into an embowering
canopy. Seating myself in this little movable ar
bor, I invited Capt. R. to take a seat at my side,
but he preferred the quarter deck of his own saddle ;
I then addressed myself to Mrs. R. 
" Will you come to ihe bower that I've shaded for you V
But this agreeable lady, though rather fond of ad-

PLAIN OF TROY. 189
venture, hesitated this once, for there was awildness
in the look and bearing of my steeds that boded no
good ; so I was left alone to the silence and solitary
romance of my condition.
The company had started and were soon out of
sight on the way ; while the buffaloes, running this
way and that, had gone in almost every direction
save that in which the celebrated fount lay. The
Turk who was attempting to drive them had come
up with his team once more, when some huntsmen,
chasing a wild boar, dashed past us, frightening the
animals, and putting them to the very top of their
speed. They rushed over a spot covered, for some
distance, with modern ruins ; the araba bounding
like a ball, from one fragment to another, till the
pedestal of a column striking the centre of the axle,
the whole flew into a thousand pieces. My first
look, on recovering my senses sufficiently, was for
the Turk : he soon came up ; and seeing the utter
wreck that had been made, lifted up his hands and
exclaimed, " God is great !"
Gathering myself up from the ruins, and ascer
taining that no bones had been broken, I looked
round for the provisions which were to sustain my
confiding companions, who had gone ahead, but only
scattered fragments remained, the rocks were flow
ing with milk and honey, and over all foamed the
porter in liberated life : only one bottle of this rich
beverage had escaped the wreck ; and being thirsty,

190

PLAIN OF TROY.

from excitement and the heat of the sun, I applied a
stone to the neck of this, (the cork-screw having
been lost in the catastrophe,) but it broke, as all bot
tles will in such cases, in the wrong place, and every
particle escaped ! The Turk gave another exclama
tion, and started for horses. Having procured them,
we deposited the fowls and bread in panniers, and
at evening reached our companions at the spring.
They were sad at the tale of our disasters ; not so
much, perhaps, for my narrow escape, as the loss of
all the good tilings confided to my care. But this
afflictive bereavement was at length forgotten, as
we sat on the marble steps of Helen's Fount, and
gazed on that wave which once mirrored back the
sweet face of this excelling type of female beauty.
Only a few willows now guard the spot ; and they
were sighing, as the evening breeze stirred their
branches, as if in memory of one who should not
lightly pass away from the bright and beautiful
things of earth.
But the plain now presents only an undulating
surface, covered with the olive and velaney oak.
We spent two or three days in wandering over it,
studying its more prominent features, and canvassing
the contradictory opinions of our learned predeces
sors ; and finally thought it advisable, as our con
clusions might create a great sensation among the
antiquarian fraternity, to defer them, in the hope that
something more decisive might recur ; in the vague

PLAIN OF TROY. 191
expectation that some spirit of earth or air might
yet point its unequivocal finger to the exact spot ;
or if not, that some inborn earthquake or bursting
volcano might cast into light and certainty those
sources of conclusive evidence, over which have
gathered the dust and silence of centuries.
Yet we did not come to this deferring determi
nation till after one night's sleep on the plain. We
thought it possible, that in some dream, with which
we might be blessed, a leading intimation would, per
haps, be given by some mysterious intelligence that
dwells in subtle essence. But our vesper prayer
was not answered by vision, omen, or voice. Through
the soft night Ida still lifted itself into the clear face
of heaven, unvisited by any of the divinities that once
dwelt there : the Scamander flowed on, without a
murmur in all its waters ; and the wave, as it came
from Tenedos to the strand of Ilium, seemed to have
fallen asleep on its way ; nor was there the slight
est whisper in the grove or on the hill. Never was
nature so voiceless, breathless, and like a tomb, as
on that night.
But notwithstanding the advantages of this in
tense silence — so very still that you might have heard
the dew-drop stealing down into the bosom of the
violets, and even the footsteps of a spirit, moving on
a path paved with liquid light, might have been au
dible — yet not a phantom moved, not an intimation
came ; every thing seemed insensible and dead, as

192 PLAIN OF TROY.
if Greek and Trojan had never fought and fell there.
Not so with us ; for we were keenly sharpening
every sense, to catch the first tokens of the nocturnal
visitant. But, alas ! instead of this, we caught a
violent ague ; after being through the whole night
restless as Achilles —
AXXor' ertt irXcupa? KaraKeiiiEVos, aXXorE 6' avrs
Yffrcof, aWoTE de Trprjviis,
We had scarcely worked our limbs into pliancy,
from the chilling effects of the night, when we en
countered a large caravan, in which were fifty or
sixty Mussulmen, returning from their pilgrimage
to the grave of their Prophet. As the first rays of
the sun tipped the surrounding trees, they dismount
ed, and kneeling towards Mecca, chanted their early
prayers. The stillness of the hour, the motionless
attitude of the caravan, with the deep and solemn
tones of the worshippers, produced a very pleasing
and impressive effect. A person whose impressions
of Islamism should be confined to occasions of this
character, would scarcely believe that its spirit could
seek an alliance with the sword, and that tears and
blood had steeped its path to conquest and power.
My enthusiasm for monumental remains had
been so quelled by the exposures of the night, the
fatigues of the day, and the deprivation of all life's
essential aliments, that I strode, at last, through the
relics of Alexandria Troas with more of the indif-

PLAIN OF TROY. 193
ference of a savage than the sensibility of a scholar.
I walked past a huge sarcophagus, with its stirring
inscription, as if it had never been sanctified by an
tiquity and death. I hardly think I should have stop
ped to gaze, though the most manly form or fasci
nating beauty of the Troadenses had there found a
refuge from corruption. Indeed, I seemed to exult,
not only in the ravages of time upon these sacred
remains, but in the Vandal stoicism that had been
converting them into clumsy instruments of destruc
tion. I stopped complacently beside a cannon ball,
of astounding dimensions, shaped from a portion of
the marble column that lay near, and now only wait
ing the gaping gun to go on its errand of ruin. Go !
I exclaimed, as if impatient of its delay ; Go ! split
the globe asunder, make of it one half thy grave, and
I will heave up the other for thy monument !
This ebullition of spleen over, my worn and ex
hausted frame sunk into an inclined posture beneath
the shade of an olive that stood near. Here I fell
asleep, dreamed that the world was a dungeon, filled
with darkness, tortures, and tears ; and awaking per
ceived very near me a serpent of enormous size,
with his glittering eye fixed steadily in mine. Not
being in the humor to die, though sorely disgusted
with the world, I determined to extricate myself, if
possible, from the fatal fascinations of this new foe ;
and gathering myself slowly up, moved silently
backward, keeping my eye unwaveringly on that of
17

194 PLAIN OF TROY.
the snake ; till my distance enabled me to turn and
fly. But my speed had nearly been fatal to me ;
for my blind footstep rushed within little less than its
length of another serpent, coiled in the very act to
spring. Heavens ! I exclaimed, on escaping from
this new peril, is this world given up to vipers ? is
there nothing here but ruins, graves, and the scor
pion's sting 1 has the curse of the fall left no refuge
for poor mortals ? must man taste, before his time,
the bitterness of death ?
And here again exhausted, I sunk against the
crumbling pedestal of a broken moss-covered co
lumn. I was so overcome by a nervous weakness
and the dark thoughts that rushed upon me, that it
was some time before I stirred sufficiently to dis
cover the old man who sat in gloomy silence on the
other side of the column, and who seemed wholly
unconscious of my presence. His dark and soiled
robe hung negligently around him, a few white hairs
strayed from beneath his dimly ornamented head
dress, while his wan and worn features, of Ionian
outline, were in melancholy harmony with his fixed
and mournful eye. He glanced not to the right or
left ; noticed no object beneath, above, or around ;
his steadfast gaze seemed to penetrate some distant,
obscure vista, as if there the last object of affection,
that linked him to the earth, had just disappeared.
" He looked as if he sat by Eden's door,
And grieved for those who could return no more."

PLAIN OF TROY. 195
Being unwilling, querulous and ill-tempered as were
my feelings, to disturb one whose attitude and
aspect were so despondingly in keeping with the
spot, I turned away ; and proceeding a short dis
tance, met a Greek carrying among several less
potable articles of food a bottle of milk, with which,
upon the force of a few paras, he was induced to
part. This revived and sustained me till our little
craft, anchored several miles above, came drifting
down, and enabled me to get on board.
I left the shore, strewn with the architectural
magnificence of other times, without a regret. The
spacious theatre, the sumptuous palace, the stately
portico, rent, ruined, and consecrated by time, had
no power to detain me. I had been walking over
the obliterated foundations of a city upon which a
higher antiquity had cast its spell. I had been
searching for memorials that were a marvel and a
mystery, when the originals of these were not
shaped or conceived ; and I could not reconcile my
distempered feelings to relics of a comparatively
recent date. Thus it is ever with man. He aims
at objects beyond his grasp, and forfeits the pleasure
to be derived from those within his rightful posses
sion. Lucifer aimed at the Infinite throne, and lost
Heaven ; Adam, at a knowledge of the tree of life,
and lost Paradise ; Cesar, at the empire of the World,
and lost his laurels and his life ; Napoleon, at the
sceptre of dismayed Europe, and sunk to an exile's

196 PLAIN OF TROY.
grave in St. Helena ; I to bathe in the Scamander,
and am now in the delirium of a fever that may
terminate in death. My conduct may have been
less wicked, but not less foolish, than that of my re
nowned predecessors. I belong, unfortunately, to
that class of men, whose wisdom comes most con
spicuously into play when it has been rendered
wholly unavailing by some irretrievable mistake.
Perhaps that preternatural intelligence, which
sometimes flashes up in the last hour of the guilty
and dying, may be ascribed to the very helplessness
and despair of his condition. The past, which has
/ rendered the future hopeless, cannot be recalled, re-
' enacted, or even relieved : it is a sealed book, be
yond the reach of his regrets, remorse, and tears ;
and wliich, with all its dark, ineffaceable pages, must
be opened at the judgment bar. O God 1 who can
, recount his errors, and not tremble and weep 1 Who
can realize what he is, and what he might have been,
and not hide his face in the dust ?

CHAPTER XIV.
Gulf of Argo6 — Reported loss of the Frigate — Storied features of the
Argolic plain — Trait in Woman— Tomb of Agamemnon — Portress
of Napoli — Love of the marvellous — Discovery of Eve's monument
— Inscriptioa — Antiquarian rapture.
Between the last sentence of my journal and
the one I am now penning, the reader will allow a
lapse of time and incident sufficient to bear us from
the shore of Ilium to the gulf of Argos. What, in
the order of our movements, could be more natural,
and classically proper, than for us, after having walk
ed over the arena of Agamemnon's valor and gene
ralship, to visit his capital and his tomb ? Yet it was
not merely this beautiful harmony of events that
brought us to Mycenae. We had rejoined our ship,
recovered from all apprehensions of the plague, and,
save myself, from the effects of our exposures on the
Troad ; had come down through the Arches to look
after a few cruisers, too freely floating under their
own flag : but finding, among all the Cyclades, no
corsairs to kill or capture, and having suffered in
our lighter spars from the violence of a recent storm,
we floated into this harbor, to effect the necessary
repairs, and again break the monotony of a sea life,
by a survey of ruins. 17*

198 GULF OF ARGOS.
The storm which we experienced terrified us
much less than those whom we had left at home ;
for the first report of it, (which reached the United
States by the way of Vienna and Paris,) sunk us all
in one engulfing grave ! And it was several weeks
before an authentic counter statement relieved our
friends from their deep consternation and grief.
Whether this stunning report originated in malice,
or a wicked spirit of trifling, has never been ascer
tained : but whatever may have been its source, no
accredited disaster, of such a melancholy magnitude,
ever had a less plausible foundation. And I can
only say, if it was an act of wantonness, its author
should be chained in a dungeon, where only the spi
der, that.weaves its web on his walls, can be affected
by his reckless, malevolent dispositions.
Our ship is now riding at anchor in the bay of
Argos. This is a broad and brilliant sheet of water,
partially defended from the action of the sea ; a green
and fertile plain extending widely beyond ; while
around the whole ascends a wild mountain range
of forest-feathered steeps. The eye rests at first
on the lake of Lerna, still breaking with its bright
face the rich continuity of the valley ; it then follows
up the exulting waters of the Erasinus, still bursting
as of old from its caverned hill ; then rises to the
lofty and permanent cliffs, where the frequent bas
tion and fortress still frown in massive strength.
No language can convey the deep and subdued

GULF OF ARGOS. 199
emotions of the spectator, as he gazes on these storied
streams and monumental remains. They carry the
mind steadily back through the dim and unrecorded
disasters of three thousand years ; they bear the feel
ings up the long stream of time midway to its fount ;
they present forms of magnificence and beauty that
were themes of thrilling romance when the minstrels
of Greece first swept the wild untutored lyre ; they
present themselves as memorials of generations
whose graves swelled from the mold of the infant
world ; as memorials upon which an unheeded pro
cession of centuries have chronicled their silent flight,
as memorials above the reach of ruin, exempt from
decay, immortal in death !
It is not so much the form and complexion of these
objects, as the associations they awaken, the times
and beings they bring forth, that interest and im
press the spectator. The fount of Canathos gushes
to the free air like other springs ; but around its
sweet margin the graceful Naiads once'dwelt, and in
its crystal depths the Queen of heaven was wont to
renew her virgin purity. The Lernean wave rip
ples or sleeps like the surface of other lakes ; but on
its bank grew the demolishing weapon of Hercules,
and along its reedy shore strayed the hydra which
tested that hero's valor and strength. The citadel
of Mycenae is like other gigantic remains of the he
roic ages ; but there Orestes and Electra hung in
suspense and agony over the justice and severity of

200 GULF OF ARGOS.
their parricidal purpose ; and there still stand in
marble sternness, as if perpetuating their fierce watch,
the lions to which the eye of Agamemnon turned,
as he departed to the Trojan war. The Acropolis
of Argos is like the materials found in many other
monuments of antiquity ; but in its deep shadow lay
the cradle of primitive empires ; around its unmoul-
dered base, wealth, wisdom and power prevailed,
beauty triumphed, and genius unfurled its seraph
wing, when the wolf in wandering wildness howled
over the seven hills of Rome.
Over these surviving relics, and the beings they
call up, Homer, Sophocles, ^Eschylus, and Euripides
have cast the kindling raptures of their verse, and
have bound us to them by the powers of a fascination
wliich time can only render the more thrilling and
intense. The beings who smiled, wept, and wor
shiped among these triumphs of art and nature, share
their immortality. They still live by the fount, the
fane, and fortress, where they once gaily forgot the
waste and weariness of human life ; they still people
the grove, move on the rushing stream, and shout
from the shadowy cliff:
" Their spirits wrap the dusky mountain,
Their memory sparkles o'er the fountain;
The meanest rill, the mightiest river,
Rolls mingling with their fame for ever."
But the more curious reader will not, perhaps, be
satisfied with this intimating outline of the antiquities

GULF OF ARGOS. 201
which distinguish the Argolie plain. Yet the allu
sions, in which I have unintentionally indulged, have
touched upon so many of these objects, that it would
require more than the graphic force of my pen to
impart freshness and life to a minute delineation.
I have committed the error of the painter, who indis
creetly presented to the lady, whose beauty he was
endeavoring to transfer to the canvass, his leading
sketch, which fell so far short of the original, that
the distrustful fair one turned away at once from the
future promises of his pencil. A female is ever im
patient of the careful and anxious advances through
which perfection is attained. Her imagination
mounts at once to the summit of excellence, while
slowly ascending improvement labors up the steep
alone. Her love and hatred reach suddenly their
elevation ; and will as quickly descend, unless sus
tained there by sympathy or opposition. Her affec
tion, if unreciprocated, will ere long change its nature
or strangle itself: her anger, if unresisted, will soon(
weave its own shroud, and be itself chief mourner '
at the hearse. On the whole, though, she is quite an
agreeable appendage to society ; I should reluctantly
vote to dispense entirely with her kindly offices. And
I sometimes think, if a decree of banishment were to
be passed against her, I should, through some by-path
or other, find my way to the place of her exile. For
who would remain in a garden from which the flow
ers have departed ; or in a grove which the birds

202 GULF OF ARGOS.
had forsaken ; or beneath a sky without one star to
smile through its blue depths ! No, let cynics prate
and prattle as they may, our existence here, without
the presence of the other sex, would be only a dark
and cheerless void. The light, the smiles, and affec
tions of woman, are the bow of beauty and promise
that spans the life of man, from his cradle to his
grave. But I am wandering from the associations and
monuments of Mycenae ; especially the tomb of Aga
memnon, where I was standing. This sepulchral
edifice, swelling but very slightly from the surface of
the plain, affords no idea of its subterranean dimen-
tions ; and might be passed, as it has been by thou
sands, without a lingering glance of admiration or
curiosity. But as you enter it at the low archway,
recently discovered, your eye ranges up through the
vaulted gloom of a stupendous dome, reared of the
most massive and enduring materials. You know
not whether most to admire the huge conception of
the architect, or the colossal power of those who
piled the ponderous rocks. The same sentiment of
indestructibility and strength impresses you, if you
ascend to the Acropolis ; you are there surrounded
by architectural remains, which would seemingly
require an earthquake to displace them ; and which,
with great apparent propriety, have been ascribed
to the masonic skill and energy of giants.
The rock of Napoli, lofty and precipitous, re-

GULF OF ARGOS. 203
quired but little aid from art to render it impregna
ble. It has been for ages the Gibraltar of the Ar
chipelago : and though in that period the standards
of different nations have been successively unfurled
from its summit, yet its surrender has been effected
more by famine than force. In its recent capture
by the Greeks, it sternly held out till want and wea
riness had reduced its garrison to a mere handful,
and rendered even these incapable of farther resis
tance. In the foundations of the fortress, which is mainly
of Venetian origin, are a few polygonal remains,
which I leave to the investigations of the more curi
ous and learned. It is not my object to discover or
discuss relics ; my ruling passion does not move in
that channel ; if it did, I would bear the indulgent
reader back with me to the ruins of Argos, Mycenae,
and Tiryns ; and there, by some mechanical force,
possessing the heaving power of Archimedes' lever,
roll over the Cyclopian blocks of Breccia, detect each
corroded unintelligible letter, imagine a few that
never existed, and add several of my own ; and so
make out an inscription, rivalling in interest and ve
rity the chronological discoveries of the Arundelian
marbles. Or if the earth any where sounded hollow
beneath my mattock, or yielded an echo to my char
ger's hoofs, I would decide, with Chateaubriand, that
the cavern beneath could be none other than the se
pulchral mansion of the Argive queen ; and exclaim

204 GULF OF ARGOS.
over the singular destiny that had brought me from
the wilds of America, to discover, in monumental
Greece, the classic tomb of Clytemnestra !
It is strange how easily mankind, through their
credulous vanity, are imposed upon. Any thing,
the most frivolous and absurd imaginable, that claims
a remote antiquity, or has about it a touch of the
marvellous, is greedily received and anxiously
sought after ; while a home-truth, affecting the hap
piness of millions, meets with a cold and skeptical
reception. Were the moon to come so near this
earth, as to dispense with the necessity of reaching
it through the adventures of something like a balloon,
few people would go to measure its mountains, or
wander by its streams. It is only the difficult and
mysterious that captivates our nature ; render any
thing plain and practical, and it comes upon the
warmth of our enthusiasm like an avalanche into
the sunny depths of an Alpine hollow. Were you
to persuade mankind — and it might easily be done —
that a descent through the centre of the Atlantic
would take them to heaven, you would see them
shoving off in their little canoes by thousands. But
when you tell them that future happiness is the re
ward of a man's every-day conduct, they turn away
with the most imperturbable indifference. There is
no mystery, adventure, or romance, in reaching the
blessed world in such a form : so, they wait til 1
some fanatical Qiuixotte shall come along, who can

GULF OF ARGOS. 205
convert devils into windmills, and heaven itself into
some Dulcinean fortress.
As for antiquities, I shall be satisfied with noth
ing except the neplus ultra of curiosities in that
form ; nothing short of the very monument which
Adam set up over the dust of his beloved Eve.
And I have recently obtained a clew to this primi
tive memorial, which I think must ultimately lead
to its possession. An Arab, possessed of more sci
entific and literary information than is usually found
among the members of his tribe, wandering up the
banks of the Euphrates, a long distance beyond the
ruins of Babylon, discovered in the heart of a valley
that opens to the east of this noble stream, a por
phyry obelisk, of delicate dimensions, still standing
upon its pedestal of the same precious material, and
bearing the original of the following inscription,
which he carefully copied on the spot. This child
of the desert had never heard of our great progen
itor, of his excelling consort, or the beauties of their
first abode ; and was so ignorant of the value of his
discovery, that it was with great difficulty I could
persuade him to accept a small amber pipe, as a
slight acknowledgment of my indebtedness for the
inscription. He detailed all the circumstances of
the discovery, with that unstudied minuteness of
description which forbids a disturbing doubt of his
sincerity, or the genuine truth of his tale. The
inscription is obviously an epitaph, expressing the
18

206 GULF OF ARGOS.
grief of Adam over his bereavement. It is in that
most smooth and poetical of all languages, the
Arabic ; and I only regret my inability to express
the beauty of the original in the translation which I
have here attempted.
Mother of mortal being, matchless Eve 1
Sole partner of this heart thy beauty blest,
More than for Eden's early loss, I grieve
To close the earth above thy narrow rest :
What now were even Paradise to me,
With all its fountB and flowers, bereft of Thee 1
I cannot blame thee that thou didst partake
The fatal fruit : it was not thy intent
To tempt my weakness, and much leBs to break
A righteous law of Heaven, in goodness sent :
Thy love of knowledge, and thy guileless years,
Prompted what thou hast cancell'd with thy tears.
When I think o'er again the first sweet hour
I saw thee standing near Euphrates stream,
And led thee, meekly blushing, to my bower,
The ills that we have felt appear a dream ;
So deep and blest the memory of the time
When thou wert faultless, I without a crime.
There's not in this surviving world the meek,
Devoted being thou hast been to rne ;
Nor, were there, would this heart such solace seek ;
It were a dearer lot to mourn for thee,
Till near thy side I seek my native dust,
And wait, with thee, the coming of the Just.
The face of the obelisk opposite that on which
this epitaph appears, contains, as the Arab informed
me, a basso-relievo representation of a beautiful
female, holding a book in one hand, a rose in the
other, and with an eye in a partially rolled up posture.
The third side contains in the same relief, the rep
resentation of a needle, a distant star, and several
pieces of bent plank, drifting about a rock : while
on the fourth appears, as in the atmosphere, the re-

GULF OF ARGOS. 207
semblance of a barge, with vapor above, and small
objects piercing the sides. The inscription, with these
representations, settles most conclusively a number
of important questions, which of late have been
greatly mooted by the curious and learned.
First. The . inscription shows that Adam lived
longer than Eve — how else could he have written her
epitaph — and that consequently it was the original in
tention of nature that a man should survive his wife.
Second. The inscription shows that Adam did
not marry a second time ; for he expressly declares
if a dearer lot to mourn for his first consort. It
would therefore seem that second marriages are
contrary to the original institution of society, if not
subversive of a becoming respect for the dead.
Third. The inscription shows that Adam did not
cast the responsibility of the fall upon his fair com
panion ; for he does " not blame" her. Hence we
may infer the correctness of those theologians who
believe, with Dr. Green, that not in Eve's, but —
" In Adam's fall we sinned all."
Fourth. The inscription shows that Adam found a
greater happiness in Eve than he lost with Eden ; for
he grieved more at her loss. Hence the miserable
mistake of those who avoid the marriage state ; they
have neither wife, Eden, or any thing else !
Fifth. The inscription shows that Adam found
Eve lingering by the waters of the Euphrates.

208 GULF OF ARGOS.
Now, as there was nothing to induce or detain her
there, aside from some instinctive partialities or apti
tudes for that element, it is not improbable that she
was originally a native of that stream — a beautiful
Naiad of the sparkling wave ; hence a clew to the
fabled birth of Venus.
Sixth. The inscription shows, that Adam was a
poet ; and as he was without the advantages of an
education, possessing nothing that is not common to
our simple nature, we may justly infer that every
man has, naturally, a certain quantity of poetry in
him, which love or grief may at any time call forth.
Seventh. The inscription shows that Arabic, and
not Hebrew, as many have contended, was the ori
ginal language spoken by man. Now, as every
thing in this world tends to a circle, from the bent
rainbow to the round globe itself, ever ending where
it begins, there is good reason to believe, that the
universal language to be spoken here, at the con
summation of all things, will be Arabic.
Eighth. The book in the hand of the female
figure, represented upon the opposite side of the obe
lisk, shows us, that the art of printing was under
stood at this early period ; while the half-dreaming
countenance, the upward cast of the eye, and espe
cially the rose, (ever, in oriental lands, the emblem of
love,) more than intimate that this book was a Novel.
Ninth. The needle, pointing steadily towards
the star, as represented on the third side of the obe-

GULF OF ARGOS. 209
lisk, may have been emblematical of the constancy
of Adam's affection for Eve ; but the broken planks
and spars about the surf-beaten rocks being, doubt
less, the remains of a shipwreck, would rather favor
the position, that the needle was designed to repre
sent the mariner's compass ; and that it .was placed
here, in connection with the wreck, to exhibit its va
lue in the most striking light ; just as an engine for
extinguishing fire is always advertised in connection
with the picture of a building in conflagration. This
establishes the fact, that the properties of the polar
magnet were well known to Adam ; and that, in all
probability, our illustrious progenitor was himself a
sailor as well as a poet.
Tenth. The elevated and still ascending position
of the barge, represented upon the fourth side of the
monument, shows that it was designed to navigate
the air. The vapor escaping above indicates the pre
sence of steam ; while the small cylindrical objects
protruding from the pierced sides, have no meaning,
unless they represent guns : hence it is evident that
Adam was acquainted with the properties and uses
of gunpowder ; that he was no stranger to the appli
cation of steam to the purposes of navigation ; and
that, by some principle of balance and buoyancy,
unknown to the naval architecture of these times, he
was able to move through the atmosphere as we do
through the ocean. It is, therefore, not improbable,
that he was in constant habits of communication with
18*

210 GULF OF ARGOS.
all the nearer planets ; while some of his more ad
venturous children may have visited worlds now
beyond the utmost range of our telescopic vision.
I am aware that the more distrustful reader will
receive, with some hesitation, all my statements re
specting the discovery and properties of this primi
tive monument. It may, perhaps, be incumbent on
me, if I would secure his implicit confidence, to pro
duce the original. This shall be done as soon as prac
ticable ; and in the mean time I assure him, there is
not, in all I have said, a less scrupulous regard to
truth and rational probability, than is usual in books
of travel, and especially those that treat of antiqui
ties. I am amazed, myself, at the discovery. It ap
pears that we are, in these last days of the world, as
far short of the aborigines of the earth in practical
wisdom, as we are behind them in years. The ut
most we can expect is, to recover what has been
lost — to make the two ends of time harmoniouslv
meet. When I think of my own agency in the disco
very of this memorial, that but for me it would
never have been known beyond the breast of the
ignorant Arab ; when I think, too, of the change it
will bring upon the face of society, of the impulse it
will give to those instantaneous convictions which
flash beyond all the slow advances of knowledge —
the enthusiasm with which it will be spoken of in
the circles of the learned — the vitality it will send

GULF OF ARGOS. 211
down among the bones of the antiquarian dead —
when I think of these things, I seem to stand on some
eminence, distinguished from my fellow-beings by a
destiny all my own — I seem to hear my name every
where repeated, every where dwelt upon with won
der and admiration : even the tongue of posterity is
not silent, the voice of its homage comes up through
the depths of time like a pean from eternity. And
well may this homage be rendered ; for no discovery
that man has yet made can equal mine, save that of
Hudibras — " That oft a fly, going to bed,
Sleeps with his tail above his head."

CHAPTER XV.
Town of Napoli— Appearance of the place— Gayety of the inhabitants
— Paganini of Greece — Island of Hydra — Wildness of its features —
Habits of the men — Costume of the ladies — Religious services on
board ship — Qualifications of a Chaplain of the navy — Passage to
Egina. I must crave the indulgence of the sober reader
for the whims which occasionally visit me. I trust
he will not permit these fanciful guests to forfeit me
his continued esteem, or weaken the credibility of my
narrative. My pen, unworthy as it may be, moves
under the eye of many witnesses from whose pre
sence it cannot escape, and from whose verdict there
is no appeal. A sentence, whether written in a spirit
of seriousness, or satirical levity, must be acquitted
or condemned, by the truth which it utters, and the
motive which it obeys. Were human nature exempt
from vanity, pride, and affectation, there would be
little occasion for ridicule, irony, and sarcasm. And
yet it must be confessed that those who resort most
frequently to these weapons, have usually themselves
the most reason to dread them. No men are so
keen-sighted and successful in detecting certain faults
in others, as they who have the same faults them-

TOWN OF NAPOLI. 213
selves. Even the lunatic discovers the mental mal
ady of his new companion. But enough of this ; I
return to incidents of a fresher reality.
The arrival of our ship in the bay of Napoli, was
greeted by its inhabitants with many tokens of af
fectionate regard. They cherish a grateful recollec
tion of the partial relief afforded them by the benev
olent of our country, in their famishing extremity.
This gratitude, at least, evinces that the heart of the
Greek is not yet so utterly degenerate as some of
his detractors would represent. His sentiments are
not of that high, heroic order, that flash through the
imagination of those whose conceptions are derived
more from the remote past than from the present. He
is a versatile, thoughtless, inconsistent being, fond of
parade and excitement ; and little given to that provi
dent forethought which foregoes a present enjoyment
in the anticipation of a future evil. It was a gala-day
when we arrived, and youth and years were forth,
indulging in their rural pastimes. There were the
rivalries of horsemanship, and the challenges of the
wrestling ring, on the field ; the game, the song,
and the witty tale, beneath the shaded court of the
locanda ; while the laughter of girls, gay as when
Greece was young, gladdened the cliffs that look
upon the sea. How soon a people forget their mis- 1
fortunes ! The rain had yet scarcely washed away the i
blood that crimsoned the streets of Napoli, and not ;
a flower had grown on the graves of the dead, and !

214 TOWN OF NAPOLI.
yet the survivors were gay and happy, as if sorrow
were a fiction, and death a dream !
The most interesting individual we encountered
on the shore, was a blind musician, celebrated for his
skill upon the violin. He was in the centre of a
large group, gathered apart from the moving crowd,
and listening with riveted attention to his captivat
ing strains. This was itself no slight evidence of his
power, for the Greek is of so restless a disposition,
that you would suppose it impossible even for an
angel's lyre to charm him into more than a momen
tary quietude. This blind master of the melodious
string is regarded as the Paganini of Greece. He
may not equal the Italian in delicacy of execution,
but he scarcely falls short of him in compass, force,
and distinctness of expression. Though homeless,
friendless, and blind, he was to me more an object of
envy than pity ; his musical gifts would reconcile me
to most of the calamities which afflict our outward
condition. How singularly nature atones for her bereave
ments ! If she takes away one sense, she quickens
another : if she deprives us of our hearing, she ena
bles us, by an improved power of vision, to gather
from the motion of the lips, the expression of the face.
and the gesture of the hand, the meaning of our
friend, and to return our own through signs little less
rapid and intelligible than those of speech ; or if she
veils one eye, she proportionably strengthens the

TOWN OF JtAPOLt; 2l5
other ; Or if she wraps both in night, she renders our
touch so delicate that we can even detect the differ
ence of colors : and she makes the ear so acute that
it can catch even the fine and subtle harmonies
which float from an insect's wing ; and then, as in
the case of this blind minstrel, she will sometimes
confer upon the bereaved a power over the magic of
sweet sounds, which no education can impart, or as
in the case of Ilium's heroic bard, and of him whose
thoughts wandered back to Paradise, she appears
only to close the eye to this outward world, that she
may render more vivid and intense the colorings
and developments of that within. She casts a veil
over her own works, that she may lift a curtain
which reveals mysteries of a higher order, creations
of a less perishable mold.
Napoli is rapidly recovering from the disasters
of the revolution ; wide and convenient streets are
taking the place of narrow, choked-up lanes ; the
commodious dwelling is rising on the ruins of the
hovel ; the shops are extensively supplied with arti
cles of foreign and domestic fabric; the market
abounds with the substantials of the table ; and a
number of elementary schools have been established
in connection with a liberally endowed institution, for
the higher branches of education. These evidences
of enterprise, of intellectual and moral improvement,
attest the value of the fostering care once extended
to them by Capo d'Istrias, and form a redeeming

216 ISLAND OF HYDRA.
feature in the aspect of that despotical rule which
shortened his days, and cast a blot upon his memory.
Leaving Napoli under a light land breeze, we
came to Hydra, a small rocky island, shooting up in
towering wildness from the sea, and appearing as if
it had risen there only to be a stern sentinel over
the iEgean. Its history is in keeping with its un
compromising looks ; for, when Turkish vengeance
had covered every neighboring isle and shore with
dismay, Hydra perseveringly maintained its self-rely
ing confidence, and became the refuge of freedom,
the rallying post of the brave. The Ottoman squad
rons, filled with burning threats, would come sweep
ing down through the "Archies" with a demonstration
of force which, apparently, nothing could withstand ;
yet, when Hydra showed its castled crags, they were
off, as one who has already come too near the jungle
of the lion. From its small, but well-protected an
chorage, the little fleet of Miaulis frequently went
out to strike consternation through the overwhelm
ing strength of its adversaries, and show the superi
ority of valor, nerved by patriotism, over the bust
ling pretensions of tyranny. Thus it will ever be
with men resolutely contending for their rights ; they
may, perhaps, experience many reverses, but ulti
mately they must prevail.
" For Freedom's battle, once begun,
Bequeathed by bleeding sire to son,
Though baffied oft, is ever won."

ISLAND OF HYDRA. 217
The town of Hydra is not less singular in its po
sition and aspect, than the island itself. It ascends
so steeply from the quay that the streets are neces
sarily cut into a regular series of steps, and you
mount to the top as you reach the belvidere of a
mansion. No enemy would be able to climb the
summit, while a rock remained there to be loosened
from its position, for it would sweep down with a de
structive force that never yet accompanied ball or
boom on its burning path. The dwellings, which are
extremely white, stand out in bold and beautiful re
lief from their dark and precipitous back ground; they
are universally well constructed, and not a few of
them possess something of the stateliness and splen
dor of palaces. Among these, first and foremost,
must be ranked the mansion of Conduriotti, which
stands upon a lofty table rock, of sufficient surface to
afford space for a small court and a slight parterre.
We were introduced to it by the worthy possessor,
a man highly esteemed for his public virtues and
private worth. He is a living evidence, among a
multitude that might be named, that the heart of the
Greek is yet capable of the most generous and de
voted sentiments. Though the success of the revo
lution could by no possibility promote his personal
interests, yet he cheerfully furnished eight or ten
ships in aid of its cause, well armed, and manned by
Albanian courage and skill. 19

218 ISLAND OF HYDRA.
Our limited time would not permit us to avail
ourselves of his intended hospitality, or even indulge
those lingering feelings which we experienced in
turning away from his two beautiful daughters.
They were just at that age when a parting glance
will awaken even in the stranger an emotion of
affection and regret. Why this emotion should ex
ist towards one whom we never met before, and may
never meet again, and with whom only a few broken
sentences have been exchanged, is a question that I
can never satisfactorily explain. There must be
some mysterious cord of sympathy in our nature, so
sensitive to youth and beauty that a word or look
may make it thrill. We do not experience this to
wards childhood, or those whose years are greatly
in the advance of our own ; it is sacred to those who
have just reached that period of life when the heart
becomes more devotedly earnest, when every thought,
feeling, and sensation have the greatest freshness and
depth, when every impulse that would seek conceal
ment is timidly betrayed, and is full of soul. I never
leave one of these sweet beings, however brief the
acquaintance, under the expectation of never meet
ing her again, without a sentiment of mingled love
and sadness. The less susceptible reader may per
haps be disposed to treat this declaration with satiri
cal levity ; but I can assure him that he who has
never had these feeling, is a stranger to the most

COSTUME OF THE LADIES. 219
refined sensibilities of our nature, and has never yet
experienced the most delicate sorrows and enjoy
ments of life.
The costume of the Hydriot ladies would not
exactly suit the taste of our more fashionable fair
ones. It consists of a green silk petticoat, very
deeply plaited, and falling not so low as to embarrass
the light foot, or wholly conceal the well-turned
ankle. This is met at the lowest and narrowest
point of the waist by a spencer of the same material,
but of a dark chesnut hue, richly embroidered in front
and fastened with double rows of pearl buttons up to
the breast, where it rolls open towards each shoulder
with a full and graceful curve, leaving the white
elastic muslin of the chemisette to conceal the swell
ing outline of the bosom. The hair, always black
and of glossy length, is rolled round the head, and
tastefully interlaced with the folds of a jewelled
turban. There are no stays in this dress, rio stiffenings, no
supplements or invasions, even at the bosom, upon
the endowments and positions of nature, yet one of
our laced ladies, whose heart never beats, except
against a barrier of steel, would predict, that if put
into this dress, she should inevitably fall to pieces,
I wish she would make the experiment, and I pledge
myself, if such should be the disastrous result, to
gather up all the delicate fragments and with the
skill of a Medea reconstruct her with a more per-

220 HABITS OF THE MEN.
feet symmetry, youth, and beauty. If this be not a
sufficient inducement, I promise her, in the loveli
ness of her fresh organization, myself, this being
the highest encouragement a bachelor can offer, for
there is nothing he so highly values, so carefully
cherishes, and so reluctantly parts with, as his own
precious self. Yet, strange to say, ladies usually
regard even this proposal merely as a compliment
due to their sex, or they coolly speculate upon it
as an additional claim to the attention of others,
while he, broken in heart and hope, is perhaps seek
ing the solitary wood, gazing at the melancholy
stars, or shedding his tears, with the drops of night,
into the silent bosom of the flowers.
The Hydriot men are uncommonly well formed,
tall and athletic, while every look and motion betrays
the wild spirit of their mountain birth. Their dress,
combining the freedom of the Asiatic with the chaste
convenience of the European costume, sets off their
form to the best advantage. There is nothing they
are so solicitous respecting as their personal appear
ance ; here rests no small portion of their pride and
ambition ; even their notions of liberty derive their
shape and fire from the physical degradation they
connect with a state of slavery. They solicit no
benefactions from the stranger, and would not ac
cept them if proffered ; they rely upon their own
strong arms and enterprising spirit for the means of
subsistence. They cannot wrench this from the na-

HABITS OF THE MEN. 221
ked rocks of their isle, and consequently take to the
sea — that great element, which ever yields up its
choicest treasures to the most skilful and daring.
Here, it is said, they sometimes use their trusty
blades, in piratical adventures against the growing
insolence of wealth and power. In this they merely
imitate nations who differ from them only as they
conduct their operations on a larger scale : they act
upon the same principle that now moves all Europe,
and has, for centuries past ; a principle Christianly
called a preservation of the balance of power, but
which, in reality, means little else than an assumed
right to plunder and humble those who are becoming
too rich, and, consequently, too strong. The French
are ready to march their armies into Russia ; and
why? because she massacred the Poles? Not sim
ply that ; but because she is extending her limits
farther than they wish to have her ; she is building
a house of larger dimensions than their own : there
fore they determine to pull it down, or, at least,
knock away some of its stretching wings. Jealousy
is at the bottom of this ; or, if you like that term bet
ter, a garnishing plea for taking spoils ; for taking
them too without the instigations of poverty ; where
as a Greek is generally forced into his predatory
conduct by the pressure of want. Yet we applaud
in the one case, and hang in the other. Let us be
consistent. If we allow monarchs and nations to
plunder whom they please ; if we allow a Bonaparte
19*

222 RELIGIOUS SERVICES
to rifle one half the world, and fill the whole with
the splendors of his name, why pursue, with such un
forgiving rage, a poor Hydriot, who merely seeks
in this form to secure bread for his starving chil
dren? Away with such blind partialities and invi
dious distinctions ; there is neither justice, humanity,
or good sense in them. What is morally right in a
prince is so in a peasant ; conduct that is just among
the courts and armies of central Europe, cannot be
otherwise among the rocks and corsairs of the Mgean
sea. But to return from this piratical episode.
Another Sabbath had dawned, bringing with it,
not only a bright sky, a temporary quietude, but an
opportunity of more publicly confessing our indebt
edness to that great and good Being whose mercy is
over all his works. The men, cleanly apparelled,
were called to the quarter deck of the ship ; the band
played Old Hundred, with all its sacred and endear
ing associations ; prayers were offered, a portion of
the Scriptures read, and a short discourse delivered
by the chaplain. Whatever may be said of the man
ner in which these services of the Sabbath were per
formed, they were ever listened to with a serious,
attentive disposition ; no officer manifesting a spirit
of impatience, or absenting himself under any as
sumed excuses ; and Capt. Read, the commander of
the ship, ever affording, in his own presence, the best
evidence of the light in which he viewed these ser
vices. And if, on these occasions, the tone of moral

ON BOARD SHIP. 223
and religious sentiment was strengthened, bad habits
checked, and good resolutions fortified, the objects
of the chaplain were not wholly lost. Could those
who are prone to regard as futile all efforts to im
prove the moral condition of seamen be present at
some of our services, they would at least discover a
degree of attention, and a solemnity of manner, that
would not disparage the most devout assemblaTe of
the sanctuary.
They who connect the services of a chaplain in
the navy exclusively with the concerns that await
us after death, who sever from his sphere of effort all
the relations of time, and send him among the sha
dows of the grave and the dim twilight of a futurity,
do not recognize the full duties of his office. Though
the soul were to perish with the body, yet it would
be scarcely less important to the country that those
who go down upon the " great water," and form the
links of communication between us and foreign
nations, should be men who may commend the
moral worth of that nation which they thus virtually
represent. Even the most thorough skeptic in
religion cannot therefore dispense with those lessons
which it is the duty of every chaplain to incul
cate. There is no situation more wretched and unpro
fitable than that of a chaplain without the friendship
and confidence of his associates, and few more
inspiring than that of one whom all can esteem, and

224 QUALIFICATIONS OF A CHAPLAIN
none reproach. He should undoubtedly have a tho
rough knowledge of human nature. He encounters
a vast variety of character, and must, when it can be
done without a sacrifice of principle, accommodate
himself to the tastes, habits, and dispositions of those
around him. He should be able to discover, at a
glance, the manner in which different men are to be
approached, and not endeavor to force his way to
their hearts, over those obstacles which an unfortu
nate education or untoward habits of life have cast
around them. He must not be too refined and subtle
for the rude conceptions of the sailor, nor too abrupt
and uncultivated for the more learned and polished
officer. He must not be too unceremonious and
compromising for those who regard with reverence
the sacred symbols of his office, nor too sanctimo
nious for those who respect less the forms than the
substance of religion. To escape these errors, and
accomplish the good intended, nothing is more indis
pensable than a thorough knowledge of mankind.
He should also be a man of decided talent and
finished education. The great principles of morality
and religion, and the duties which grow out of our
relations to God and our country, are obviously too
momentous to be entrusted to weak or ignorant
hands. Moral virtue is the basis of national as well
as individual happiness and honor. But this great
truth, lying at the foundation of public and private
worth, sustaining all that is noble and excellent in

IN THE NAVY. 225
man, and inseparable from his present peace and fu
ture hopes, needs, nevertheless, to be advocated, to
be enforced, by those who are able to comprehend
its sublime nature, and secure for it a living and
practical respect among men.
He should also be a man of consistent piety ; for
however deep may be his insight into human nature,
and however eminent he may be for talents and
learning, yet, without this sacred qualification, his
services would be little less than a solemn mockery.
No class of men are more quick-sighted in detect
ing character than those connected with the navy ;
and none, with all their generosity, less tolerant of
an assumed character. While they deeply respect
a sincerely devout man, they regard with utter de
testation that religion which is made an article of
convenience. They will not listen to a man who
does not practise what he inculcates ; who does not
manifest, in his conduct, the sincerity of his pro
fessions. His piety should not be of a distant, austere cha
racter, but of a warm, generous, and social cast. It
should be a piety full of benevolence and forbear
ance ; not disposed to cavil, but ever ready to ad
vocate those higher and holier principles which have
their foundation in the human conscience. It should
be his object, not so much to hunt up delinquencies,
as to correct their source ; not so much to oppose a
temporary barrier to the threatening stream, as to

226 QUALIFICATIONS OF A CHAPLAIN
reduce the secret springs which supply the fountain
head. A man possessing this knowledge of human na
ture, with a mind vigorous and cultivated, and a
piety ardent, social, and tolerant, must be useful as a
chaplain in the navy. His services will have not only
a tendency to promote a sense of man's higher re
sponsibilities, but to deepen that respect and deference
which are due to the wholesome rules and regulations
of the navy; they will, in a measure, divest the severe
discipline of a ship of its arbitrary cast, and shed over
it that more concihating aspect which is connected
with social and moral obligations. There is no obe
dience so prompt and willing as that which flows
from the higher sentiments of our nature, and it is
evidently the tendency of a chaplain's instructions to
quicken and sustain these sentiments. A chaplain is
the only commissioned officer on board, that does
not speak in the language of implicit authority. It is
his province to reason men into what is right and to
dissuade them from what is wrong. He appeals to
motives, to conscience and sober judgment. He thus
relieves, in a measure, an absolute authority of what
is odious, and an unquestioning submission of what is
degrading. His instructions form a medium where
these extremes meet, and are vested in a reasonable
ness and moral necessity.
In these remarks I am only echoing the sentiments
of every humane and considerate man who is ac-

IN THE NAVY. 227
quainted with the habits and dispositions of seamen.
A deep interest in their behalf has of late expressed
itself in efficient action. The American Seamen's
Friend Society has risen with a majesty, zeal, and
energy, equalled only by the purity and benevolence
of its intentions. The effect has been the adoption of
measures eminently calculated to improve their con
dition and prolong their usefulness. The Bethel Flag
now floats through the quiet Sabbath over thou
sands that would otherwise be revelling in the haunts
of dissipation and crime. It is just and becoming in
the Government to countenance and sustain these
efforts of philanthropy ; the result will be more effi
cient seamen ; an increase of individual happiness at
home, and national honor abroad.
The evening came sweetly in, as we weighed
anchor from Hydra, and spread our canvass to a
light breeze, that soon died away, leaving us becalm
ed at a short distance from the harbor. I never
knew an inland lake, in the silence of a summer's
eve, so still and waveless as the waters lay around
us that night. They had that deep composure, that
death-like tranquillity, which the melancholy mind
of a sculptor sheds over his breathless creations. But
the aspect of the town would at intervals lift our
eyes from this ocean-grave. Its white dwellings,
gleaming in the clear moon-light from their steep
position, shone like the waves of an Alpine torrent
frozen in their wild leap.

228 PASSAGE TO EGINA.
The morning at length came, and brought with
it a breeze that took us past Paros, on our way to
Egina, without affording us a visit to the temple of
Neptune, which there still stands like a divinity in
ruins. This, I think, was in extremely bad taste ;
for being ourselves sailors, we might at least have
paid the homage of a passing glance to that shrine
to which the eye of the ancient mariner in triumph,
peril, and death was ever turned. But the Trident,
and he who shook it over the obedient ocean, have
passed away ; the reverence and trust of mankind
have also passed ; and now even the altar and fane
crumble to the earth, unmourned save by the wind,
which, more constant than man, still sighs among its
broken columns. All have perished like that pyra
mid of fame which ambition rears to its memory,
and which posterity forgets.

CHAPTER XVI.
Island of Egina — Softness of its scenery — Twilight ramble — Aspect of
the town — College and museum — Visit to the temple ot Jupiter Pan-
hellenius — Sites of sacred edifices — One's native village — l< Maid of
Athens" — Officer of the Greek army.
The breeze to which the morning had given
birth, continued, faintly though , to fan us on till we
let go our anchor on the bright and beautiful shore of
Egina. The face of this sweet isle is at perfect con
trast with that of Hydra ; no barren steeps, no thun
der-scarred cliffs disfigure it ; it smiles up from the
caressing wave, with a warm sunny aspect. It is
just such a spot as Love would seek, flying with its
cherished treasure, from the tumult and strife of the
world. The happy and romantic pair would here
find all outward objects harmonizing with the hue
and shape of their quiet, devoted feelings. Even the
early sun, which usually puts on too fierce a look of
flame, here comes up out of the eastern waters with
that softened splendor which cannot pain the most
delicate eye. Its light is full of strength, but it is mel
lowed down from a dazzling effulgence, into a milder
richness and depth. The happy pair would find, too,
the music of the early birds, instead of breaking on
20

230 ISLAND OF EGINA.
them with the abruptness of a bursting orchestra,
softly stealing upon their waking sense, and bearing
their spirits up with its gradually increasing and
swelling harmony. This, you will say, is fancy : —
it was not so to me on waking from a night's repose
in a green valley which occupies the centre of this
small island ; and in which this pair might find a still
deeper seclusion ; and where they might wander,
discourse, or braid their flowers, beneath the com
mingling shade of the olive, almond, myrtle, and
oleander. I have seen many valleys justly celebra
ted for their verdure and fragrant shade ; but I have
seen none that can vie with this, in composure, fresh
ness, and picturesque beauty. There is nothing in
it which reminds you of the stiff lines and formalities
which ever accompany the works of man : every
thing in it and about it is easy, varied, and possessed
of hidden charms, that seem unintentionally to be
tray themselves to notice, just like the virtues of
one's own Love.
But of the whole island, perhaps, its shore, espe
cially at twilight, may be considered as the most
enchanting. Here, at that still hour when daylight
melts into the softer hues of evening, the unwearied
pair might wander without a fear, without a care,
without a thought, save what should spring from
their mutual affection. There would be no jealous
eyes to circumscribe their steps, no censorious tongue
to mar their peace, no obtrusive curiosity to create

TEMPLE OF VENUS. 28t
distrust ; they might gather the shining pebbles.fwan*
der on, or linger, as each gentle impulse suggested*
There would be above them the radiant nighty ><whil
its dewy stars and separate clouds afloat, as islands
in a golden atmosphere ; there would be before; theni
the slumbering ocean, with a dream of the full heft*
ven upon its face ; there would be about therxiithe
glittering sands and shells of the broad beacbj-witfa
"the dirge of the dying wave on their ear; andrthey
would be to each other as if there were no beings in
the world beside ; and they would feel the fullrforce
of that encircling fondness which would blend heart
with heart, and life with life. O ! ye who seekiitHe
delights of a reciprocal affection among the heartless
professions of the gay saloon, come to this sweet isle
of Egina ; wander through its shades, and along its
star-fight shore ! An hour's communion here* even
with the imaginary being that dwells so wactolyrin
your fancy, were worth an age of such affecledqdef
votedness and truth. ;rn,! 'I*
The first object that attracts the eye ofllhe-ma1
riner, on approaching the town of Egina, iso^ soli*
tary column of the temple of Venus. It stands there
like the last representative of a ruined race.// It is
a beautiful beacon, and dates up the lapse of tintaito
a period when the ocean-wanderer had no light, on
mound or cliff, to guide his devious barque, unle_sscif
were the watch-fire which love had kindled,^ Trhe;
town, occupying the site of the ancient city,j or^fo

232 ISLAND OF EGINA.
ted an agreeable surprise, by the neatness of its
dwellings, its airy streets, convenient quay, compact
harbor, and above all, its orphan asylum, constructed
on a scale of munificent liberality. Here five or six
hundred boys, whose fathers perished in the struggles
of their country, are not only rescued from the dis
astrous effects of utter destitution, but are receiving
the elements of an education that may one day raise
them to stations of influence and honorable fame.
The institution is graced with an extensive libra
ry, selected with classical taste ; and a cabinet, em
bracing, among other objects of curiosity, several
choice specimens of ancient sculpture. Among these,
a statue of Cythera's peerless queen particularly en
gages the eye. Her personal charms are chiselled
forth with touching effect. You fondly trace the
symmetrical proportions up to the curve of the neck;
and there, like one who has heard only half the
response of the oracle, are left to conjecture ; for
the head, alas ! it is gone. Probably some Turk
knocked it off for a temporary seat. I fancy I can
now see the turbaned barbarian sitting upon it, twirl
ing his rosary, or smoking his pipe, composedly, as
if it were some shapeless stone from the common
earth, or worthless wall.
It would seem as if this world, so far from ad
vancing harmoniously, as a whole, towards some
high state of intellectual and moral perfection, is
ever to be fatally retarded by the intractable per"

TEMPLE OF JUPITER. 23ii
verseness of some of its elements. If one mationphy
any superiority of genius, or a wiser applktationiof
its powers, strikes forward in advance of the'irfesit^
there is sure to be another close upon its itraclc; iirol '
to rival or surpass it, in its career of improvement*
but to trammel its limbs, diminish its trophies,)! and
drag it back to its pristine weakness and^bscrurityf
Thus perished Egypt, Greece, and Rome* jUand thus
will eventually perish the pride and hopes! o£ <thfe
most aspiring nation upon earth. Whatlthe: gfeJat
world has been it now is, and will essen!tialiy;coia?i
tinue to be, till the bitterness of its curse is. cancelled
in its final extinction. No ! religion cane'xaltit* aM
will : Christ has not died in vain ! /!¦-,- : j;:j' : -Jr.
Perhaps the solemn and the ludicrous,! thei chifefe
and the grotesque, were never found indcrfOser, eofo
nection than they were in our visit to the temple of
Jupiter Panhellenius. We were mounted' Qn;J!apk(&
the most stupid animal alive, with a kn^ttfldjjfiOf?
for a bridle, two bits of board, uniting, in ,a sjiarp
ridge, for a saddle, and goading our way.on^ardtto
a relic sanctified by genius, time, and deafe! :It;W^
like an Esquimaux, in the slouching skins cof; hJMjpgfc
lar clime, coming to pay his adorations: to ia.Venus
of Praxitiles. The heart of the island;thjJough whjch
we passed, was full of varied beauty^but .the.most
expressive charms were lost upon usslfbfc as soon/aS
an emotion of delicate delight began; to #ffuse;itsejf
over the mind, one of our graceless •aflimal^jfVt'ag
20*

234 ISLAND OF EGINA.
sure to set up a bray, which seemed to be a signal
for the rest to strike in ; and such a chorus of dying
and distressing cadences, as they all produced, was
never before heard in or out of Greece. There is
something in the braying of this brute that sets my
whole nervous system in a shake. He begins at the
very top of his whistle, and then, as if overstraining
in an effort to heighten the pitch, breaks down
through an agonystical succession of abortive efforts,
till he finally drops his ears, as if ashamed himself of
his utter failure ! He is just such an animal as a
young man should ride home on, after having con
fidently addressed a young lady, and received her
absolute refusal ! I think he must have been espe
cially intended for the use of those who are thus
taken all aback in their matrimonial enterprise.
Passing by the old Venitian capital, hung around
the apex of a high conical mountain, we came to the
Panhellenian Temple, which occupies itself an ele
vated position, commanding a view of the sea on
both sides of the island. The location was eminently
happy ; so were all the selections made by the Greeks
as the site of their sacred fanes. They fixed upon
some conspicuous, unfamiliar spot, one to which the
eye of the distant pilgrim might turn without an in
tervening object to break the vision, or darken his
devotional faith. I am not singular in my predilection
for separate and elevated positions as the site of re
ligious edifices. A sanctuary in the depth of a village

THOUGHTS OF HOME. 235
is ever encroached upon, and made to partake of the
secular character belonging to its busy neighborhood.
But situated apart upon some gracefully swelling
hill, it seems to stand above the noise and prattle of
the street, the contentions of the mart, the aims of
miserly ambition, pointing to heaven and leading
itself the way.
The last thing to fade from my memory will be the
simple, unpretending church which, standing sacredly
by itself, overlooks the green hamlet where I was
born, casting the twilight shadow of its spire beyond
the last closed grave, and bearing its chanticlerical
vane as true to the course of the wind as a needle to
its pole. Then there was the good pastor, reverently
dressed in black, but indicating more in his deport
ment than his attire the sacredness of his calling :
with a countenance sober, yet full of kind, endearing
sentiment ; with a word on his lips that would re
prove sin, without exciting anger, and encourage
piety, without creating presumption. As he crossed
my father's threshold, we were instinctively called in
from our sports ; when taking each upon his knee,
that now trembled with age, he would connect with
our pastimes, of which he always spoke, some thought
that would look earnestly up, as if in anticipation of
less perishable delights ; then blessing us, he would
bid us remember our Creator in the days of our youth.
My mother's eyes would fill with tears as he spoke,
and my father, at his parting, would press him to

236 ISLAND OF EGINA.
repeat more frequently his paternal visits. These
were moments inadequately appreciated then, but .
God grant they be the very last to which I may be
come indifferent. The lessons of early piety, unlike
all other elementary instructions, lose none of their
value in our gathering years.
But I have quite forgotten the temple that enticed
our steps into this section of the island. It is the
most ancient monument in Greece that can be found
in so high a state of preservation. Twenty-three of
its thirty- six columns, surmounted by their archi
trave, are still standing. They are cut from a light.
free-stone, indigenous to the soil ; and though so soft
as scarcely to impede an instrument more than the
porous substance of the forest tree, yet they have pre
served their erect posture and delicate outline through
a lapse, of years in which the structures of impervi
ous marble have crumbled. A shepherd's boy led
us to this ruin ; no human habitation rises near it ;
no other remains dispute its pre-eminence, or divide
the stranger's gaze ; it stands alone in melancholy
grandeur, as the sole relic and representation of a
race whose habitations have perished, whose very
graves are forgotten ! The day will come when this,
too, must pass away ; for Time bears down to the
dust slowly but inevitably man and all his memorials.
The great Author of nature only survives, and such
of his works as he has stamped with a portion of his
own immortality. This seal he has graciously set

MAID OF ATHENS. 237
upon our spirits ; death may destroy these cherished
forms, but this divine image and superscription will
remain unbroken. I return to other themes.
The deepest charm of which Egina, with all its
beauties can boast, is in the presence of one, poeti
cally known to the reader as the " Maid of Athens."
She resides in a little cottage, in the borders of the
village, with every thing around her mildly partak
ing of the romance sprinkled through her history.
In her person she is slightly formed, hardly reaching
the medium stature, and yet presenting all the graces
of a rich symmetry. A very small foot and hand give
a lightness to her attitude and motions ; while a deep
blue eye sheds softness over the expressive and deli
cately harmonized features of her face. Her dress is
simple and native, betraying no vanity or even soli
citude, if you except the care with which the glossy
fulness of dark hair is made to assume the beau
tiful form of the turban. The bridal flowers which
once adorned those locks, have now been often re
newed from the blossoming gifts of the year. The
bloom and vivacity which once colored in her cheeks,
and gave a child-like sprightliness to her manner,
though still at times half surviving and betrayed, have
yielded to a paler aspect, and a more subdued air.
Her countenance, which appears to reveal the un
disguised flow of her feelings, has a mingled expres
sion of diffidence, tenderness and sorrow. You would
think, from her look, that some portion of her life had

238 ISLAND OF EGINA.
been darkly overcast ; that some hope fondly che
rished had been broken ; or that some memory
clung to her heart, still pointing to one that had now
passed beyond the reach of her sympathy, and a per
ception of her grief. Yet there is a tone of cheer
fulness in her conversation, a playfulness in her fan
cy, that leads you at times half to doubt if there be
any permanent weight upon the delicate wings of
her spirit. In speaking, she becomes instantly ani
mated ; her eye dilates, her countenance lightens up,
her voice, without losing any of its sweetness, be
comes more assured, every look and tone is full of
soul ; when suddenly, as if some thought, to which
you are a stranger, had swept through her breast,
she appears to struggle between a current of emo
tions wholly new, and those to which she had par
tially given utterance. And yet, the blushing deli
cacy with which she escapes from this momentary
embarrassment, touches you more than the most
eloquently turned period.
I do not wonder that one so alive to beauty, and
the romance of sentiment, as Byron, should have
breathed with deep grief and love his final adieu to
the maid of Athens. If so youthful and attractive
in the summer of life, what must she have been
among the buds and mysteries of its May ! If her
eye still swims in its melting beam, how soul-inspir
ing must have been its light, when that brow was
yet unshaded by care, and that heart unacquainted

MAID OF ATHENS. 239
with the coldness and hypocrisy of the world ! I
have ever lamented the blind necessity which so
early separated the minstrel and her who drew forth
his most tender and impassioned lays. Beings so
congenial in their sympathies, impulses, and desires ;
so alike in their tastes, pleasures, and susceptibilities,
should have met but once, and then never to have
parted. He, perhaps, would have experienced, of
the two, the more benign and salutary effects from
their union. Her devotedness, forbearance, gentle
ness, and truth, without contravening his disposition,
or coercing his freedom, would have twined him for
ever to her heart. Her empire over his affections
would have been entire, yet soft and untroubled as
the spreading moonlight over the bosom of the hush
ed lake. But they were not thus to be united ; it
was for him to wander on, to encounter strange and
familiar faces, to be falsely allied, to seek again the
scene of his former exile, to bind the wreath of his
lyre upon his sword, and flashing it in the eye of ex
ulting Greece, drop into an untimely grave ! He sunk
alone ; but, like a resplendent star, that kindles with
its own effulgence the clouds that would darken its
descent. She, the object of his early fondness, was
not there to witness his departure ; but she heard,
through the forest tops of her distant isle, the moan
ing winds conveying onward the sighs of a dismayed
nation, the regrets of a bereaved world !
I have parted with few places, after so brief an

240 ISLAND OF EGINA.
acquaintance, with so much regret as Egina. It is
so unlike the islands that rudely rend the bosom of
the sea ; so soft in its outlines ; so brightly beautiful
in its full face ; so removed from the strife and tur
moil which agitate the great world, that I watched
its receding shore as the captive dreamer pursues
the fleeting vision of his slumber, and wakes again
to his dungeon and his chain !
If any thing so lovely as this can have survived
the convulsions that have rent and disfigured the
globe — if any thing so truly fair can have escaped
the blighting effects of the fall — what must that
" land of promise" be, where no such disasters have
come, and where no sin has cast the taint of its sha
dow ? — that land which awaits the good when they
shall have crossed the Jordan of death ! Happy he
who has a title to an inheritance there ; the ills that
may afflict him here will only render more dear the
anticipated possession, and even the last stern mes
senger will come without his wand of dismay.
Before leaving Egina, we visited the Beacon
Cliff, which an incident connected with the late re
volution has invested with a melancholy interest.
A young officer attached to the Greek forces, which
were to make, the next morning, a decisive and des
perate attack on the enemy, for the relief of the cita
del of Athens, had come over from the main land to
Egina the day previous, to be for a few hours with
that young devoted being who, next to his country,

ISLAND OF EGINA. 241
had the largest share of his hopes and affections.
She accompanied him, on his return, to this cliff
where he lingered long and devotedly at her side.
The sun's last ray had lit the cliff
On which the warrior stood :
What star shall rise to light his skiff
Across the faithless flood !
For he must ride the darken'd wave,
And, ere the morrow's light,
Be foremost of the few and brave
That gather in the fight.
But these were words that had no dread
For that young warrior's breast ;
He had been where each burning tread
His sabre's strength impress'd.
It was not fear of death that sway'd
In this dark hour of grief;
No lingering love of life delay'd
The young heroic chief.
But there was one whose pleading eyes,
Whose speechless tenderness,
Betray'd the yearning strength of ties
Her lips might Bcarce confess :
She clung around him as the vine,
That, trembling in the storm,
Will nearer come and closer twine
To that which lifts its form.
Another pledge — a last embrace !
He hastens down the steep :
Sar, will that gallant youth retrace
His footsteps from the deep '}
There is a maid on that high cliff,
Whose watch-fires never wane ;
But ah ! they burn to light a skiff
That never comes again !

21

CHAPTER XVII.
First view of Athens — Straiisof Salamis — Strand of the Piraeus — Tem
ple of Theseus — Mars hill — Paul before the philosophers of Greece —
Prison of Socrates— Maltese hotel — Testy travellers — Streets and
dwellings of the modem Town — Schools of the Missionaries.
The Acropolis of Athens, crowned with its white
and gleaming temples, now became the beacon of
our course. We saw it through our glasses, and held
our helm to its bearing, steadily and almost enthusi
astically, as the mariner was wont two thousand
years ago. How must his eye have kindled, and his
heart swelled within him, as the peerless Parthenon
broke slowly upon his steadfast vision !
And is this Athens ? Are these the monuments
of Pericles, the triumphs of Phidias ? Was it here
that Socrates and Plato discoursed of the human
soul ? that Eschylus strung the tragic lyre, and the
daring denouncer of Philip poured the thunders of
his eloquence ? Was it by these streams that Prax-
itiles encountered the original of that statue, which
enchants the world? Are these the mountains to which
the eyes of those who fell at Marathon were turned ?
Was it to this spot that the proud Roman came on
his pilgrimage of veneration and grief? And was it
here that the great Apostle proclaimed the mysteries
of his faith 1 These and a thousand other impas-

APPROACH TO ATHENS. 243
sioned inquiries rush on the mind at the sight of
Athens !
We let go our anchor close to the shore of Sala-
mis ; through the very wave that was once crimsoned
with the bravest blood of Persia. The eastern despot,
as he watched from his rocky throne the breaking
light of that eventful day, believed that its evening
shadows would close over the breathless corse of
Greece. Nor was his confidence without a reason
able foundation : for if numbers could have pre
vailed against the courage of despair, his desolating
hopes would have been realized. But Themistocles
and his dauntless associates had determined not to
survive that conflict, or survive it in the ruin of the
oppressor. They provided no escape ; they left for
themselves no refuge ; triumph or death was on
each lip, and in each arm. And when the sun went
down it left no cliff darker than the fallen counte
nance of Xerxes. But the victors and the van
quished have now alike passed away ; the rock re
tains no trace of the imperial throne ; and the mar
ble mound which sanctified the hero's dust, has been
washed away by the perpetual wave. The silence
of the shore is broken only by the complaining bil
low, and the shriek of the sea-bird, hovering over
some relic of corruption. To stand here where
millions once thronged, to gaze upon the same ob
jects which once fixed their eyes, and filled their
breasts with exultation, and to find no trace of their

244 TEMPLE OF THESEUS.
existence remaining, makes the heart sink back upon
itself in bereaving despair. It is like a naked echo
retuned through the voiceless solitude of a cavern.
Were it possible for one to return to this earth,
after the desolations of the last day have passed
over it, he would invoke even death as a refuge from
recollection and reality.
But though the shore lay untrod ; and the harbor
of the Piraeus, through which we were now passing
in our boat, slumbered with scarce an oar to break
its rest ; yet busy memory would still keep recalling
the time when a thousand keels pressed this strand ;
when the welcome and farewell broke from countless
lips ; when the ships of battle and of commerce
mingled here the harvest of their enterprise and va
lor ; and when the city to which we were bending our.
steps, sent out on either hand to the tributary sea its
lofty and impregnable walls. Passing through an ex
tended grove of the olive and fig-tree, over a plain rich
in soil and neglected in cultivation, over the obliterat
ed graves of men whose memories have survived their
monuments, — we entered a part of the town broken
into open spaces, and found ourselves, as if borne
from our anchorage upon some stream of the closest
associations, beneath the Theseum ; a temple erected
in commemoration of the eventful victory, gained
over the pride of Persia, on that very wave over
which our flag was flying. We had come from the
spot where the patriot nobly periled his life, as if to

TEMPLE OF THESEUS. 245
witness the immortality which genius conferred upon
his devoted conduct.
The architectural characteristics of this temple
are in sober harmony with the solemnity of the
worship of which it was the shrine, and the sacred-
ness of that remembrance due to departed worth.
No ambitious, fantastic display of ornaments impairs
its entire impressiveness : it stands with self-relying
composure, in the pure Doric order, simple, massive,
and majestic. Its material was not unworthy its
purpose, or the perfection of its design ; for the finest
Parian marble prevails throughout ; and so resisting
has it been to the corrosive touch of time, that only
the sombre tinge of years is apparent upon its form ;
except in one of its angular columns, which the light
ning has visited, and where it has left the traces of
its scorching energy. The frieze on which the
achievements of the hero whose name the sacred
edifice bears, are successively represented in beau
tiful sculpture, is still nearly entire. It was too high
for the reach of the casual visiter, and too difficult of
access for the cupidity of the indolent Turk ; and to
these it is indebted, more than to any sentiments of
reverence, for its inviolability.
You gaze on this temple without any ravishing
amazement or electrical emotion : yet on attempting
to leave it, you turn round at every step to take an
other parting look; till at last you resolve to re
trace your steps, and come again into its full pre-
21*

246 PREACHING OF PAUL.
sence. You feel irresistibly attracted, chained to
the spot : and yet if asked by one, strangely destitute
of this gift of perception, what there is in the ob
ject of your regard that so deeply charms, you could
give no satisfactory, or perhaps intelligible answer.
You could not point to this, or that feature, or give
a pre-eminence to any particular combination, with
out, in your opinion, doing injustice to the indescriba
ble impression which it has produced as a harmoni
ous whole. You are as free of separate and de
tached emotion as a sculptor in the presence of the
animated countenance and richly endowed form of
the sweet being selected as the model of his Cythe-
ran statue. It is not the eye, the lip, or brow, the
small ankle, or graceful waist, that he lingers upon ;
it is the symmetry, life, and perfection of the whole,
that fixes his eye, and makes his hand unsteady. But
I must now break away from this most excelling relic
of Grecian taste and skill. It has long survived
the worship of the imaginary divinity to whom it
was dedicated, passed to the quiet possession of the
Christian, been forced again into the service of the
false Prophet, and has reverted once more to the
follower of the Cross : and long may the voice of
grateful prayer be heard within the veil of its sanc
tified beauty.
Proceeding on in the direction of the Acropolis,
through a line slightly inclining to the right, we as
cended the Hill of Mars ; where the most learned

PREACHING OF PAUL. 247
and venerable court in Athens held its sessions ; and
where Paul, under color of an altar inscribed, " To
the unknown God," disclosed the supreme atributes of
Him " in whom we live, move, and have our being."
The appearance of the Apostle before this august
assembly involved an exhibition of moral courage
that has seldom been equalled, and perhaps never
surpassed, in the history of our race. He was in the
presence of the statesmen, philosophers, orators, and
poets of the most intellectual and refined nation upon
earth. He was there to humor no popular sect, to flat
ter no national vanity, to move upon no springs of am
bition or future fame. He was there to unfold, to for
tify, and rivet upon the judgment and conscience
of his enlightened auditory, doctrines at variance
with every previous conviction and present impulse ;
doctrines totally subversive of that faith in which
they were born ; in which their fathers died, and
which they wished to bequeath to their offspring.
He had no splendid and imposing forms of wor
ship, or mythological mysteries, to aid his arguments,
or conciliate the pride of his audience. He had no
temples, statues, or altars, to substitute for those
which he would make desolate. He had no divini
ties peopling each hill and vale, and grove and fount,
to take the places of those whom he disclaimed. He
had only the pure abstract conception of the one su
preme, holy and self-existing God : his universal pro
vidence and man's final accountability. He delivered

248 PRISON OF SOCRATES-
his message as one raised by his mighty theme-
above the frown, or the commendation of his hearers.
He was too clear and discriminating for the subtle
sneer ; too earnest and impressive for the skeptical
jest, and too cogent and massive in thought for the
dialectical evasion.. And though no corresponding
results were immediately obvious, yet convictions
were planted there which struck at length into the
very heart of Greece ; and which finally enthroned
a forsaken God upon the affections and allegiance of
a repentant nation.
Leaving Mars Hill, which has now little that
can interest the stranger, independent of its historic
associations, we wandered to the prison of Socrates,
a cave cut in the steep face of a rocky elevation that
rises between the Acropolis and the sea. The cavern
is small, low, and gloomy ^ its shadows relieved only
by .a few scattered rays that struggle through the
thick fob age of the olives which shade the entrance ;
and even these few rays seem pale and tremulous,,
as if conscious of revealing some spot of ingratitude
and guilt. It was here that this sublime sage spent
the last thirty days of his life, under sentence of
death for having discovered, without the lights of
revelation, some of those sublime truths which em
brace the divine attributes and man's highest dignity.
These dark walls may indeed have confined his per
son, but not that Intellectual being,
ThoBe thoughts that wandered through eternity.

PRISON OF SOCRATES. 249
Cato watched their flight ; and when he from whom
they sprung was under the darkness of the grave,
gazed at their brightness, as the benighted pilgrim
watches, on the evening cloud, the lingering light of
the departed sun. There was a patience, a meek
ness, and forgiving magnanimity in the death of this
martyr to truth, to which no heart can be wholly in
sensible. I wonder not that the servant, in reluctant
obedience to orders, wept as he handed him the fatal
hemlock ; and that the disciples of the philosopher,
in the energy of their veneration and grief, resembled
the followers of Him who closed, on the cross, his
mission of love. The most sublime spectacle in the
world, is a powerful mind vindicating truth in the
presence of its foes, and a martyr calmly sealing his
faith with his blood.
Leaving the prison, we descended through masses
of modern ruins and ancient remains, to the locenda,
kept by a Maltese, where we found accommodations
not remarkably elegant or ample, but sufficiently so
to meet every actual want. One accustomed to the
hardships and privations of a sea life is not apt to be
troublesomely fastidious upon shore. Give him some
thing to raise his head a few inches above his body,
and he sleeps as soundly as if the straw or plank be
neath him had been converted by his dreams into
down. The most captious, fault-finding traveller is
usually one who has got the least distance from
home : he quarrels with what few comforts he meets,

'250 CAPTIOUS TRAVELLERS.
in consequence of being ignorant of the still fewer
that await him : he denounces his hotel, because it
has not all the little conveniences and nice arrange
ments of his own private house ; he abuses its in
mates, because they do not care a thousand times
as much for him as he cares for them ; because he
cannot find there his old faithful servant, who under
stands, to a drop and grain, the relative proportions
of sugar and brandy that should mingle in his toddy ;
because there is no sweet child to climb his knee
and kiss him before retiring to its early rest : and
no devoted wife to bathe his temple if it throb too
quick, to soothe the rheumatic twinge that distorts
his face ; and in the frosty night, to go to bed just
enough in the advance to diffuse a gentle warmth
through the cold linen. It would be of vast service
to such a man, just to take a voyage at sea ; to hear,
in the thick night, the tempest breaking down his
spars, the wave howling, as if eager to get at its vic
tim ; to live on salt junk, till he would hanker for
the bones of a gull, buzzard, booby, any thing that
had not been steeped in brine ! But this is not a
theme befitting the atmosphere of Athens : I return
to objects of a less famished and querulous nature.
Let the complaining traveller and owl mingle their
lugubrious notes together; their plaints shall be
music to me, while there is a ruin or khan through
which they can hoot and sigh.
It is extremely difficult, as we have already ex-

STREETS OF ATHENS. 251
perienced, to thread the narrow, irregular streets of
the modern town of Athens : they are choked up,
and in many places impassably obstructed, by the
walls, roofs, and turrets of dwellings thrown down
in the frightful disasters of the revolution : but few
of the buildings are sufficiently entire to protect
their unfortunate inmates from the elements ; and
yet you not unfrequently meet, from these wretched
retreats, a countenance filled with light and beauty ;
only the apology Of a dress conceals the symmetri
cal shape, while the unconfined' tresses 'float over
shoulders that swell in rich relief from their coarse
drapery. The ankle is without a protection, but the
small foot is full of bounding life ; while the face, a
stranger to the delicate shades of the Veil, has yet a
transparent freshness on each feature. She is here
like a violet among bleak and barren rocks, or like
a bird singing and snapping the dew from its wings
on a blighted tree ; or rather, perhaps, like the grace
ful dolphin that has lost its way ahTong the fleshless
bones of some stranded leviathan.
The removal of the seat of government to Athens
will eventually work mighty changes in it's features.
Already the foundations of many commodious houses
have been laid, and wide, convenient streets begin
to stretch themselves thrdugh the ruins. The curi
osity of the scholar, and the capital of the 'merchant,
will aid its prosperity'; while the numerous and judi-
cibusly conducted schbols of our mis^ionlariefe'Win

252 SCHOOLS IN ATHENS.
contribute to its moral dignity. These schools em
brace, in many cases, the children of the first fami
lies : I have seldom met with so many bright eyes
and intelligent faces. Captain Read very justly re
marked, while listening to their recitations, that we
could not yet despair of Greece. Professor King, an
excellent oriental scholar, has a circle of Greek lads,
whose attainments are the best testimony to the value
of his instructions. Mr. and Mrs. Hill, who have a
faculty for teaching that very few possess, are lite
rally surrounded and taken captive by the young.
Their school-room is a little amphitheatre, where
you witness, through the silent and thronged seats,
an interest and play of intelligence that no game for
mere amusement ever yet excited. Mr. Robertson
has been engaged in superintending the publication
of several works in modern Greek that will greatly
aid the cause of learning as well as religion. Let
those who deny or distrust the utility of missionary
efforts look to Athens ! Let them look also to Con
stantinople, into the schools of Messrs. Goodell and
Dwight ! If to enlighten and elevate the minds of
those whose conduct is one day to affect the happi
ness of thousands, and perhaps determine the destiny
of a nation, be objects worthy of human regard, then
these men do not labor in vain, and spend their breath
for nought.
We were again at our hotel, forgetting its restrict
ed accommodations in the attentive courtesies of the

COMPANIONS AT ATHENS. 253
host, and the anticipated pleasure of seeing the next
sun rise from the Acropolis ! And yet our company
was of a character that might make time, under al
most any circumstances, pass agreeably. Here was
Petarches, brother-in-law of the Maid of Athens, a
fervid antiquarian, and custodor of the Attic remains :
here was Dr. M-, the surgeon of our ship, a gentle
man of classic attainments, and imbued with the spi
rit of the past : here was Mr. H., the secretary of
our legation to the Porte, and familiar with the lan
guages and customs of the East : here was Mr. C,
who supplies us with funds, and whose only fault is
that of being too generous to others to be just to
himself: and here was also the writer of this, who
has no doubt nature had some wist intention in bring
ing him into being, though he has not yet ascertained
precisely what it was. We discoursed of Athens
as it was, and as it is ; of her monuments and her
men ; of philosophy, sculpture, and poetry ; and
finally settled down with a greater earnestness on
the subject of letters — the comparative capabilities
of different languages. And here I could not refrain
from putting in a word for my own mother tongue.
I love the English language — its energy, its copi
ousness, its versatility. For variety of expression,
strength' united with ease, and general united with
definitive powers, it has, perhaps, no equal. There
is no subject, the most vast or minute, the most re
fined or rude, that it cannot appropriately reach. It
22

254 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
conveys the subtle distinctions of the metaphysician,
and the coarse sentiments of the street wag. It em
bodies the lightning of the poet, and the cold calcu
lations of the mathematician. It thunders forth the
passions of the orator, and whispers the mild accents
of subdued affection. It furnishes a becoming vehicle
for the most gigantic conception, and an appropriate
conveyance for the sylph-like thought, whose carriage
should be " airy nothing." It reflects the glittering
hues of unclouded hope, and the deep shadows of
blank despair. It conveys the fervid blessing of pas
sionate love, and the chilling curses of unqualified
hatred. The rhapsodies of heaven may kindle along
its numbers, and the wailings of hell howl through
its broken sentences.
And it is as much at home in the natural as the
moral world. It can represent the most trifling and
the most magnificent of nature's works. It exhibits
the dew-drop, trembling from the leaf of the violet,
and the avalanche, crushing, with wide ruin, its way
to the earth. It gives us the sweet notes of the
laughing rill, and the sullen roar of the fierce cata
ract. It mirrors the sparkling surface of the sunny
fountain, and the terrible aspect of the ocean when
she frowns at the gathering tempest. It spreads the
sweet bow of promise, when it has heaved around
us the wrecks of the storm.
A language of such energy and versatility is of
no easy acquisition ; and he who means to bring it

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 255
within his grasp has a task before him which requires
his undivided efforts. A few leisure hours, indiffer
ently applied, is a mere mockery ; years of patient toil
are demanded ; long and assiduous attentions, with
minute and profound investigations, are requisite.
He may write a coarse homily, or familiar epistle,
without these ; but he cannot pour forth a torrent of
pungent, harmonious sentences. He cannot arouse
the passions, or charm the ear of the multitude. He
cannot spread out his thoughts in glittering attire
before the mind of the public. He cannot weave
his feelings into a broad, bright chain of language,
and cast the radiant web, in a glowing belt, round
the great firmament of letters. He is cramped, con
fined, cut off from the world around him; and the fire
of his soul dies within him, as lightning in the isolated
cloud ; but let that pass.
When 1 consider the genius of the English lan
guage, its beauty, versatility, and copious power, I
exult in the thought that it is my own vernacular
tongue : and when I think of those who speak this
language, Tavrt/j rot yEvsas Kai aifiaros cv^o^cLt sivat !

CHAPTER XVIII.
Athens— Ascent of the Acropolis— The Parthenon— Beauty of its ar
chitecture^ — Present condition— Impressions it makes on the spec
tator — Erectheum— Delicacy of its proportions — Violence it has
suffered — The Pandrosea— Singularity of its origin— Horologium—
Failure of the artist — Lantern of Demosthenes — Eloquence of the
orator — Temple of Jupiter Olympus— Cell of an Anchorite on its
architrave — Ruins of the Stadium.
The night passed away, and the next morning,
while the dew was yet fresh on the flowers, we were
ascending the steep way which leads to the Acropolis.
The first object that arrested our steps, by the force
of the feelings which it inspired, was the Propylaea.
We paused before it, as one reaching suddenly the
gate of some palace, which, with all its reputed mag
nificence, he had not supposed could possess an en
trance so superbly rich. Its double colonnade, con
sisting of twelve Doric columns, with portions of their
capitals and architrave is still in preservation The
flutings of the shafts have been injured, and the
expression of the whole impaired, by the solid
masonry with which the intercoluminations have
been filled to sustain a terrace and battery. This
is the work of modern barbarism and bloodshed.
We seem - to live in these days of the earth merely
to destroy what our predecessors have left ! I
sometimes think that the world, instead of advancing,

RUINS OF ATHENS. 257
is falling back into some dark unknown period of
rudeness and erime, when there was not skill and
honesty enough even to leave a record of its vices.
The flight of marble steps which wind up from
tiie Propylaea to the temples beyond are nearly en
tire, and exhibit on their smooth surface the polish
anciently given them by the sweeping footstep of
Athenian Beauty. Alas ! that footstep so light and
(elastic will never be seen passing up this etherial
way again. Death has cast on it his cold, nerveless
chain, and bound the form that it delicately buoyed
in the pressing recesses of the grave. All that once
smiled and throbbed here have gone down beneath
the unconscious clod. Their loveliness, youth, and
animation have been sepulchred together in darkness
and corruption. And we, who now mourn the frail
ness and brevity of their being, will soon, like them,
be where the regrets of the passing stranger and the
sympathy of the surviving world eannot come. May
the grave, dear reader, he to you and me the portal
- of a better world.
Passing the Propylaea, we proceeded onward and
upward through a circuitous ascent, till we emerged
within a few steps of the Parthenon ! There stood in
broken beauty the most finished monument of clas
sic taste, the highest triumph of Grecian genius, the
world's warmest wonder ! Never shall I forget the
sensations of that moment ; it appeared as if my life
had been only an anxious pilgrimage, that I had
22*

258 RUINS OF ATHENS.
reached at last the object of my deferred hopes,
and could now willingly yield up my breath. The
reader may, perhaps, be disposed to regard this as
the language of affected reverence, or the confession
of a morbid enthusiasm. But let him from the cold
contemplative solitude of his closet come into this
storied and stirring portion of the earth ; let him float
around the islands that gem these bright waters ; let
every object that meets his eye, every sound that
accosts his ear, be the talisman of some being or event,
calling up youth, beauty, genius, and valor from the
grave, and restoring the images of self-sacrifice and
patriotism which slumber in the dust of a Marathon !
let him leave the wave and approach this sacred soil ;
let him wind his way over the ruins of temples, pal
aces, and tombs to this heighth, and filled with the
strange and mingled emotions which these relics of
a ruined race inspire, come into the overpowering pre
sence of the Parthenon ! And though it may be a
weakness, yet he will kneel and weep. He cannot
interpret his feelings, he cannot explain satisfactorily
what it is that so unmans him, yet he is like a child,
returning, after a long absence, to the hearth of a des
olate home ; to the grave of a venerated father. If there
be one sentiment on earth that partakes less of its sor-
didness than others, it is that we experience in con
templating the achievements of those who have now
passed beyond the reach of our homage and the ad
vantages of our friendship. This sentiment is pure and

TEMPLE OF MINERVA. 259
unmixed, above the faults and frailties of our nature ;
vanity cannot taint it, for we had no participation
in the objects from which it springs ; envy cannot
blight it, for they to whom it points, are beneath the
sanctity of the shroud. Death hallows alike the re
spect of the living, and the virtues of the dead.
But I must turn to that which is more immediate.
The Parthenon, though now a magnificent ruin, has
suffered less from the constant visitations of time than
the casual violence of man ; years have not materi
ally darkened its aspect, they have only in this pure
clime imparted an autumnal tinge to the whiteness
of its marble ; but the Venitians, who should have
been the last people to injure so precious a monu
ment of genius, were the first to overthrow, with their
burning balls, in their attack on the Acropolis, a por
tion of its columns ; and travellers since, who should
have appeared here only as admiring pilgrims, have
expressed their veneration in detaching fragments,
and transporting them to their ambitious cabinets,
They knew and felt it sacrilege, yet as the mourner
will cut a lock from the pale brow of his deceased
friend, they must carry away some slight relic of
this fading temple. We censure less the feeling that
moved them, than the action in which it resulted. It
is too much like a devotee — weeping, praying — and
plundering the shrine of his saint !
The depredations committed by a late English
nobleman on the statuary treasures and sculptured

260 EUINS OF ATHENS.
ornaments of this sacred edifice, were enough to have
startled Phidias from his grave, and made poor Icti-
nus sigh in his shroud. Yet these predatory achieve
ments were dictated by a profound reverence ; but
it too closely resembles the affection which the rob
ber bears your purse ; he loves deeply and devotedly
the gold which it contains, yet you do not like to*
surrender it simply on that account ; you choose to
have him show his love for the sequin in some other
form. The man who attempts to elope with your
wife loves her, perhaps, more than any other woman
upon earth ; but you cannot for that reason quite con
sent to have your children made orphans, and your
self a mateless vagabond. You choose to have him.
look out in some other quarter, to go to some Christian
who is about applying for a divorce, or to some Mus
sulman whose harem is stretching beyond his means.
You never can exonerate a man from the injury or guilt
of a bad action, whatever may have been the feelings
in which it originated. The deed is what the law
and the judgment of mankind look to, and by its good
or ill effect the man and his motive must stand ac
quitted, or condemned. But enough of this : it is a
subject upon which men have ever disagreed, yet not
more widely than the conduct of the two celebrated
pilgrims from the British Isle to this spot. Byron
came here, and with the sympathy of a true poet
shed a fresh charm over the immortal beauty of these
remains ; Elgin came, and like a weeping Vandal,

TEMPLE OF MINERVA. 261
mingled his tears and the strokes of his pickaxe to
gether !
The Parthenon still presents thirty-nine of its
columns, in unshaken and uncrumbled integrity. The
two colonnades of the pronaos, and the outer one of
the posticum are entire ; while a solitary member
of the inner mourns its absent brethren. The tym
panum, from which the colossal statues were taken
that now adorn a distant museum, was so weakened
by the removal of these ornamental supports, that it
has since fallen, but the corresponding one is suffi
ciently perfect to afford a vivid conception of both in
their unmutilated state. The entablature of the pe
ristyle has suffered more than any other portion of the
edifice. The metopes in the frieze, each a finished
piece of sculpture, have been removed, while the al
ternating triglyphs stand there as if to betray the ex
tent of the Gothic plunder. The exquisite sculptures
on the inner frieze of the pronaos, casting into life,
around the whole cell, the splendors of the Panathe-
nian festival, would have shared the same fate, but
fortunately they were less accessible. They exhibit
still the delicacy and fire which ever followed the
chisel of Phidias ; and may death unnerve the arm
that shall strive to wrench them from their places!
On whatever portion of the edifice your eye rests,
you can discover no evidence of haste or wearied
interest. The smooth fluting of the columns, the
scarcely perceptible jointure of the blocks which

262 RUINS OF ATHENS.
compose them, the astragal and cornice of the capi
tal, the varied ornaments of the frieze, with the breath-
ins: statues of the pediment, all betray the same soli
citude and finishing perfection. Though rent and
mutilated by violence, yet enough of the temple still
remains to afford an intimating and vivid outline of
its original magnificence and beauty. As you gaze,
it stands at length complete in your imagination, and
you are as deeply impressed by the harmony of its
proportions, and the grandeur of its main concep
tion, as you probably would be if no capital had been
displaced, no column overthrown. Perhaps the in
juries which have marred its material form, by the
melancholy sentiment of regret which they inspire,
tend rather to render more deep, solemn, and com
posed the impression it might make as a glorious
whole. When my last hour shall come, when the
fever and tempest of life shall be passing away, may
this divine relic linger in bright relief on the cloud of
the departing storm. Let me die with those deep,
subdued emotions inspired by strength and beauty in
ruins ; and let a hope, untouched by decay, sustain-
ingly lead this spirit upward to its exalted, unchang
ing source. And may the same hope, dear reader,
hover over thee in that last moment of dismay, and
bring thy undying soul, kindled with a Saviour's love,
to that Temple, not made with hands, eternal in the
heavens. At a short distance from the Parthenon, stands

TEMPLE OF BRECTHEU'S, 263
the Erectheum ; a temple of small dimensions, purely
Ionic in its style, and possessing all the delicate gra
ces which belong to that order. As you look upon
it, your regret is doubly deep, that any thing so truly
beautiful should have been exposed to the severe
misfortunes, by which it has been visited. You
think you could endure to see a monument of stern
strength and gigantic proportions contending with
adversity, even though it must finally fall ; but to see
one so lightly reared, so tastefully planned, so ex
quisitely finished, so trusting and dependent in its bear
ing as this, exposed to rudeness and violence, touches
your feelings more than you had supposed it possi
ble for any sculptured charms of marble to do. This
sympathy is truly most strange and deep ; you know
that the object which calls it forth can neither per
ceive its own calamity, nor the emotions of your
grief; and yet you linger near it, as one committing
to earth the bright and beautiful being that first
touched and chained his heart. There is something
in beauty, whether it dwells in the human face,
in the pencilled leaves of flowers, the sparkling sur
face of a fountain, or that aspect which genius breathes
over its statue, that makes us mourn its ruin. I should
not envy that man his feelings who could see a leaf
wither or a flower fall, without some sentiment of
regret. This tender interest in the beauty and
frailty of things around us is only a slight tribute
of becoming grief and affection ; for Nature in our

264 RUINS OF ATHENS.
adversities never deserts us ; she ever comes more
nearly to us in our sorrows ; and leading us away
from the paths of disappointment and pain, into her
soothing recesses, allays the anguish of our bleeding
hearts, binds up the wounds that have been inflicted,
whispers the meek pledges of a better hope, and in
harmony with a spirit of still holier birth, points us
to that home where decay and death can never
come. Leaving the Erectheum, we stopped a moment
to survey a little temple dedicated to Pandrosea, one
of the three daughters of the first Athenian king.
Minerva, it seems, had entrusted these three sisters
with a casket of flowers, and forbid them looking
into it ; but curiosity was too strong for two of them ;
they took a sly peep ; Pandrosea, however, was faith
ful to her trust ; and as a reward for her fidelity, the
goddess decreed her this graceful chapel ; which
still bears her name, and memorializes her truth.
Few ladies, I fear, would now-a-days be able to per
petuate their trustworthy virtues in this form : they
could not long withstand the temptation of curiosity,
and many, I apprehend, would not be able to sleep
till they had cast a furtive glance into the casket :
curiosity is their most active and persevering pas
sion. I have seen them take the shocks of an elec
trical wheel, to ascertain the force of its stunning
effects, and pass over the bosom of a thinly frozen
lake, to see how low its surface will bend before it

TEMPLE OF THE WINDS. 265
breaks ; and I have seen them stand upon a giddy
cliff, that overhangs the falls of Niagara, to see if
the sun-bows in the spray be actually, as reported,
nearer a circle than the same phenomena on the
cloud. But this is no fiction ; I discovered one there
which, to my amazement, formed an entire circle. -
It rose unbroken, brilhant, and tenderly serene over /'
its gulf of agony and thunder :
" Resembling, mid the torture of the scene,
Love watching madness with unalterM mein."
But no rainbow on the dropping cloud, or the tem
pest's darkened form, or the cataract's distorted visage,
ever appeared more sweetly calm and brightly beau
tiful, than the marble relics which gleam up from
among the grosser ruins of the Acropolis. It is the
light and loveliness of life, lingering among the sha
dows of death. If so bright and impressive now,
what must they have been as forming a portion of
those unrivalled structures which once crowned this
whole elevation ; when portico rose over portico,
temple over temple, and the Parthenon, pre-eminent
over all, shone in its marble whiteness, like a glitter
ing edifice cut in the ice of the eternal avalanche.
But they are now only the broken links of a magical
chain ; the charm still faintly clings to them, but the
enchanter is dead. We can only cherish, remember,
and mourn.
Descending from the citadel, we turned to the
Horologium, or temple of the winds, which interests
23

266 RUINS OF ATHENS.
the stranger more by the singularity, than the classic
merits, of its architecture. It is a wild, fantastic con
ception, and rudely executed, as all monuments will
be that have not a chasteness and sobriety of design,
that can enlist the more deep and solemn emotions
of the artist. Genius is in itself essentially earnest
and passionate ; a mere fanciful conceit cannot rouse
it and call it into action ; it requires something in
serious harmony with its nature, something that can
enlist its profound sympathies. A sanctuary that is
to embosom the presence of a Divinity, or a monu
mental pile that is to perpetuate the memory of ex
alted virtue, or a statue that is to betray the nobler
attributes of life, is such an object : and it is for this
reason that we see, in the execution of each of these
designs, the warmest expression of its enthusiasm,
the highest evidences of its power. But a concep
tion of the winds is too vague and varying to be re
presented in the proportions of a temple, and the
seasons are too subtle and undefined to be embodied
in emblematic sculpture. Hence, the Horologium is
an unintelligible mass of extravagant conceit and
baffled skill.
Winding around to the street of the ancient Tri
pods, which descends from the eastern extremity of
the Acropolis, we came to the choragic monument
of Lysicrates. It is a small peripteral temple,
with a conical dome sustained by light Corinthian
columns, and bears throughout a vivid evidence of

CHORAGIC MONUMENT. 267
its delicate conception and elegant finish. The slight
walls, which now fill the intercoluminations, impair
the beauty of its effect ; still the original design of the
artist is distinctly evident, and impresses the classical
spectator nearly as it would without these modern
appendages. It is so arranged as to present, aside
from its associations, the most tempting accommoda
tions to the stranger. It was the residence of Byron
during his visit to Athens : — here he mused, ponder
ed, and penned that mourning protestation of his
affection :
" Cold is the heart, fair Greece ! that looks on thee,
Nor feels as lovers o'er the dust they loved."
It has subsequently been the abode of an opulent
Osmanlie, who renounced his faith to gain the hand
of an Athenian beauty. The lovers here passed
that nuptial moon which wanes seldom to wax
again. Little thought had they, that the green leaf
of their affection would ever wear the autumn tinge
of decay ; nor indeed was it to be blighted in this
form ; a quicker doom from the hand of aggrieved
Islamism awaited the loving pair ; he dropped into a
bloody grave, and she, whose charms had made him
false to his Prophet, went in grief to a hurried shroud.
This temple is now called the Lantern of De
mosthenes, though for what reason I know not. But
the blaze of that orator's genius, in the stormy period
of his existence, could never have been aptly repre
sented under so doubtful and circumscribed an em-

268 RUINS OF ATHENS.
blem. It flashed through all Greece, exciting the
desponding, nerving the timid, and rallying the
strong. The passions, hopes, and fears of the count
less multitudes, over whom his voice went, shook
to the force of his eloquence, like the tops of a
mighty forest to the strength of the mountain wind.
His was the triumph of mind ; he had no bayonets
or dungeons to back his appeals ; he could only hold
up the pride and splendor of the past, the perils and
threatened degradation of the future ; but these with
him were sufficient. He rolled them through the
imaginations of his countrymen against the objec
tions of his adversaries, like a swelling wave travel
ling on its fearful way, and discharging its accumu
lated powers against the reeds of the shaking shore.
His lips have long since been sealed in death ; two
thousand years have passed over the orator's grave,
but his accents linger still in thrilling echoes through
the earth.
But I must hasten my narrative ; proceeding on
in the direction of the Ilissus we came to the colos
sal remains of the Olympian Temple. This stu
pendous edifice covered, originally, an area of half
a mile, in circuit ; it was constructed entirely of
Pentelican marble, and was sustained by one hundred
and twenty columns, sixty feet in height, of the Co
rinthian order ; its completion occupied centuries
and exhausted nations, but raised it, in surpassing
grandeur, over all the architectural triumphs of the

TEMPLE OF JUPITER OLYMPUS. 269
world. It is no wonder that Hadrian, when he saw,
through his munificence, the finishing block of this
vast pile fitted to its place, pronounced his self-ap
propriating exultation over Athens. He had com
pleted what had been growing under the hands of
many successive generations, whose very graves
had become a blank. He had achieved the great
design that had been bequeathed from sire to son,
through ages of progressive advancement. The
most gigantic scheme may thus find its accomplish
ment in the fidelity and efforts of those who may
in vain search for the projector's dust. The last
child of the enslaved African, who now saddens the
aspect of my own country, might be restored to his
long-lost home, if the living would ardently espouse
that righteous determination. They may die while
the enterprise is still in its infancy ; but those who
successively come after them, will carry on the transn
mitted purpose, till Ethiopia shall receive to her
bosom the last descendant of her scattered sons.
But to return ; no monument in Athens fills the
stranger with a more deep and melancholy rever
ence, than the few lonely columns which now remain
of the Olympian Temple. There are no mingled
ruins to lead his feelings imperceptibly into the final
impression. He encounters at once these towering
columns standing in solitary grandeur, without a
strewn fragment at the base, and only the moan of
the sighing wind, about the summit. He does not at
23*

270 RUINS OF ATHENS.
first discover the cell of the anchorite, which crowns
a broken piece of the giddy entablature, and which
stands there as if in mockery of the magnificence,
which it basely disfigures. The recluse has now fled,
and left even the question of his subsistence in his
airy cell, an inexplicable problem. He may have
been fed, like the prophet of old, by ravens, but sure
ly no human hand ever cast to his aerial abode the
elements of life. I never felt before such an utter
scorn of that monkish frenzy which escapes from
the world, to seek in a listless solitude the rewards of
a well spent life. But, if a man can consult his con
science in this form, let him at least seek out some
other retreat, and not build his sneering cavern above
the most sublime remains of ancient art. Let him
plunge into the earth, or among the rifted rocks, where
the bear and the badger, his fitting companions, make
their home.
Leaving Mrs. Read and her fair companion be
neath the Olympian columns, still listening to the
fervid narrative of Petarches, I directed my solitary
steps to the banks of the Ilissus. This sacred stream,
so full of melody and exulting power in the allusions
of the classics, is now only a slight rivulet, scarcely
bending the slender reeds which encroach upon its
margin. The Temple of the Muses, by which it mur
mured its music, has departed, leaving no trace of
its delicate beauty ; and the marble bridge, which
spanned its bright waters, has passed away with the

RUINS OF ATHENS. 271
footstep that traversed its strength. The splendid
Stadium of Atticus Herodes has left only the swelling
outline of its location ; its circling seats of marble,
which once rose with the whiteness of the freshly
drifted snow, have gone ; and the arena is now voice
less as that resting place to which have sunk alike
the victor and those who shouted his triumph. The
grove where Plato lectured, the leafy retreat where
Aristotle taught, with the revered chair of Socrates,
and the kindling stage of Eschylus, have disappeared,
and even the statues of these great men have slowly
followed their forms to the earth ; all have gone
down under the crushing footstep of Time,
O Time ! sole empress of the mighty Past,
The pillars of thy. throne are on the grave
Of empires ; thy dominion is a waste
Once animate with nations great and brave,
And who contended with thee to the last,
Like shipwreck'd men against a whelming wave ;
But who have gone, leaving no trace of all
That signalized their triumph or their fall
O Time ! thy centuries shall circle round
Till thou shalt hear a mightier Monarch say —
" Advance my throne, let the last summons sound."
Then will thy sceptred glories pass away,
And no bright trophy of thy reign be found, .
Save in the wrecks of that tremendous day !
Man, starting from his grave, shall look for thee,
But find alone his own eternity !

CHAPTER XIX.

Athens-- Sunset from the Acropolia — Traits of the Athenians — Objects
of their Superstition — PersoD, costume, aDd habits of the Females
— Domestic peculiarities of the Mother — Female Writers — Their
attempt at great themes — Traits of the Men — Physical and moral
Qualities — Period and objects of Marriage.

Though the monuments of man have crumbled,
the triumphs of his skill passed away, yet nature
still survives, and is still fair. Nothing can exceed the
softened dream-like beauty of the face which she
here presents, as day-light dies on the Athenian hills.
I stood on the ruins of the Acropolis at this subdued
hour ; the sun had melted down into the verge of
the horizon, while bis slanting rays, deserting the
level plain, still lingered upon the loftier cliffs, con
verting them into purple and gold ; the islands of
Egina, Salamis, and Paros, swelled from the sea,
bold and beautiful in the rosy light ; while the distant
citadel of Corinth stood against the sky, a conspicu
ous mass, fringed with fire ; Mount Hymettus, with
its marble steeps, cast its arching shadow far down
the silent valley, while the Cephisus went on its
whispering way, breaking the sombre aspect of the
plain, with the line of its silver waters. There lay
the Piraeus with the mourning wave still lingering
on its strand ; there stood Eleusis, whose sublime

TRAITS OF THE ATHENIANS. 273
mysteries are still the deepest marvel of the past ;
there rose the Olympian columns, to which the exult-
tin eye of mouldered millions have turned ; there
lengthened the sacred way, once lined with the mon
umental tombs of poets and sages ; there too lay Ma
rathon, whose very dust seems blended with heroic
memories ; while around, within a narrow circle,
slumbered the ashes of those whose genius, valor,
and learning made Athens the wonder, pride, and
worship of the earth ! What ruins and recollections
— what perished grandeur and undecaying beauty
are here — man, his monuments and memorials in the
grave ! Nature full of life, light, and strength ; and
" Living as if the earth contained no tomb '."
To turn from the marble, to the moral, remnants
of this singular people : the Athenians have retained,
through the revolutions and disasters of twenty cen
turies, many of their characteristic peculiarities.
They have the same vanity, versatility, and fickle
ness which they had in the days of Pericles ; nor
are they much less superstitious than they were when
Paul reproached them with this weakness. Their
superstition has changed the objects of its reverence
and terror, but preserved its full force ; they have
forsaken their prodigies, incantations, and spells, and
taken to amulets, charms, and the miracles of pic
tured saints. They have left the altar of Minerva
only to bend the knee to the Virgin Mary ; they

274 FEMALES OF ATHENS.
have abandoned their thirty thousand gods only to
worship as many monks and martyrs. This conti
nued confidence in objects unequal to the trust re
posed in them is, perhaps, the most conspicuous in
the females : their mothers bathed in the Cephisus
to relieve the anguish which Eve entailed upon her
daughters ; they slide down the smooth rocks of the
Pentelicus for the same purpose. Thetis dipped her
son in the Styx to render him invulnerable ; they
place amulets on their infants to protect them from
the fascinations of the evil eye.
But with all her weaknesses, the Greek lady has
many engaging and commendable qualities : she is
affectionate, as a child, -and devoted as a mother ;
and her fidelity is too stern to be shaken by passion
or seduced by gold. She is confiding and depen
dent in her disposition, and returns the kindness she
receives in the strength of her attachment. She is
diffident of herself in discharging even the duties of
her quiet sphere ; and yet, when the hour of trial
comes, exhibits a fortitude and resolution equal to
the occasion. She has not unfrequently been known
to exchange the distaff for the sword, the soft lute
for the trump of conflict. When the battle has been
fought, and the enemy defeated, she has returned to
her home without a thought beyond the peaceful
enjoyments of her hearth. Privations and sorrows
may chasten, but they can never destro)^ her cheer
fulness. She wipes the tears from her eyes, and

FEMALES OF ATHENS. 275
sees in the future, though bleak as the grave, some i
buds of promise, to which she still clings. I have 1
seen her gather the slender herbs of her garden,
dress them for the table, — and when this simple
repast was over, tune her rebeck as sweetly as if
she were living on the milk and honey of the land,
She has a plasticity in her nature that easily adapts
itself to any changes in her varied lot. In wealth, *
you may see her moving with the splendor andj
graces of a queen, — in misfortune, maintaining that \
subdued gentleness and unmurmuring resignation J
which wins its way to the inmost sensibility of your l
heart. In personal attractions she is not, perhaps, equal
to the picture which poetic rhapsody has planted in
your imagination. As if sensible of this, she fre
quently seeks from art an enhancement of her real
charms. In the bloom of youth her hair is orna
mented profusely with gems that sparkle in shower
ing light ; while the darker tinge given to the eye
lash by the surmeh, renders the ray still more kind
ling and intense. The temples and neck are aided
in their whiteness by the powdered cowry, while
the root of the wild lily deepens the hue of her
cheek. Her dress has no narrowing inventions ;
yet the spencer rolling gracefully from the chest,
and the jewelled zone, with its spreading knot, seem
ingly enrich and relieve the shape. Yet I have met
with many, to whom nature had been so liberal in

276 LADY OF SCIO.
her gifts, that they presumed to dispense entirely
with all these artificial aids. I have seen two sisters
from the island of Scio, over whose features and
forms the chisel of Praxiteles might have trembled.
And there is one of them now, in the near balcony,
which, unperceived by her, commands the small
window where I am penning this note, most excel-
lingly beautiful. Her hair, black as the raven, falls
far down over her shoulders, long, glossy, and free ;
her eye, of the same expressive hue, floats large and
full of soul ; her lips, slightly apart, and rich in dye
as the cleft pomegranate, seem only to betray a
deeper gush of that vermilion which melts so deli
cately through the soft oval of her cheek; her
smooth and upright forehead, with the small ear, and
well turnejd head, are in harmony with the graceful
curve of the neck ; while the snow of her shoulder
and chest, with the swelling beauty of her bosom,
are rather shaded than concealed by the thin gauze
of her cymarr. From the slender waist, and fuller
developments of her form, the eye drops to a small
ankle and foot, which lend an air of lightness and
ease to each attitude and motion. Would that the
mystic thread of her destiny were interwoven with
mine ! But shall I forget the gentle being who dwells
on the green banks of my native stream ? The one
-who alone wept at the parting word, and blushed
that she betrayed her tears ! No. This heart still
turns to her, as the eye of 'the pilgrim to his vesper

HABITS OF THE FEMALES. 277
star 1 How strange and inexplicable is our nature !
The root of affection, once struck deeply into its
substance, lives on through every blight and change !
Its buds may wither, its leaves fall, but the radi
cal fibres of the mangled shoot still drink vitality
from the heart. One moment of surrendered thought,
and this allured spirit flies back to that murmuring
stream, its verdant shore, its twilight softness, and the
lifted face of that enchanting one, whose evening
hymn ever mingles its melodious aspirations with
the homage of nature. Sweet worshipper ! may He
who- hath pencilled the leaves with beauty, given the
flowers their bloom, and lent music to the Jay
of the timid bird, hear thy prayer for thg ornaments
of a meek and quiet spirit, and graciously remem
ber thee in that day when he shall number up his
jewels. The lady of Scio, whom I have faintly sketch
ed, would be too flattering a representative of her
sex here; she is not very closely approached in
beauty, except by her sisters of the neighboring
isles. The natives of this city are generally of a
much less captivating person ; their fondness for the
hot bath injures their complexion ; while their se
dentary habits impart a premature fulness to their
forms ; yet both of these evils might be counteract
ed, did the usages of society allow them the privi
lege of frequent exercise in the open air ; but they
seldom move much abroad till after their marriage .
24

278 THOUGHTS IN ATHENS.
and though this usually takes place while they are
very young, yet nature has already been forced to
imbibe its less pleasing hue and shape. Their seclu
sion is relaxed on a few of their holy days ; on such
occasions they may be encountered in the fragrant
fields, or on some shaded green, dancing through the
mazes of the Romaica, with a life and glee that makes
yoUiforget your years ; or when death has snatched
away one of their smiling circle, you may see them
occasionally carrying fresh flowers to strew on her
grave, and singing the songs which she loved over the
dreams of her hallowed rest. There is something
in this custom most touchingly devoted and endear
ing ; it retains the deceased within the warmest em
braces of our remembrance ; it embalms her within
the very bosom of our softest affections ; it sheds a
cherished immortality over all her delicate virtues.
It fills the mourner with fidelity, and makes the lan
guage of the unhealed heart —
" Heu ! quanto minus est cum reliquis versari quam tui meminisse !"
Greece cannot now present us with one female
writer of celebrity ; nor could she even in her best
days furnish many examples of great excellence in
this form. The lyre of Sappho owed half its fire
and fame to the solitude of her pre-eminence over
her less gifted sex ; and the eloquence of Aspasia
derived no inconsiderable portion of its admiration
from the absence of rivalry. It would seem as if
the female mind, whether reared amid the inspiring

FEMALE WRITER . 279
scenes of Greece, or among the tamer landscapes
of other zones, may realize the full measure of its
capabilities, and not reach the most lofty or pro
found sentiments of our nature. It may have bright
feelings, glittering fancies, quick and tender emo
tions ; but it will not have deep and self-sustained
convictions, exalted and original creations, an un
shaken consciousness of innate power, which no
flattery can dazzle, no adversity subdue ; it will not
leave the print of a gigantic footstep in' the moral
pavements of the age, to be pondered by generations
yet unborn.
The defect of female writers, where they attempt
great themes, is a want of strength. They have
sensibility, pathos, quick-coming visions of trans-
cendant loveliness; but they want energy; they
want that grasping and subduing faculty which sub
jects every thing to its main purpose ; they want the
power of condensing their emotions into a solid
current that shall roll on deep, enduring, and resist
less. Their thoughts have delicacy of point, but
they want massive strength; they penetrate, but
they never overwhelm. Their creations are beauti
ful, and often impressive, but never fearfully de
praved or terribly sublime. They have no Hamlet
shuddering over a murdered father's wrongs, and
veiling his avenging purpose under the mockery of
madness ; no Macbeth, clutching the visionary
falchion, and quailing at the deep damnation of his

260 THOUGHTS IN ATHENS.
intended crime ; no Michael, entrusted with the
citadel of heaven, and encountering hostile legions,
armed with the fearful courage of despair ; no un
subdued monarch of evil, lifting in pride and agony
his thunder-scarred front from his couch of everlast
ing fire !
To these great conceptions of the soul, the
female mind is a stranger. It has never been the
source from which the master passions of our nature
have sprung on their errands of thunder. It has
never been the fathomless gulf from which those
forms have issued, whose shadows have cast the
globe in disastrous twilight ; it has never sunk a
deeper pit through the flames and horrors of an
unveiled hell ! I would not, however, lightly value
the beautiful and touching merits of female writers.
Their influence on the more tractable qualities of our
nature is inestimable. Through the less difficult
passes, and over the easier heights, which alternate
through the sphere of mental activity, they glide
with an ease and celerity that justly awaken our
admiration. But they have never scaled the high
est heaven of invention ; never left the print of their
goings along the deepest foundations of mind.
I ask pardon of the ladies for this seemingly un
just, and wholly unpremeditated, stricture. Illiberal
as it may appear, it implies the absence of nothing
that could enhance the esteem of those whose affec
tion and respect are worthy of their solicitude. It

FEMALE WRITERS. 281
is not the eagle that screams exultingly amid Alpine
steeps and storms, that moves most warmly the love
and admiration of man ; it is rather the beautiful
bird that sings at his window, and converts the soft
valley through which he strays, into sweet har
mony ; and such, in her true sphere, is woman ; not
that the mere exercise of these pleasing attributes
embraces the whole design of her existence, far from
it ; she has duties and responsibilities of a higher
order : but it is her very nature, in being happy her
self, to make others so ; nor is it ordinarily possible
for her to atone for the absence of this disposition to
please, by the exercise of sterner qualities. Her aim
should be to avail herself of those mysterious ave
nues to the heart, which she alone can thread, and
there move softly and triumphantly over each foun
tain of thought, emotion, and desire. Her influence
should be like that of the dew, noiseless and unob
served, but creating widely around deep life and
verdure. The men of Greece, though of a less command
ing presence than their Asiatic conquerors, are yet
not deficient in personal endowments. They are
slightly above the medium stature, and of a symmetri
cal, sinewy formation. They work, walk, and con
verse with energy ; every motion bespeaks muscu
lar vigor ; every word betrays a sleepless, inquisi
tive mind. The face is strikingly indicative of their
character. Their thin lips reveal the quickness of their
24*

262 WALKS IN ATHENS.
passions ; while their restless, darting eyes disclose
their fickleness of purpose, versatility of thought,
and treacherous instability of faith. Their manner
is that of men acting more from caprice than con
viction, more from impulse than reflection; their
conduct has therefore a recklessness of consequences
that often plunges them in difficulties ; but their
ingenuity, in extricating themselves from the results
of their inconsideration, seems never to fail them.
They are as fertile in the inventions of an escape
from difficulty, as they have been thoughtless in
getting into it. They are generally the most deter
mined when their situation is the most desperate;
and the most brave when they contend at the great
est odds. Give them an insignificant fire-ship, and
they will rush into the centre of a hostile fleet ; or
arm them with a concealed torpedo, and no maga
zine would be safe that could be reached by the
most daring stratagem or suicidal hardihood.
A Greek very rarely reaches the middle of life,
without being married. His earliest and fondest
solicitude is to place himself in a situation that may
justify his marriage. He considers life without this
crowning change, as little better than thrown away.
He appears to be governed in this matter not so
much by the suggestions of nature, as the dictates of
pride ; not so much from the yearning force of affec
tion, as the promptings of vanity. His object seems
to be the attainment of that esteem and importance

HABITS OF THE GREEKS. 283
in the community, which the generous responsibili
ties of the wedded state confer. Nor should he be
accused of a cold, calculating policy in the absence
of motives more devoted and earnest ; for he may
have never enjoyed even a passing glance of the
being that is to cheer and dignify his home. The
conditions of the union are usually arranged between
the parents of the parties, while they may be yet
very young ; and they meet, perhaps, for the first
time, at the foot of the altar : there can, therefore,
be little of that affection founded on mutual know
ledge and sympathy. Yet instances of infidelity
among them are rare ; and, when separated by the
grave, they are slow to seek, in the pleasures of a
new connection, a refuge from their solitude and
grief. They afford, in their example, no countenance
to those who hesitate and tremble through life, over
the frightful commitments of the marriage vow.
Such men are generally in the enjoyment of an in
come sufficiently ample to meet all their real, and
most of their imaginary wants ; but they are unwil
ling to part with any portion of it, for the sake of
rendering themselves more respectable and useful
members of society, or for the enjoyment of those
sentiments connected with the higher and more gene
rous qualities of our nature. They love themselves
so devotedly — are so well satisfied with their own
insignificance, that they have no affections or con-

284 WALKS IN ATHENS.
cern to bestow upon another ; they resemble the
spider, who weaves his web for himself, and having
secured his fly, retreats to his dusty covert in the
verge of his little domain, and there wrapping him
self up, reappears no more, except when some luck
less insect has fallen into his tattered snare. There
are, indeed, exceptions to this ; but ordinarily, celi
bacy results from a poor, self-cherishing disposition, or
an absence of those qualities which can interest and
engage the other sex ; and in either case the indivi
dual is deservedly an object of contemptuous pity.
Having said thus much in support of the opinions
very properly entertained by the ladies, I return to
the men of Greece, where an old bachelor is as
rarely encountered, as an iceberg in the torrid zone.
Of the wisdom of the Athenian youth, in their
predilection for the marriage state, no one can doubt
who is acquainted with their dispositions ; for, inde
pendent of the happiness such a state affords, they
are frequently prevented by it from indulging those
wandering and wild propensities, which too often
lead to dissipation and crime : it makes each one
feel that he cannot go to ruin alone — that there is at
least one other to be involved in the calamity ; and
this thought, if he has the heart of a man, must im
pose a powerful restraint. A beloved, devoted wife,
is the guardian angel of man. Of the susceptibility
of the Athenian, and his romantic turn, I should
want no stronger evidence than that presented in

HABITS OF THE GREEKS. 285
the chained attitude and enticing tones of one be
neath the balcony of a neighboring window. Beauty
is above, that has made him heedless of the flowers
his footstep crushes ; eyes are there, that have made
him forget the stars that are beyond ; and the moon
light streams upon his dewy locks as he sings :
Canst thou not leave the princely hall,
Its pleasure, pomp, and power,
And be as bright and gay to all
Within my vine-ciad bower !
The May birds there shall sweetly sing,
To chase each starting tear,
And round thy path shall violets spring, ;
The loveliest of the year.
The laughing rills shall brightly blend
Thy smiles in every wake,
And shout thy name, as they descend
In beauty to the lake.
And neath the rich, embowering vine
Shall ring thy voice of health :
Say, wilt thou not for these resign
The pageantry of wealth 7

CHAPTER XX.

Athena — Moral influence of her Memorials — Features of the Revolution
— Condurt of the Greeks — Their future prospects — Charges brought
against them— intellectual and moral claims cf the Turks and Greeks
compared — Genius of the two Nations contrasted — Sources of reli
gious Influence — Missionaries— The missionary Enterpriae.

The Greeks have preserved, through a long
series of unexampled disasters, many of those during
intellectual traits, which distinguished their remote
ancestors. The engines of despotism have been
unable to break down their mountains, obstruct their
streams, or destroy the proud monuments of their
geuius. These unsubdued, spirit-stirring objects, with
all their associations, lofty and tender, have been
constantly before them, recalling the past, reproach
ing the present, and filling the future with the anti
cipated triumphs of rallied patriotism and courage.
They have not therefore, at any period of their mis
fortunes been utterly broken in pride, purpose, and
hope ; the chain has galled without subduing them ;
they have yielded to its weight, but, ever and anon,
their indignation has flashed along its shaking links.
They could not but cherish some wild thoughts of
freedom, by the waves of Salamis, and the graves of
Marathon ; they could not but remember and mourn

FEATURES OF THE REVOLUTION. 287
on the banks of the Peneus, and the ambrosial steeps
of Parnassus ; they could not but breath their burn
ing vows among the mangled relics of their storied
cities, and over the insulted ashes of their ancestral
dead ! These memorials sustained, from age to age,
that spirit, resolution, and self-respect, which finally
burst forth with the avenging force of a dark and
deeply cherished wrong.
They made up their minds to die, sooner than
be the passive instruments of transmitting this con
tinued inheritance of bondage and shame. They
encountered their oppressors with a force that made
their resistance, at first, more a subject of derision
than alarm. But courage and decided patriotism
seldom reckon nicely upon numbers ; they had that
within them which no superiority of strength could
subdue — a spirit resolutely resolved on freedom !
They had no arms, amunitions, or system of opera
tion ; no disciplined legions to force the enemy from
his strong positions ; no fleet to prevent the access
of hostile squadrons ; they rose as each man's sense
of duty prompted, and siezed such weapons as lay
within their reach ; it might be a bludgeon, but it was
wielded by an arm true to its trust ; it might be a
boat, but it was armed with concealed fire ; it might
be a rock, but it went on its precipitous course with
unerring aim ; or it might be the fragment of a co
lumn, but, like the pillars of Gaza, it crushed the in
surers with the insulted. Few men of any age or

288 FEATURES OF THE REVOLUTION.
nation have achieved more with the same slender
and distracted means of enforcing their purpose ;
and instead of the reproaches levelled against them
by ignorance and animosity, they deserve the plau
dits of mankind.
It is vain to accuse them of a want of that spirit
which can assert and maintain its dignity at the
highest sacrifice and peril ; thousands espoused the
cause who could have had no motive for their conduct
except their national honor ; they pledged their lives
and fortunes to the issue of a conflict that could in
no event confer any personal advantage. Their
want of union and a harmonized system of operation
was more their misfortune than their fault ; it flowed
more from the untowardness of their outward con
dition than any perverseness of spirit. They were
like a mountain lake shaken convulsively against its
yielding boundaries, and falling in many separate
streams, instead of one deep overwhelming torrent
If it had been their desire, it was not in their power,
to concentrate their forces, they had not the means
of subsisting them in that compact form ; their only
resource was in a desultory warfare, and the access
it furnished to the scanty provisions which the
country precariously afforded. They were, per
haps, premature in their first step ; too hasty in
raising the standard of Liberty ; but that step, wise
or fatal, had now been taken, the standard had been
unfurled, the gauntlet had been cast in the face of

FEATURES OF THE REVOLUTION. 289
the enemy, and they must abide the consequence !
It was no longer a debatable question, or an indul
gent choice of evils ; they had no mercy or forgive
ness to expect even in a relenting submission ; and
they had provided no refuge in disaster.
They had been goaded to this fearful measure
by a series of wrongs, that made endurance a
deeper humiliation than defeat. Their fields had
been plundered successively of their harvests ; their
flocks and herds driven off to the stalls of the
stranger ; their sons forced into foreign wars ; their
daughters made the victims of privileged lust ; their
temples and shrines rendered desolate; and their
religion scouted with derision and scorn. They
pondered indignantly the history of their misfortunes ;
they saw the long road on which their fathers had
travelled down in chains to the grave ; they heard
from the dungeon and rack the dying exclamations
of their chiefs ; and drawing their blades, swore
never to sheath them again in the condition of
bondsmen and slaves. We, who experienced none
of their grievances, and can scarcely comprehend
the nature and extent of their provocations, may
perhaps, question the policy of their conduct ; talk
coolly of their privileges ; and dilate on the growing
extent of their commerce. But a nation that has
bowed for ages to the yoke, never rises, with a
desperate inferiority of force, against her oppressors,
unless provoked to it by a most crushing accumula-
25

290 TRAITS OF THE GREEKS.
tion of abuse. The very fact of her rising under
such fearful disadvantages evinces the depth of her
wrongs, and affords an earnest of her final triumph
over the disastrous and degrading effects of her
thraldom. Her present ideas of liberty, though not suffi
ciently chastened and sober, are yet far from being
the wild and reckless conceptions which many sup
pose. She has not yet become sufficiently tran
quillized to discover, with impressive distinctness,
all the delicate bearings of her true interests. We
require too much of her, in expecting that she will
settle at once into a calm and steady pursuit of those
objects connected with the greatest amount of public
and private good. We should recollect the fierce
and desperate nature of her revolution ; it was not
a change coming calmly over the surface of society,
Effecting only the sentiments of men ; it was a great
decisive conflict, involving principle, life, religion,
property, every thing dear upon earth — waged with
an unforgiving foe, and at perilous odds. The
nation was convulsed to its centre ; the very foun
dations of social order displaced ; and all bonds,
save those which bound her to a forlorn hope,
broken up.
The struggle is now over ; the battle has been
fought and won ; but the intense excitement, which
thrilled and absorbed the public mind, though some
years have elapsed, has not yet entirely subsided.

EFFECTS OF THE REVOLUTION. 291
Men have not as yet unconcernedly returned to their
quiet avocations and individual duties. They very
naturally take a deep and jealous interest in the
character and measures of their government ; they
cannot tolerate the idea of being deprived of the
smallest portion of that liberty for which they have
poured out their blood like water. This will ex
plain the cause of the death of Capo d' Istrias. They
invited him to the government, as a man of liberal
and enlightened sentiments ; they found him, with a
few relieving exceptions, selfish and tyrannical ; and
were restless, till they had rid themselves of his
misrule. This discontent did not arise mainly from
an impatience of wholesome authority ; it was not
the expressions of a factious temper ; it proceeded
from a burning conviction that the feelings wants,
and interests of the country were not consulted.
That there are evil-minded men in the nation, who
prefer a state of anarchy to one of repose, is un
doubtedly true ; but this is not the disposition of the
great body of the people. They want a popular,
vigorous, and intelligent government, equal laws,
and a freedom from oppression. These blessings
they are now beginning to realize, under the mild
and enlightened policy of Otho ; nor do I believe
they will long withhold from him their united and
cordial support.
They are now in possession of their long-lost
Athens,, with the rich memorials of its storied splen-

292 TRAITS OF THE GREEKS.
dor. These imperishable relics will be to them a
new bond of union, a fresh source of pride, patriot
ism, and self-respect. For this rich gift they are
indebted to the intervention of England and France ;
whose conduct in their liberation is far from merit
ing those sentiments of distrust with which it is gen
erally regarded. It is natural that they should take
a lively interest in Greece ; indeed what nation, that
is not dead to every nobler impulse, can fail to do
it ? The monuments of her transcendant genius are
in all lands ; the story of her grandeur and grief, her
magnificence and desolation, has reached every heart.
Her resistance to the frightful encroachments of
barbarism ; her devotion to the rights of human
nature ; her sacrifices and sufferings in defence of
the religion of her fathers, have been the eloquent
themes of thousands, at the hearth, in the sanctuary,
and in the halls of legislation. It was these which
stirred public sympathy so warmly in her behalf;
which enlisted the humane and enlightened states
men of Europe in her favor ; which sunk the arma
ments of the oppressor in the Gulf of Navarino ; it
is these which now sustain the cabinets of England
and France, in their efforts to cherish and defend this
most injured and unfortunate people. They are act
ing on the force of public opinion ; the convictions
and approbation of every liberal and intelligent com
munity. Sinister motives may indeed enter into
their conduct, — but men are not angels ; when the

TRAITS OF THE GREEKS. 293
great interests of human nature are promoted, we
should be satisfied, nor be over curious in searching
for the latent springs of a possibly selfish policy.
Greece will ascend in the scale of nations ; and the
blessings of all times await the men who have
paved the way for her future exaltation and happi
ness. The moral features of Greece, though inferior to
her intellectual, are yet perhaps not below what any
nation, even the most sternly virtuous, would ex
hibit, after being subjected, for an equal length of
time, to the same Vandal stupidity, tyranny, and
crime. It is matter of wonder that the storms of
revolution and disaster, that have been for ages
rending and overthrowing the bulwarks of her mental
strength, should have left even a vestige of her un
regarded virtue. Yet she has come forth from this
long series of calamities — doubly deepened by the
moral night in which they were inflicted — with an
elevation and rectitude of character far above the
deserved frowns of the age. She has brought forth
her love of country, undiminished ; her religion,
with its altars, unquenched ; her reverence of con
jugal fidelity, paternal obligation, and filial duty, un
impaired. These alone should save her from the
bitter denunciations of -those who blind themselves
to her trials, or are incapable of sympathizing with
her misfortunes.
Let the Greeks be brought before their accusers
25*

294 TRAITS OF THE GREEKS.
and allowed the opportunity of answering to the
charges, uncharitably preferred against them. They
are accused of extreme avarice ; they exhibit their
desolate hearths, hold up their empty hands, and ask
where are the evidences, the fruits of their covetous
dispositions ? They are accused of insincerity ;
they refer you to that system of jealousy and in
justice, under which they have been compelled to
conceal even the suggestions of natural affection ;
and they ask if their deportment, while suffering
under the intrigues and extortions of a rapacious
barbarian, is to be taken as a criterion of their
truth and honesty ? They are accused of ingrati
tude ; they remind you of the violence and wrongs
to which the nations of Christendom, in forgetful-
ness of the obligations of a common faith, and the
claims of outraged humanity, have for ages aban
doned them ! and they ask if the injuries of this
treachery and moral hardihood can be more than
wiped out by a few self-accusing regrets, and tardy
manifestations of sympathy ? They are accused of
ignorance and superstition ; they point you to the
remnants of their ruined libraries, the obliterated
foundations of their schools and colleges, and ask,
what else can be expected under a government,
where learning is synonymous with treason, and en
lightened religion a crime ? They are accused of
a turbulent, indomitable disposition ; they refer you
to the fierce struggles of their revolution, and ask, if

TRAITS OF THE GREEKS. 295
a nation that has been so violently convulsed, can at
once become calm and tractable in all its elements ?
They are accused of robbery and piracy ; they ex
hibit the fetters of their absolute servitude, and ask
with indignant earnestness, if, in this helpless condi
tion, the whole nation is to be held responsible for
the conduct of a few outlaws, haunting their shores,
and distressing their mountain glens ?
Those who denounce the Greeks as a nation of
klepts, pirates, and heartless impostors, draw their
sweeping inferences from a few individual examples
of perfidy and outrage, with which the great body
of the people had no participation, and for which
they cannot, with any shadow of reason, be held
accountable. We should regard it as maliciously
unjust to have the treason of an Arnold, the robber
ies of a Hare, and the piratical crimes of a Gibbs,
cast in the face of our whole country ; and though
these examples of guilt and shame were to multiply
in every port and city of the Union, still we should
triumphantly appeal to our national honor, virtue,
rectitude ; and indignantly hurl back the indiscrim
inate imputation into the teeth of the accuser. It is
not the vices or virtues of a few individuals that
stamp the character of a people ; it is the character
istics of the great mass ; and as these are pure, or
depraved, the nation as such must stand, or fall.
Let the Greeks be tried by this standard, and it
will be found, that their acquittal will be more the

296 TURKS AND GREEKS.
verdict of impartial justice, than the decisions of a
lenient commiseration.
My affection for Greece, my confidence in the
remnants of her political and moral energy, may,
perhaps, appear too unqualified. I am aware, how
difficult it is for one, situated as I am among the
evidences of her past greatness and present suffer
ings, so far to divest himself of all feeling, as to see
distinctly her true character and condition. But,
what I have said has been uttered in a spirit of
honesty ; with the simple desire of doing her justice,
and of shielding her from indiscriminate reproach.
It has become a prevailing disposition with travel
lers — a flippant vice of their pens — to eulogize the
Turks, and denounce the Greeks ; to allow the for
mer virtues, which they never possessed, and charge
the latter with crimes, which they never committed.
I have no wish to raise the one by lowering the
other, to deify the victim by demolishing the idol.
If we compare the two, we shall find the Mussul
man morally the superior, the Greek intellectually
so ; and we shall find all the features in the religious,
social, and political condition of the two nations, as
they have existed for a long series of years, contri
buting to such a result.
We may omit the influences of education, for they
have been extremely meagre, and equally so with
both. To glance at other causes and their corres
ponding effects : the Mussulman has enjoyed his re-

TURKS AND GREEKS. 297
ligion without molestation or rebuke : and though
the precepts of the Koran are grossly deficient and
culpably indulgent in many respects, yet they stre
nuously inculcate some of the great cardinal virtues
which lie at the foundation of individual excellence
and national worth. This religion has been instilled
into the Mussulman from his earliest years, imbuing
his feelings, forming his principles, shaping his con
duct, and connecting the undisguised manifestation
of its spirit with his highest moral dignity. The
Greek, on the contrary, has loosely clung to his reli
gion amid sneers and persecution — a religion that
has been abused by its friends, and trampled upon
by its enemies — a religion in which the vital prin
ciples of Christianity have become almost extinct — a
religion too vague to excite interest, too feeble to
mould character, and too absurd to inspire respect.
This will account, so far as the influences of religion
are concerned, for the moral superiority of the Mus
sulman. Another source of advantage will be found in
the social condition of the Mussulman. He has ever
had his home, with which the stranger has not inter
meddled ; a home to which his warmest feelings
have turned ; where he has garnered up his hopes ;
and around which his pride, ambition, and self-re
spect have rallied. The Greek, on the contrary, has
had no home that he could call his own ; it might
be his to-day, another's to-morrow ; he has had no

298 TURKS AND GREEKS.
security for his family, his flocks, or his fields ; has
never been certain of reaping the harvest of the seed
he is sowing ; of gathering the fruit of the tree he is
planting ; of wearing the fleece of the lambs he is
tending ; or of even preserving from pollution that
guileless daughter he is rearing into womanhood.
He has therefore been without those motives to in
dustry, those springs of ambition, those strong in
centives to a lofty virtuous example, which have
been operating on the Mussulman, and which have
conduced, in no slight degree, to his moral supe
riority. The political condition of the two, though ope
rating against the Greek in every other respect, yet
so far as intellect merely is to be affected by it, has
perhaps been in his favor. He has never submitted,
except in form, to that absolute despotism which has
trammelled the mind of the Mussulman: he has
never subscribed to the doctrine of passive obe
dience: he has never acquiesced in that tyranny
which reaches the soul : he has never believed that
one man, whether representing the Prophet of Mecca,
or presenting himself under the awful symbols of the
Roman hierarch, has a right to seal the lips of mil
lions. He has indeed been a slave in his outward
condition, but his mind has been free : his limbs have
been fettered, but his spirit has soared: he has
clanked the chain, but it has been in sight of Ther
mopylae and Platsea ! He has never utterly relin-

TURKS AND GREEKS. 299
quished the hope of freedom ; never given up all as
lost : never abandoned himself to despair. Hence
we find him, intellectually, an exception to the tor
pid myriads over whom the car of triumph has been
driven, and intellectually superior to the acquiescing,
unresisting Mussulman.
The Turks and Greeks, though living for centu
ries under the same government, the same political
institutions, and in constant habits of intercourse,
yet present, in their characteristic features, even
to the casual observer, the most striking contrasts :
the Turk is patient and enduring ; the Greek,
restless and refractory : the Turk is inquiring and
distrustful ; the Greek, inconsiderate and sanguine :
the former acts from reflection ; the latter, from im
pulse : the Turk submits in silence to his wrongs,
and conceals his resentments till the perpetrator is
within his fatal reach ; the Greek flies into passion,
and loses his redress in the loudness of his premoni
tory execrations : the Turk exercises his ingenuity
in preventing a disaster ; the Greek, in escaping
from its consequences : the Turk fails in his enter
prises from a want of confidence in himself; the
Greek, from a vain, over-calculating excess of this
confidence : the former is defeated by having too
little enthusiasm, the latter, by having too much:
the Turk will liberate a caged bird, and lop off the
head of a human being : the Greek will keep the
cage close, and overthrow the gallows, when per-

800 TURKS AND GREEKS.
haps it ought to stand : the Turk takes care of his
horse and dog, the Greek takes care of himself: the
former feeds the stranger, but puts him to death for
the impiety of a look into his harem : the latter
allows him to kiss his wife, and then starve : the
Turk cherishes his wife here, and divorces her in a
future state : the Greek neglects her here, and ex
pects to live with her hereafter : the Turk prides
himself in the number and appearance of his chil
dren ; the Greek in the number and livery of his
servants : the Turk thinks of his dinner and siesta ;
the Greek, of his toilet and promenade : the former
lives to please himself ; the latter, to excite the ad
miration of others : the Turk washes his body, and
neglects his apparel ; the Greek, washes his apparel
and neglects his body : the former uncovers his feet
as a token of respect ; the latter, his head : the
Turk professes ignorance upon all subjects ; the
Greek, upon none : the former leaves every event to
the disposal of Providence ; the latter, to his own
wits. The Turk will overreach you at the council
table ; the Greek, in the bazaar : the former deceives
you in the conditions of a compact ; the latter, in
the fulfilment : the Turk ascribes his misfortunes to
an unalterable destiny, meets them with composure,
and avails himself of the slight opportunities that
may remain ; the Greek ascribes them to capricious
accident, or his own folly, endures them murmur-
ingly, and often spurns what is left, in vexation for

GREEKS AND TURKS. 301
what is lost : the Turk, in going into battle, relies
upon solid physical force; the Greek, upon dexte
rity and stratagem : the former calls upon Mahomet,
and fights for his religion ; the latter calls upon the
Virgin Mary, and fights for himself: the Turk re
gards an absolute despotism as the ordinance of his
Prophet, and religiously renders it obedience ; the
Greek considers it the ordinance of the devil, and
indignandy resists : the Turk, if required to relin
quish a habit, thinks of its origin ; the Greek, of
what is to take its place: with the former, nothing
can outweigh the sanctions of antiquity ; with the
latter, nothing prevail against the promises of no
velty : the Turk is a true devotee to his religion ;
the Greek makes his religion his convenience : with
the former, his piety is the substance of things hoped
for ; with the latter, it is the evidence of things
seen : the Turk tolerates the Christian infidel in the
exercise of his religion, but decapitates a convert to
it from his own ; the Greek burns the partial dis
senter, and allows the hopeless apostate to escape :
with the former, the closer the resemblance, the
stronger the affection; with the latter, the nearer
the approximation, the greater the antipathy : the
Turk kisses his death-warrant, and thinks of heaven ;
the Greek tramples it under his foot, and seizes his
weapons: the former dies like a philosopher, the
latter like a glEtdiatori ';
I must not leave Athens without alluding again
26

302 SCHOOLS OF MISSIONARIES.
briefly to one eminently salutary source of influ
ence fostered here by the piety and benevolence of
my countrymen ; I refer to the schools under the
care of our intelligent, devoted missionaries. These
institutions, though existing without parade, and ac
complishing their ends in silence, are doing more to
enlighten and permanently benefit the country than,
perhaps, any advantages in her political condition.
They are conveying the elements of social and moral
life to multitudes of the young ; they are expanding,
replenishing, and elevating the minds of those who
will one day shape the character and hopes of Greece.
I speak with more earnestness respecting the utility
of these missionary establishments, being aware of
the skeptical apathy with which they are regarded
by many, of the fanatical shape which they as
sume in the distempered imagination of others, and
knowing that no man, who may read these pages,
will accuse me of a blinding bias, of having my feel
ings run too deeply and wildly on the subject of reli
gion, or deny me a large share of that confidence
due to an impartial witness. I will never be the in
strument of deception, even where supposed good is
to be attained, or hold up a false light, though it may
shed its uncertain ray on a portion of that path
which leads to heaven.
I have been throngh the schools under the care
of our missionaries in Greece, at Constantinople, and
in Asia Minor ; have observed the character of the

CHARACTER OF MISSIONARIES. 303
instructions imparted, the age, condition, and apti
tudes of those who receive them, and have no hesi
tation in saying, and in holding myself responsible
for the reasonableness and practical truth of the de
claration, that philanthropy could not have suggested
a system of means more replete with exalted and
enduring benefits to these communities. They are
pure and constant lights in lands of doubt and
darkness ; they are fountains of science, political
wisdom, and moral truth, in realms of ignorance,
superstition, and crime. They will, one day, be re
ferred to by many who have here received their first
impulses in a career of extended usefulness and
sanctified fame ; and multitudes, leaving the world,
will bequeath them the benediction of their parting
prayers. The missionaries, on whom the labor and care of
these schools devolve, are not the visionary enthu
siasts that some ignorantly suppose ; they are men of
learning, piety, and sound practical sense. The end
they have in view is a diffusion of that knowledge
which lies at the foundation of virtue, freedom, and
religion ; and many of the happy results which they
confidently anticipate from their labors, will as truly
be realized, as that a stream, notwithstanding its
many windings and partial obstructions, will event
ually find its way to the ocean. Years may pass
away over their purpose, the grave perhaps close
over them while the fruits of their labors are yet

304 CHARACTER OF MISSIONARIES.
only in the sprouting germ, but the blade will spring
up, reach its heighth and maturity, blossom and
bring forth, and other times will reap the golden
harvest. Yet no class of men are more miscon
ceived in their character, or more injuriously misrepre
sented in their motives, than these same self-denying
missionaries. As if to give the last shade of a repelling absurd
ity to their professions, they are represented as
obeying the dictates of a sordid selfishness. If it
b,e selfish to leave one's home, kindred, and country,
while the heart is yet young and filled with tender
affections and trust toward these objects ; if it be
selfish to take up one's permanent abode in a land of
strangers, and there, with the promises of a mere
subsistence, to live, labor, and die for the benefit of
others, without one relative to administer to our last
necessities, or cherish our dying request — if this be
selfishness, then indeed are our missionaries open to
the opprobrious imputation. But I would not ask for
a higher honor than the inscription of such selfish
ness on my humble tomb. These devoted men are
also held up as a class of self-exiled fanatics, whose
exclusive object is the conversion of mankind to the
peculiar tenets of their own creed. If such were
their object, I can only say they have adopted a very
inauspicious mode of accomplishing it. Instead of
establishing schools, diffusing knowledge, and en
couraging a spirit of inquiry, they should have

MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE. 305
riveted still closer the chains of ignorance, left their
Bibles behind them, and denounced at once all right
of private judgment. But they are engaged in no
such narrow project as this ; their mission is of a
higher order ; they anticipate results of a more bene
ficial and expanded character.
The Christian, whose benevolence and faith are
enlisted in these missionary establishments, rightly
considers the question of their expediency and ulti
mate success as conclusively settled, or at least as
placed above his control by Him who has made their
maintenance an imperative duty on the Church.
Nor is he dependent, solely, for confidence and en
couragement upon the spirit of this divine, uncon
ditional injunction. He knows that the same religion
which he is now endeavoring to extend through the
earth, was eighteen hundred years ago propagated
with incredible success by the same means he is
now using, and under circumstances incomparably
less auspicious. It had then no connection with
princes, no alliance with the schools or philosophical
systems of the age, no wealth or learning at its
command ; it was derided by the great, and rejected
by the obscure ; ridiculed by the scholar, and per
secuted by the rabble ; its only friends were a few
ignorant fishermen, whose insignificance made their
cause still more contemptible in the opinion of man
kind. Yet, with the friendship of these poor unlet
tered men, it was at length enabled to secure a
26*

306 MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE.
foothold, and began ere long to assume an impor
tance sufficient to take from opposition its conde
scending sneer. Its enemies now rose against it in
banded hosts, bent upon its extermination ; its friends
were seized, scourged, and put to death; but in
losing one advocate it won a thousand ; and con
tinued to extend the presence of its power till, with
out force, without a return of evil, without a retalia
ting word or look ; and breathing only the language
of forgiveness, compassion, and good will to men,
the whole civilized world lay prostrate at its feet.
Though centuries have intervened, empires that
were disappeared, new continents been discovered
and peopled, unprecedented systems of idolatry and
superstition introduced, and the moral features of
the whole globe changed, yet it is the same religion
that the Christian is now endeavoring to extend, and
by the same means : human nature too has undergone
no change ; it is now what it was in the days of the
apostles, and it will be in the last man what it was
in the first : truth is also immutable ; its clearness
and force may at times be obstructed by circum
stances foreign to itself, but when fully apprehended,
its effect must ever be essentially the same, pure
and unmixed conviction ; so that the Christian has
now the same instrument, and the same material
to operate upon, as had the primitive disciples. If
successes were achieved then, they can be achieved
now ; if skepticism and infidelity were routed then,

MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE. 307
they can be routed now ; if false religions, sustained
by temples, shrines and oracles, were overthrown
then, they can certainly, without these stupendous
auxiliaries, be overthrown now : only let the truth be
brought to bear with clear and constant rays upon
the human mind, and disbelief must vanish, doubt
and cavil disappear, like the lingering shadows of
night before the risen orb of day. The enterprise,
therefore, in which the Christian is engaged, if pro
secuted with a becoming zeal and faith, cannot
finally fail. He who has made it a duty on the
Church, who has connected it with his visible glory,
and sanctified it with his blood, will not withhold
from it the energies of his omnipotent grace : it will
move on with increasing majesty and strength, till
it fills the world with the trophies of its transcendant
purity and power. Then will be realized on this
earth the prophetic vision of him, who saw the
wilderness and solitary place made glad, the desert
rejoice and blossom as the rose, the hills break forth
into singing, the trees of the field clap their hands,
and the ransomed of the Lord come to Zion with
songs and everlasting joy on their heads, — then will
" The dwellers in the vales and on the rocks
Shout to each other, and the mountain tops
From distant 'mountains catch the flying joy ;
Till, nation after nation taught the strain,
Earth rolls the rapturous Hosaflnah round."

CHAPTER XXI.
Departure from Athens — Feelings on leaving Greece — Reasons for
writing this Journal — Armenian Bride — Entertainment on board
ship — Sentiment of an Athenian gentleman — Washington's last
injunction — Passage to Mahon— Arrival of friends — Winter amuse
ments — The waltz and camp meeting contrasted.
From the splendors of that millennial vision, into
which my feelings unintentionally wandered, the
reader will now come back with me to the poor and
desolafc strand of Athens. If anticipated triumphs
and happiness inspirit the mind, and render us supe
rior to present disappointments, afflictions deepen the
tone of its sympathies, and inspire those fraternal feel
ings in which the best impulses of the heart are exhi
bited. The dazzling parade of power and the sump
tuous show of wealth may awaken sentiments of ambi
tion, envy, or exultation, but it is the meek face of sor
row, directing our thoughts to our own infirmities and
the sufferings of those around us, that teaches us
how to estimate human life aright, and die with dig
nity and composure. Let him who would repine at
his lot, and murmur at the dispensations of Provi
dence, think for a moment of the millions who are
without a shelter for their heads, and without the
known means of a naked subsistence : let him look
at the Grecian mother, anticipating the light in her

fcEPARTURE FROM GREECE. 309
willing task, and denying herself repose and com
fort, that she may provide for her orphan children :
the tears fall on her distaff as she works, but they
are not shed in despondency ; they are in recollection
of one whom she never more will see. O God!
though sickness waste this frame, and the blessings
of thy bounty be denied, yet never more shall a com
plaining word escape these lips, or a distrusting sigh
heave this heart.
I have left no place with such a clinging fond
ness and sympathetic grief as I felt, when my last
footstep parted with the soil of Greece : not that I
had ever drank deeply of her sacred founts, or more
than tasted her ambrosial fruits: but there was
something in the splendors of her past condition, the
still surviving relics of her transcendant genius, con
trasted with her present helplessness and woe, that
tenderly wed me to the spot. It was as if the face
of the one we love, and over whom the grave hath
closed, were to revisit us in our dreams. No man
of any susceptibility can come to this country with
out being made the wiser and better : the sphere of
his thoughts will be extended, his classical taste im
proved, and his conception of the powers of the
human mind enlarged ; while the sad aspect of de
cay and ruin, spread over all things around, will
soften his heart, and turn off his thoughts from his
own adversities to the deeper misfortunes of others.
Here he will stand over the tombless dust of thou-

310 WRITING A JOURNAL.
sands who were the pride of their age and the won
der of this, — over the sepulchre of a soaring nation,
pressed into the issues of death, by the mountain
weight of its calamities. He will say —
" Upon such a shrine,
What are our petty griefs 1 let me not number mine."
But to resume my long-neglected narrative: 1
must confess digression is my. fault, and candidly
own were a man to treat a wife with as much ne
glect, as I do my narrative, if she had any spirit she
would apply for a divorce, and if there were any
justice in the court, obtain it. Yet if I can be as
happy in any of these digressions as a lady is in her
postscript, which usually contains the pith and mar
row of her whole letter, I shall not regret them,
though criticism, with its straight lines and sharp
angles, cut them off from all hope of mercy ; I do not
write for critics, though they are a class of men for
whom I entertain a deep literary respect, but now
and then they canonize a book to which the public
refuses its homage, and again anathematize another
that is to ascend before their astounded vsion into
the beatitude of an imperishable fame ; nor do I
write for the bubbling breath of the indiscriminating
mass ; I would as soon chase the foam which the
sea heaves up against its reeking shore ; nor do I
write for fame from any source ; it is worrying
one's self to death in pursuit of a shadow : fifty years
hence it will be of no moment to me whether few

WRITING A JOURNAL. 311
or many ever heard of my existence ; though un
wept, unhonored, and unsung, yet the flower will
bloom just as freshly on my grave, and the bird sing
just as sweetly on the tree that shades my last sleep :
but I shall hardly win a belief to the sincerity of this
professed indifference to laurelled celebrity ; too
many have made the same declaration, and then,
like Young, sought an immortality in the splendor
of the lie ; nor do I write for money, for I would not
even transcribe the pages of this journal for every
farthing I may receive from its publication : I never,
to my recollection, copied but one article of which I
was the author, and that was a love letter, written
for another ; and it was couched in such majestic,
diplomatic terms, that it was more like a pulseless
skeleton than a palpitating heart ; nor do I write
under the vain expectation that these pages will
shed any light essentially new upon any of the topics
on wliich they touch, for learning has already ex
hausted its stores on these themes, as well as pedan
try its prattle ; every thing, that has left behind the
slightest token of its existence, has been traced ; the
lines of its original strength and beauty laid down ;
and a thousand things have been discovered that
never had any existence at all ; for what then, per
haps, the reader will ask, do you write ? simply be
cause the humor takes me ; I write while this invol
untary sentiment lasts, then throw the sheet aside ;
and however much I may value it at the moment,

312 HABITS OF THOUGHT.
the next day I care but little whether it goes to
readers or to rats : usually what pleases me most
at first, disgusts me most in the end : I often have
thoughts which appear, at the moment, exquisitely
beautiful, and carefully embalm them, but afterwards
find that I have only been preserving a bubble, or
wrapping new bandages around the mummy of an
other's brain ; and then again, a theme of surpassing
loveliness, appearing at first to partake more of
heaven than earth, will, by-and-by, drop its mask,
and display features that make me shudder in my
sleep — a type of the human heart ! Why, then, the
reader will ask, if you only expose yourself to mor
tification and terror, do you continue to write ? why
not denounce the whole as utter " vanity and vex
ation of spirit ?" Did not Solomon, who penned those
words, and spread their frightful force over all the
pursuits and hopes of man, still continue to write
proverbs ? So must I still continue to weave this
mental web, though it be of so thin a texture that a
heavy thought would fall through it, as a spent ball
through the gossamer that floats on the atmospheric
tides. But my narrative, which I was about resuming,
I have quite forgotten again; and forgotten it in
self, too,, that little, contemptible pool, which man
ever makes the ocean to the river of his thoughts.
Suspend every purpose and action that has a selfish
end, and this globe would become nearly as still and

DEPARTURE FROM ATHENS. 313
unconscious as it will, when, with its voiceless
dwellings and empty graves, it shall be cast off
among the wrecks and skeletons of other worn-out
worlds. But to resume — if I can remember where
I left off: " I think it was the coast that I
Was then describing — yes, it was— the coast
Lay at this period quiet as the sky,
The sanda untumbled, the blue waves untost."
So we shoved off in our boats from the strand
of the Piraeus, having in company a number of la
dies and gentlemen from Athens ; among the rest
an Armenian beauty, who had run away from the
Turkish capital and her home, with Mr. L., a gen
tleman more deeply tinctured with a love of adven
ture than is usual among the sober sons of Scotia.
She was now his bride, speaking just enough Eng
lish not to be able to disguise her feelings, and with
a native accent that made her imperfect sentences
still more pleasing. Seeing them together, and wit
nessing her feminine expressions of affection and
confidence, I could not but think there was some
thing in this mode of escaping from parental oppo
sition calculated, by casting the parties more unre
servedly on each other, to strengthen the ties of
mutual attachment. Yet I would not encourage.
such scapements ; although I once married a run
away couple — the parties being well known to me
— but just as the ceremony was concluded, the
father of the young lady rushed into the apartment,
27

314 DINNER ON BOARD SHIP.
calling, in a voice of thunder, for his daughter ; I
told him it was now too late, that he should have
come fifteen minutes sooner, but now it was all
over 1- He stood, for a moment, as if struck with
catalepsy; and, coming to, fixed his eye on me, and
sternly remarked, " I hold you, sir, responsible for
consequences." I told him his daughter had so
many of those virtues which he possessed, and
which had made him the distinguished pride and or
nament of his native city, that 1 would cheerfully
take the responsibility. He began to soften down,
and soon ordering an entertainment, became as
merry as any of the company. But to my narra
tive: Reaching our ship, which still lay anchored in
the eventful strait of Salamis, and surveying its
finished order, in which ladies ever take a lively
interest — it is so much like the neat arrangements
of a compact nursery — we sat down to an elegant
entertainment provided by Captain Read. The con
versation was quite as intellectual as usually obtains
on such occasions ; it ran on the present condition and
future prospects of Greece, and embraced many glow
ing predictions, embarrassed by none of those reser
vations and double constructions, which marred the
responses of Delos and Delphi. Wine, among its
other virtues, has a remarkable tendency to render
the heart sanguine ; and however correct the pro
verb, in vino Veritas, in reference to the secrets of

TOAST OF AN ATHENIAN. 315
one's own breast, I should doubt its applicability to
predictions. This dew of the spirit, as it is called,
refreshes its plant too suddenly ; the next day it is
found, like Jonah's nocturnal gourd, withered ; and
its possessor, like him too, perhaps, mad. But on
this occasion there was no excess in the grape;
and this was the more commendable, as we had
just come from the remains of the Temple of Bac
chus, with our imaginations still full of the phantoms
that reeled in giddy gladness through his festive rites.
One sentiment proposed on the occasion is especially
worthy of being recorded, more on account of the
admonition it suggests, than the compliment it con
veys ; it was offered by Mr. Pyllas, an Athenian
gentleman, combining the courage and energy of
the soldier with the accomplishments of the scholaiv
" America," said he, " is so much the more worthy
of praise, in her successful devotion to Liberty, since,
in the sentiment of Demosthenes,
To <pv\a]-at t ayada rov KrUasdai xaXsiruTEpov.
It is more difficult to preserve than acquire what is
good." Let that sentiment sink deep into the heart
of every American. We have acquired our liberty
at a great expense of treasure and blood, but the
more difficult task now remains, of preserving it;
aud this is a task that can never be remitted ; which
must never lose any portion of its high interest ;
which must be transmitted from father to son, with
augmented solicitude and zeal. We must not inac-

316 INJUNCTION OF WASHINGTON.
tively presume upon the increased fidelity of those
who are to come after us ; we must not expect
them to do what we have neglected — to retrieve
our errors — to bring up the arrears of our supine-
ness and sloth. It is for us, and for each successive
generation, to say whether with the next, liberty
shall be a great and glorious reality, or a perished
dream ; whether it shall be an exalted source of
national happiness and honor, or the poor relics of
an enterprise, commenced in tears and blood, and
closed in folly and shame. He who led our fore
fathers to conflict and triumph, as if endowed with
a preternatural vision, saw the true source of our
security, and that of our peril ; and embodied his
prophetic conviction in a sentence that should ever
live on the Up, and at the heart of his countrymen —
"United we' stand — divided we fall." Could the
dead leave their graves ; could those who achieved
our liberties, mingle again with us in our assurances
and doubts, they would still repeat the dying accents
of their great compatriot — United we stand — divided
we fall. Let this sentence vibrate with thrilling
energy through our land ; let it be echoed in every
-valley, on every mountain, through every hamlet,
and swelling city; let every breeze that sweeps
from the Atlantic shore bear it on into the deep
forests of the west ; let it kindle along the icy cliffs
of the north, and spread its electrical radiance over
the fervid plains of the south ; let every cloud of

PASSAGE TO MAHON. 317
embosomed thunder give it utterance, while it
flames in characters of living light on the baldric
of our sky — United we stand — divided we fall.
The entertainment over ; the parting words
spoken ; the guests gone ; we weighed anchor and
sailed for Smyrna. Here taking under convoy twb
lubberly things called vessels, because they had
masts, and which appear to have been put afloat
to illustrate the motion and speed of a dead whale,
we held our course for Mahon. Arriving at last off
Cerigo, we parted very reluctantly with Mr. B., our
First Lieutenant, to whose energy and excellent
judgment all accorded their warm confidence. Three
cheers from our ship's crew, given at their own re
quest, bespoke their feelings towards him, and their
wishes for his safe return home.
The executive duties of the ship now devolved
on Lieut. R., a man of sound sense and indefatigable
fidelity. Our passage, after our release from the con
voy, was rapid, till we arrived off Sardinia, where we
encountered a violent head-storm ; this mass of de
formity and perverseness ever manages, sail which
way you will, to cast a tempest in your teeth. I
would not pass it, if bound to heaven, were it possi
ble to get there without ; and I am very sure if the
perils and hardships which it inflicts on the mariner,
obstructed the way to perdition, fewer sail would
be steering for that frightful coast. I leave it, what
thousands have left it before, my unqualified male-
27*

318 FANATICAL ULTRAIST.
diction : may its miserable inhabitants escape, and
may itself sink into the bottom of the sea, where
even an earthquake's shaking tread cannot reach it,
unless it be to sink it still deeper.
Our crew were so elated with the prospect of reach
ing their winter-quarters, that the old violin, which
had lain silent for a long time, was restrung, and
made to discourse its music. Of the amusement that
followed, with ten times the heart of the fashionable
ball-room, without any of its graces, I will say no
thing ; for a previous description of a scene like this
gave, it would seem, mortal offence to an editor of
one of our religious papers. He says, that so far
from describing it, I should have made my imme
diate escape from its neighborhood. Now, as there
is only one mode of escaping from occurrences on
board ship, I suppose this discreet editor, if in my
situation, would have adopted that, and jumped over
board ! and perhaps given, in the other state, as an ex
cuse for his appearance there before his time, that
he had come conscientiously, to escape from the sound
of a fiddle string. This same editor tells me, in the
abundance of his Christian charity, that my religion
is like a robe that fits me loosely : perhaps it would not
be amiss for him to examine a little, and see that his
is not like a glove that fits either hand. I have no
religion to boast of; but what little I may have,
teaches me, that a man poorly commends his own
piety, by railing at that of his neighbor. This self-

FANATICAL ULTRAIST. 319
constituted censor arraigns me, also, for my unpre
tending literary habits, and seems to think a modest
cultivation of letters little less than a crime : as if
religion had nothing to do with letters ; as if its his
tory had come down to us through other channels ;
as if its solemn mysteries could be taught, and its
divine obligation inculcated, without the aid of lan
guage ; or, as if a religious sentiment could not be ren
dered more attractive by the graces of its apparel.
He reminds me of the man who, in his blind hatred
of ornament, attempted to knock off the drapery of
a statue ; but, in doing it, as might be expected, de
stroyed the statue itself! This wonderful editor,
also, accuses me of an unprincipled latitudinarian-
ism, because I think it possible a Catholic may get
to heaven ! Has he ever met with the meek pages
of a Fenelon, or ' listened to the thrilling, sanctified
eloquence of a Bourdaloue or Massillon ? Verily, if
the days of persecution are to come again, when
men are to be burned for a difference of opinion, I
shall expect to see this editor with a torch in one
hand, and a poker in the other. He has favored me
with a little of his ghostly counsel, and I hope he
will allow me to return the obligation. I commend
him to the question, whether it be not more profita
ble for a man to be engaged in correcting his own
faults, than picking out and exhibiting the faults of
his neighbor ; although I have very little expecta
tion of any salutary results from this advisory hint ;

320 VANITY OF FANATICS.
for I have generally observed, that advice of any
character, given to a vain, self-conceited man, is
very much like water cast upon the back of a quack
ing duck, it never penetrates. When he arraigns
another Christian at his little inquisitorial bar, I hope
he will preface his condemnatory sentence with the
evidence of his judicial authority, which he will find
in Paul's Epistle to the Romans, ch. 14. v. 4. — To
his own Master he standeth or falleth. The strong
est evidence that can be produced against the Chris
tian religion at the present day, is the want of
charity among many of its professors ; and, I regret
to say, that this intolerance is the most conspicuous
where there is the most display of zeal, and the
greatest pretension to sanctity.
The blustering parade of these men, were it not
connected with religion, would be only a subject of
merriment. They seem to forget the intense ele
ments of the age in which they live ; and ascribe
all heat, impulse, and motion, to themselves. They
forget the kindled state of the public mind, the
mighty, conflicting energies that are at work ; and be
cause they make a bluster and noise, seem to think
they have within them some peculiar, inborn sources
of animation and power. Why ! even the dead frog
will leap when put between the plates of a galvanic
battery. They run about flourishing their insignifi
cant flambeaux, as if there were no sun in the hea
vens ! Even nature seems to have caught the infection

VANITY OF FANATICS. 321
of their vanity ! What a bright night, exclaims the
glow-worm, turning his tail' to the moon ! Put on
the steam, I am in haste, cries a snail that has crept"
into a railroad car ! Crack it again, my good fellow,
ejaculates a fly that has lit on the folds of a thunder
cloud ! What a prodigious reverberation, says a wood
pecker, tapping a hollow tree on the roaring verge of
Niagara! I fear my house will be shaken down,
mutters a mouse, as the walls of the cathedral rock
with the throes of the earthquake ! What a deal
of observation we excite, says a bumble-bee buz
zing along in the tail of a comet ! We leave the very
ocean split asunder, exclaims a perch darting along
in the wake of a whale ! We shall bring up with
a tremendous crash, cries a weasel on an avalanche
that is plunging into an Alpine abyss ! Bury me with
my face to the foe, cries a cockroach dying in the
battle of the Nile ! What a long shadow I cast,
hoots an owl, gazing at an eclipse of the sun ! " The
spoils of victory" screams a harpy, pouncing on
an elephant struck by lightning! One counts as
much as another, says a democratic flea, jumping
into the face of a lion ! This last strong hold of
aristocratical pride begins to totter, cries a levelling,
radical rat putting his shoulder against the foundation
of a palace ! I have looked Satan out of counte
nance, cries a fanatic, taking off his green specta
cles ! The splendors of the millennium are bursting
on the world, exclaims a new-light ultraist, holding

322 ARRIVAL AT MAHON.
up his jack-o'-lantern ! The chains of millions are
breaking, screams an abolitionist, as the bands of his
own apparel give way ! Enough of this. I return
to the ship :
We arrived at Mahon ; and were quarantined,
like Virgil's ghosts on the Stygian shore, till time
Concretam exemit labem, purumque reliquit :
though we had no taint or disease to be purged
away. These quarantine regulations are excessively
annoying, and iniquitously indiscriminate in their
exactions. They are executed with equal rigor up
on a man-of-war, where contagion can find no lurk
ing place, nothing to subsist upon, and a coaster
freighted with the rottenness of death. You are still
confined in your floating prison after the tedium and
deprivations of a long voyage ; all access to the
shore cut off, and all communication with your
friends denied, unless your epistles first pass through
a steam of fire and brimstone, that may lead them
to suppose, it came from the lower regions.
Alas ! for man ; he is the sport of things he cannot
govern, and the fool of those he can ! But I am
impatient and querulous ; yet I hope the reader will
forgive me this once, for I am not often in this mood;
but just now I am so sick at heart with every one
around, with myself, with every thing in the world,
that I would hardly raise a finger to arrest this globe
were it rushing into the volcanic eye of the sun, or
plunging to the abysses of " uncreated night." Boy,

ARRIVAL AT MAHON. 323
swing my hammock ; I must sleep, or this nervous
delirium will end me ! Yet I cannot feel the refresh
ing dew; of slumber ; this throbbing brain, this men
tal torture, are forsaken of the soothing spirit of rest :
Sleep, gentle sleep
Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighten'd thee 1
Another and better day has dawned ; my mind be
comes more calm ; its spectral terrors are departing ;
and the dreary void in nature begins to exhibit
forms, on which the heart can rest with returning
affection. Man deceives us, betrays, and abandons
us, but nature never : a cloud, flowing perhaps
from our ingratitude, may at times shade her sweet
face ; but, like a fond mother, she comes soon and
clasps her offspring to her breast. Never more,
thou dear, maternal refuge of the weary and distress
ed, will I forget thee, or distrust the strength and ful
ness of thy all-pitying love. Through every dark
day, and every night of gathering ills, I will think
of thee, of thy kindness, gentleness, and truth, and
fly to the covert of thy brooding wing ; — and when
this fevered being shall sink to rest, let me softly
sleep in thy fragrant bosom.
We had survived our quarantine, and were once
more in intercourse with the goodly earth ; when to
oui great satisfaction the United States, bearing the
broad pennant of Commodore Patterson, accompa
nied by the Brandywine, under the command of Capt.
Renshaw, entered the- harbor. They would have

324 AMUSEMENTS AT MAHON.
arrived much sooner, and in better condition, but
they had been detained and nearly wrecked in a
gale off Sardinia. I knew nothing good could come
of that island ; it has the marks of its malignant mad
ness on its very face ; it is the fratricidal Cain of
these waters ; may it sink ! though it leave through
the unclosed wave a whirling pit, to which Charyb-
dis be only the eddy of a descending pebble, for it
can leave nothing behind more fatal and execrable
than its own presence. Its destruction is safe as
would be that of Satan, from whose grave it is
impossible that any spirit more powerful and malig
nant can ascend.
Our newly arrived friends, whom we were for
bid to take by the hand, had not been sufficiently
afflicted by tempest, and were put in quarantine.
We were allowed to approach them but little nearer
than speaking distance ; this was the more trying as
there were young ladies among them for whom we
entertained an esteem that would narrow to the
smallest fraction this separating space. But pra
tique came to them, as it had to us ; the noninter-
course act expired ; and we now snugly located
ourselves for the remainder of the winter. Aside from
the agreeable entertainments given alternately by
Commodore P. and Captain R. and which contribu
ted essentially to our rational pleasures — the eve
nings of some were beguiled by the attractions of a
respectable opera ; while a few hours of each day,

AMUSEMENTS AT MAHON. 325
when the duties of the ship had no paramount claim,
were healthfully exercised in rides over the hills and
valleys of this romantic isle. The carnival, with its
masquerades, also came in to diminish with many
the weight of passing hours ; though I must say, of
all amusements got up for human entertainment, I
think the masquerade the most stupid. There is
neither refinement, wit, or worth in it ; Maelzel's
automatons display a thousand times more tact and
originality. Its chief merit seems to consist in ren
dering one's self incognizable ; and that undoubtedly
the foolish devils effected, who entered into the herd
of swine that " ran violently down a steep ledge into
the sea !"
Nor can I, at the utmost, more than tolerate the
waltz, which here forms a prominent feature in the
masquerade, and in all evening entertainments ; and
to which the chaste matrons of my own country
have recently extended their kind indulgence. Where
this whirling amusement originated is more than I
can conjecture, unless it were in some of those name
less retreats where intoxication is the least crime ;
or perhaps the idea was caught from the giddy rites
of the whirling dervishes of Turkey, who whirl round
single in this life, for the sake of whirling double in
the next ; but sure I am if Terpsichore had attempt
ed the getting up of any thing of this kind, the
modest mother of the muses would have put her
daughter under lock and key. I cannot realize how
28

326 FEATURES OF THE WALTZ.
a lady of strict delicacy can allow a stranger to come
so near her person ; to encircle her very form ; her
own soft arms lying on his; every attitude and
motion necessarily exhibiting that yielding air which
ordinarily means still more than it expresses ; and
then their scarcely separated lips, sighing a language
inarticulate and warm ! Doubtless the situation has its
charm ; the propinquities and tactuations must have
an exquisite mystery, which the uninitiated compre
hend not ; or else she would shrink, when she felt
the trembling hand of her impatient partner clasping
her palpitating waist ! The tell-tale blood, mantling
the cheek and neck, will sometimes betray the na
ture of this mystery, and the true source from which
has arisen the excessive popularity of the waltz !
Yet those who countenance the voluptuous reel
ings of this ambiguous amusement will denounce, as
indecent, the congregating of people in groves, to
worship their Maker. The waltz is encouraged as
a thing of elegant refinement ; while a camp meet
ing, with its family groups, its preachers of sacred
truth, and its hymns of fervid devotion, is condemned
as excessively vulgar, and panderly accessary to the
indulgence of criminal passion. I do not advocate
these sylvan assemblies ; I only say that those who
yield themselves to the indiscriminate embraces of
the waltz, should be the last people in the world to
bestow upon them their reprobation. But what a
mass of inconsistencies may be found in the Ian-

VOTARY OF PLEASURE. 327
guage and deportment of one of those who declaim
most vehemently against the usages of the devoted
ly religious ! He is out himself, at rout, revel, and
masquerade, till the cocks crow for day, and sees no
unseasonableness in his hours, or harmful tendency
in the nature of his amusements ; but if a few poor
Christians meet for an hour or two in the evening to
confess their sins, and strengthen their better resolu
tions, he is alarmed for the discreet habits of society,
and sees a fanatical apparition advancing, ghastly
as death on his pale horse ! He will spend a week,
or month, on a party of pleasure, in hunting a rare
bird, or running down a red-tailed fox, and considers
his time most unobjectionably employed; but if a
" three days' meeting" is announced, he thinks a
famine will ensue, of the whole world be turned up
side down ! Now I only ask him, who is so devoted
ly given up to fiddles and foxes, to have a little pa
tience with those who prefer their Bible and Chris
tian duties. At least, let him remove the beam
from his own eye, before he attempts to pluck the
mote from the eye of his brother. I love that im
partial justice which cuts up one's own faults, as
well as those of his neighbor. I admire consistency,
though it be in Lucifer, and feel, sometimes, a shud
dering respect for that unchanging, unmixed, and
immortal hate, that made him exclaim in his burning
anguish, over the result of his contemplated scheme — •
" Which, if not victory, ia yet revenge."

CHAPTER XXII.

Consequences of our visit to Constantinople — Solemnities of a Court
Martial — Situation as Counsel for the Defendant — Sentence of the
Court — Principles of our Naval Code — Redress of Grievances —
Self-vindication — Thoughts of Home — Obituary Notice.

I was speaking of the incidents which relieved
the monotony of our winter at Mahon, and must not
wholly omit the solemnities of a court martial, which
broke in with imposing effect. It grew out of cir
cumstances connected with our visit to Constanti
nople ; our exposure to the Plague while there ; the
precipitancy of our reunion with the ship, and the
unjustifiable attitude which a few were induced to
assume in view of our deportment, which they at
the time regarded as extremely reckless. One little
irritation led to another, till the gathering snow-ball,
at first scarcely visible in its steep place, rolled at
last into the deep ravine, a thundering avalanche !
Articles of accusation, by the superior officer of the
ship, were drawn up in form ; a court summoned,
and the. accused, holding the rank of lieutenant, or
dered up for trial. I was called upon by the defend
ant to act as his counsel ; this was placing me in
rather an embarrassing attitude, for, aside from my
legal ignorance, and the sacerdotality of my profes-

THE COURT MARTIAL. 329
sion, I was largely enjoying the munificent hospi
tality of the other party, and well knew, however
entire and devoted might be my fidelity to my client,
yet if it involved merely a naked defence, the for
bearance might be ascribed to a sense of personal
obligation, which, in any other situation, it would be
ungrateful not to cherish, but which, in this new
capacity, could not be indulged without an imputa
tion on my honor. But the accused, having very
wisely expressed a willingness to stand strictly on
the defensive, I consented to run this narrow chan
nel, though I expected my poor ship would have her
copper raked off on both sides, and, perhaps, her
bends broken in.
The charges — for we have now come to them —
were like a November caravan of crows, very long,
and very black ; but, like my worthy progenitor of
wind-mill memory, being now fairly enlisted, I felt
it incumbent on my vow to run a tilt with every
hostile form, whether of earth, ocean, or air ; so the
attack was immediately commenced on these flying
squadrons of the dark plume ; some were frightened
away ; some killed outright ; some slightly wounded
and dispersed ; till at last only one poor fellow re
mained, and he appeared so lonely and lost to hope,
that the court, fearing they should not have an oppor
tunity of exhibiting their skill and courage in the
battle, shed tears quite feelingly and fast. Never
was victory, in a desperate case, more complete ; it
28*

330 THE COURT MARTIAL.
was like the rout of the spirits that waited on Co-
mus, and the liberation of the fatally enchanted
lady, who sat
" In stony fetters fix'd, and motionless."
But to drop all metaphor and hyperbole : the
court was organized ; the charges read over, and
the witnesses examined, who testified with an ami
able inclination to the side of mercy. The tribunal,
composed of spirits that would, if necessary, "beard
the very devil to keep his place," manifested the
most majestic patience, while the parties, through
many a long day, like Corydon and Thyrsis, exer
cised their rival gifts,
Et cantare pares, et respondere parati.
The contest, which, after all, had very little
music in it, would have been less long, but every
question had to be written down, submitted to the
court; its propriety, perhaps, discussed; and then
the answer of the witness, often long and unsatisfac
tory, recorded. This makes a court-martial the
most tedious process by which guilt is ever punished.
Indeed, if the offender has turned the middle of life,
you may as well allow him to escape, for your ver
dict will hardly overtake him before he has gone
beyond the reach of human penalties ; and there is
no gallows in the grave ; and I thank Heaven there
is not, for if there were, such is the passion of people
for seeing culprits hung, there would be more bodies
swinging under ground than above it ; and the con-

THE COURT MARTIAL. 331
sequence would be, that wandering ghosts, who now
at the cock's shrill clarion " troop home to church
yards," terrified out of their pale realm, by these ghast
ly spectacles, would linger around our dwellings, and
flit across our chambers through the day, as well as
night I always had a great dread of these noctur
nal visitants ; they come in such a mysterious form ;
at such unseasonable hours ; and have such an omi
nous complexion on their errand, that I know not
how to meet them, what to say, or how indeed to act.
If they had substance, one might offer resistance,
but they are so thin, the moonbeams strike a sickly
light through them : they are the boneless shadows
of death, with all the terrors of the original ! I never
retire to rest without first looking into my closet ;
this precaution was taught me by my judicious nurse,
who knew more about the habits of ghosts than any
philosopher or divine I ever read, not excepting Dr.
Johnson and Cotton Mather. But what have these
mysterious and incomprehensible beings to do with
the business in hand? I return to the solemnities of
the court-martial. The witnesses summoned on the
defence were very few, and their testimony very
brief; not but what more might have been obtained,
but I informed the court, like any young sprig of.
the law full of vanity, ignorance, and Latin —
Non tali auxilio necdefensoribus istis tempus eget.
The evidence being at lengtb concluded, three days

832 THE COURT MARTIAL.
were allowed in which to write the defence, upon
which every thing now depended ; but as if,
Quern Deus vult perdere, priusquam dementat,
I visited the monks on Mount Tauro, and quite for
got, in a reclusive discussion, my tremendous respon
sibility as counsel. This, though extremely reckless,
was the less censurable as my client had given his
consent — consensus tallet errorem — and gone himself
to a masquerade : — Ah 1 — little did we then dream
of what awaited us : little did we anticipate that ver
dict, which was to annul the fundamental principles
of criminal jurisprudence — de minimis non curat lex —
and expose the utter fallacy of the oft-quoted maxim,
true in legal as biblical science — qui heret in litera,
heret in cortice — for it was to rive the very heart of
the tree. But on the third night, I went earnestly to
work, and produced the next morning, with the
aid of the prisoner — qui facit per alium facit per se-~
perhaps the ablest defence that ever fell from a hu
man pen. Every word of it was like the strokes of a
trip-hammer, quick-coming, hot and heavy. In mas
sive energy of thought, force of reasoning, aptness of
illustration, and power of pathos, it has no equal in
the annals of any court, held either in or out of the
Navy. It was a tower in itself ; it was Atlas with
heaven on its shoulders ! Some have had the audacity
to assail it, but I can only tell them that it will still
pillar the great firmament of law and letters when

THE COURT MARTIAL. 333
time, with its slow touch, has wiped out the epitaph
that flattery may have engraven on their tombstone :
Exegi monumentum ere perennius.
I now approach the last sad scene in this tragic
history of error and retribution. The criminal was
summoned to the quarter-deck of our ship, to hear
that sentence which the court, in the painful discharge
of its duty, had decreed — a sentence from which there
was no appeal — no possibility of escape ! The sad
sentiment of Euripides was in my heart :
TfyijSw yap 9 dsis avBpunroiv (pi\og.
Through the silent crowd assembled on the me
lancholy occasion, a voiceless sympathy forced its
way to every countenance ; when the judge advo
cate, from whose lips the fatal sentence was to fall,
advancing from the ranks, seemed for a moment to
pause, with upward eye, as if in invocation of that
aid, now beyond the reach of man !
" His look
Drew audience and attention still as night,
Or summer's noon-tide air :"
The Court — he slowly articulated — have decreed a
condemnatory reversal of the opinion pronounced by
Jack Falstaff, in the words,
" Discretion is the better part of valor."
Coit formidine sanguis! Had a thunderbolt fallen
within a hair's breadth of me, down through the deck
of that ship, it would not have astounded me more
than this decision ! It not only ruined the prisoner,

334 THE COURT MARTIAL.
but it demolished an opinion which I had regarded
with as much veneration as I could the ruins of Pal
myra, or Rome. 0 Jack ! thou who didst love good
things, and say wise ones, little didst thou think that
the soundest and sagest of all thy sayings would come
to such an end as this. Yet it has not abated for
thee my love and affectionate remembrance ; with
filial tears I gather up the pale relics of thy decision,
and consign them to their narrow rest ; may violets
spring over the place of their repose, and the softest
dews of heaven light there. Alas ! for human nature,
the noblest offspring of its intellectual agonies seem
destined to perish first !
I have now done with this, and as I hope, with
all courts-martial ; and I only ask that what I have
said may be taken in the spirit in which it is ex
pressed, — a spirit not at variance with the respect
and esteem which I entertain for the members of
this court, and especially, the individual with whom
I was brought into more immediate opposition, by
my official connection with the defendant. It was
not, perhaps, their fault that the records of this tri
bunal have not a more stern and grave aspect ; the
fault lay in natura rerum ; in the absence of deeper
criminality, of a desert of more afflictive consequences;
and that cast of the ludicrous which every thing must
wear, when swelled into a false fictitious importance.
I sat down to write a serious article on the subject,
but, in spite of every thing I could do, the humorous

REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES. 335
impulse would prevail. It may ill suit the gravity
of my profession to entertain, even for a moment,
such a light, facetious guest, but,
Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurrit.
I have, by this time, been able to dip a little into the
genius of our naval code, the spirit of its economy,
the nature of its rules and regulations ; and, from all
I have seen, read, and heard, have no hesitation in
saying a court martial would be my very last resort
for a protection of my innocence, or a redress of
my wrongs, For in such an appeal, this innocence
must be exempt from the liabilities which it has al
ready betrayed, not to suffer additional violence ;
and these wrongs must rise superior to the depend
encies involved in their sufferance, and " plead like
angels trumpet-tongued," to secure the reparation
invoked. I have by no means any personal allusions ;
but the more judicious course for an officer, in a sub
ordinate rank, who has been aggrieved, is to make
an immediate and strenuous application to leave that
dishonored deck, and thus place his commander under
the necessity of either keeping his own watches, or of
laboring under the mortifying conviction that he is
surrounded by those who are kept near his person
by the naked law of force. I should not envy any
commander, thus situated, the reflections that would
enter his official solitude ;" if a man of pride and
sensibility, he would prefer a grave-yard, for the
cold marbles around would not be there by his

336 REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES.
compulsion, or cherish an ill-concealed aversion.
I should myself prefer even the centre of a voiceless
Sahara, for I should there, at least, have now and then
an antelope to cross my path, and turn on me the
friendly light of its timid eyes. But bears can live
in cheerless caverns, and despots in the bosom of
injured, alienated communities.
I am aware that some of my superiors may re
gard the sentiments I have advanced as very trea
sonable, but I contend that it is the very essence of
submission, blended with a becoming degree of self-
respect ; instead of flying in the face of authority,
with an array of charges which are never to attain
the redress they seek, or of vainly endeavoring to
plant the levelling, disorganizing doctrines of these
times upon the ruins of wholesome, long-estabhshed
principles of discipline, it is merely adopting the
peaceful sentiment soberly recommended by the
satirist : -Levius fit patientia

Quicquid corrigere est nefas.
My equals may, perhaps, regard my counsel as ex
tremely superfluous, and perhaps excessively absurd :
I do not impose it upon them ; or solicit for it even
an indulgent acceptation ; it is my own fig-tree, and
those who wish to partake of its fruit and shade,
will find in me a welcome hand and a warm heart ;
but if they prefer passing on to some other vine, I
only hope they will find a still more fragrant and
agreeable shade. My maxim is, let every man do

RULES OF CONDUCT. 337
his own quarrelling, or, in nautical phrase, paddle his
own canoe ; yet if he gets into a dangerous whirl
pool, or is likely to go down a fatal cataract, and
raises a hand for help, I will be the first to cast him
a rope, and to extricate him, if possible, from his peril
ous condition. As for myself: I quarrel with no
man ; I consider it the most stale and unprofitable
business in the world. If a man is bent upon quar
relling with me, I just leave him to do the whole of
it himself; and he ordinarily very soon becomes
wearied with his unencouraged occupation ; for even
the most malicious ram will soon cease to butt against
a disregarding object ; and he will usually find his
own head more injured than the object of his blind
animosity. It is possible, however, that an occasion may
unwelcomely occur, when something more may be
requisite than this unheeding attitude ; in such an
event, I have a small bundle of arrows in my quiver,
some heavy, others light, some quite blunt, others
perhaps rather sharp, but none of them dipped in
venom ; with these I will ply the wanton offender ; and
some of them I think, unless he is as well protected as
the rhinoceros, will take effect ; nor will I, if unrepent
ant, let him off while he has substance remaining in
which another arrow can stick, or from which a drop
of blood can be extracted. But if a single submissive,
relenting symptom be discovered, I will throw down
the arrow that may at the moment be trembling on
29

338 PRINCIPLES OF HONOH.
the string, and take him to this heart. Forgiveness
is a virtue, revenge a crime.
I was speaking, if I rightly recollect, of the eco
nomy of our Navy, the spirit of its government and
responsibilities ; the whole of which rests substan
tially on two principles — an unhesitating and unqua
lified obedience to the orders of a superior, and an
indefinable sense of honor, flowing from official sta
tion, and the dictates of private judgment. The for
mer is tangible, fixed, and cannot be mistaken : the
latter is Protaean, and assumes more shapes than any
ghost that ever left the grave. What is honorable
in the opinion of one man, may be very dishonorable
in the estimation of another. It is honorable with
some men to play off their gallantries on the other
sex, in the absence of their husbands, but not re
markably reputable in my opinion ; and then again,
it is dishonorable with some for an individual to de
cline killing his friend in a duel, but quite the reverse
in my humble judgment ; it is dishonorable, with
some, for a man to leave the field of battle, though
situated like the last of the three hundred who fell
at Thermopylae. Yet I have ever inclined to the
opinion of Hudibras, that, in extreme cases,
One may fight and run away,
And live to fight another day.
We have acted on this plan sometimes, and it an
swered very well ; though it was rather a failure at
Bladensburg ; for there they ran too soon, too fast,

PRINCIPLES OF HONOR. 339.
and too far; some of them never brought up till
they reached the steep cliffs of the Alleghany ; and
several, I am told, actually reached the Pacific ;
and, when last seen, were constructing a raft for
farther flight. Had Lot fled from Sodom with half
their speed, the spreading flames would not have
scorched his escaping consort into marble; but let
that pass.
Suppose a man is brought before a court-mar
tial for what is denominated dishonorable conduct ;
he pleads his own sense of propriety ; but this does
not coincide with the notions of those who compose
a majority of the court ; the consequence is, he falls
a victim, not to any act of demerit, as understood
by himself, but as capriciously conceived by others.
He is, therefore, tried and condemned by principles
which he never recognized, and of the existence of
¦which he may have been wholly ignorant. Yet if
asked how something tangible, defined, and intelli
gible, can be substituted for this impreseribable
phantom, I should be extremely puzzled in the an
swer. We have no engines for condensing and
shaping shadow ; and of all shadows, those of the
brain are the least subject to such a process. Yet
as an eminent psychologist has of late been able to
discover the shape of the soul, ascertaining it to be
exactly triangular, it is not impossible that its emo
tions may also be seized, and subjected to the square
and compass. In that event, a man may, perhaps,

340 IDOLIZING THE ANCIENTS.
be able to anticipate, without an infinite range of
abortive conjecture, the decision of a court-martial,
on a question involving his honor ; but till then, we
shall be like Milton's perplexed spirit reasoning on
foreknowledge, "In wandering mazes lost."
In looking over my notes, I find that I have ex
pressed myself so fervently among the ruins of
Greece, the reader may perhaps be disposed to class
me among those who idolize the ancients ; but, so
far from harmonizing with them in my feelings, I can
conceive nothing more absurd, than their blind vene
ration for every thing that wears the garb of anti
quity. The child who seeks to gratify the senseless
whims and caprices of a superannuated parent, does
no more than filial affection and piety dictate ; but
for us to be led about by every dream and dogma
of the dead, is pitiful and contemptible. It is not
sufficient, that we allow the ancients a place in the
same rank with men of modern times ; but they
must be hrought out, and placed in the fore front,
as a corps, head and shoulders above the mightiest
of our day ; and we may congratulate ourselves if
able to make our insignificance seen in the twilight
of their gigantic shadows. We give their produc
tions the most conspicuous place in our libraries ;
the first and last in our systems of education. We
commit their maxims to memory ; we settle the
principles of their philosophy deep in our intellectual

IDOLIZING THE ANCIENTS. 341
nature ; we drink in the spirit of their poetry, till we
reel with delirious fulness. We search among their
buried relics, and feel that the labors of a life are
compensated in the discovery of a bit of parchment,
containing a few sayings that would not honor a
modern school boy. Aye, we go down into their
tombs, rummage these cells of corruption, for a thread
of their shroud, a nail of their finger, a lock of their
hair. These disinhumed remains are brought with
religious awe into our houses, placed near our fam
ily altars, and preside as household deities.
I would not detract an iota from the merits of
the ancients ; or withhold any praise which is justly
their due. But I will not get down on my knees
and worship them ; nor suffer myself to be unman
ned with grief, if a relic of them is presented. I
would not adopt one principle of philosophy, or one
maxim in ethics, merely because it has their sanc
tion ; nor would I read a book any the sooner for J
its having had its origin with them.
Their works must stand or fall by their own inhe
rent strength. They may perish, if they have not
merits to sustain them, independent of the circum
stances or age that gave them birth. We may, indeed,
wonder how so splendid a production as the Iliad
ever appeared in so dark an age : but to read it
merely because it appeared in an age of ignorance,
is as senseless as it would be to catch and treasure
up the uncommon lispings of infancy, merely because
29*

342 CLOSE OF THE YEAR.
the little prattler said something remarkable for
children of that age. The productions of Homer,
considering the state of the human mind at the time
they made their appearance, are, I confess, a moral
phenomenon ; but they would not be a miracle at
the present day, nor have been in the days of Mil
ton. Could we carry that poet of Paradise back, and
make him a contemporary with Homer, he would
share one half of the homage rendered this Grecian
bard. And could we place Shakspeare between
these heroic minstrels, the prince of the drama
might rest his hands on their heads. I name Ho
mer, because he is the mighty spirit, whose altar has
been perfumed with the incense of every succeed
ing age. He is among the ancients, what the queen
of night is among the starry hosts that follow in her
wake. But that there has not risen an orb of great
er magnificence, I shall not be convinced, till the
sun of Shakspeare's genius has vanished from the
horizon. We return to passing incidents : another of Capt
Read's elegant entertainments occurs this evening ;
youth, beauty, and many festive hearts will be there,
but I am too sad for such a brilliant scene. The last
night of the year is mingling with the past ! would
that I could recall some of its mispent hours and be
permitted to escape a recollection of its ills ; as for its
moments of happiness, they have been few : I have
grasped at substance, and found it shadow : life is

THOUGHTS OF HOME. 343
truly a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and
then vanisheth away : we are here to-day, but to
morrow the places that have known us are to know
us no more ! The flowers will bloom as freshly as
before, but it will not be around our steps : the sun
beam as brightly, but his ray will not reach our nar
row home : the stream, by whose margin we have
strayed, will still rush between its green banks, but
it will not be beneath the vision of our eyes : the
stirred forest, where we have so often wandered at
the twilight hour, will still breathe its music, but it
will not be our ear that shall be turned to its mys
tical hymn. But there is a spirit-land, of which these
relinquished beauties are only the faint type — there
the flowers never fall, and not a withered leaf mars
the beauties of the eternal spring.
My thoughts wander with solicitude from this
distant isle to my native shore, to the home of my
friends, and hover, with anxious affection, around
each endeared hearth : are there not seats there which
the last year has made vacant : shall I not on my re
turn look fondly for some, inquire where they are ;
and echo only answer where. Will the one who
once bent over me with a sister's solicitude, in an
hour of weakness and pain, be there ? shall I again
greet her whose tears fell so warm and fast over the
farewell words 1 Fond memory ! thou callest up
this scene in all the tenderness of a fresh reality. I
seem again to be parting with that shore, looking

344 THOUGHTS OF HOME.
back to its hills, and murmuring in the breeze that
may reach the ear of that one, more lovely in her
very sadness !
Blest be the soft seraphic hour
That first betray'd to me
The unadorn'd, and priceless dower
Which Heaven conferr'd in thee.
I would not, for a fleeting day,
This single gift resign,
For every gem that sheds its ray
In rich Golconda's mine.
For thou hast been to me what ne'er
In ruby's ray hath shone —
A sister, from a purer sphere,
To lure me from my own :
And I have watch'd the rising light
Of each inspiring word,
As they who track the farewell flight
Of some ascending bird.
Through every night of doubt and ill,
And every darksome day,
A sunny smile was round thee still,
To chase their gloom away :
And when the world in rudeness spoke,
Thy voice was heard above
The tones that from their murmurs broke,
In its unchanging love.
But now the freshening breeze ia near
That parts me far from thee ;
I go, with no sweet voice to cheer
A pilgrim o'er the sea :
A pilgrim through the surging sweep
Of every wilder wave,
Rushing remorseless o'er the sleep
Of many a pilgrim's grave.
But wheresoe'er my path may lay,
Through varied sea and zone,
My inmost heart shall still betray
The image of thine own ;
And till my latest hour hath come,
By shore, or mount, or sea,
I'll think of thy sweet hearth and home,
And breathe a prayer for thee.

APPENDIX. 345
Obituary Sketch. — There was one — who often
accompanied us in our diversions along the shores of
the Mediterranean — one who frequently gave to
such occasions an interest beyond the objects which
lured our steps — one who would light up the most
common themes with her sparkling gems of thought,
or supply the worn topics with others, brilliant and
fresh from recollection and fancy — one who made
others happy, without seeming to be conscious that
she was the source ; and who ever delicately evaded,
as if misplaced, the admiration her youth, genius, and
beauty awakened — who now, alas ! has left us for
ever ! She has gone from the circle of our friendship,
and the hearth of her fond father, to return no more !
Over the pleading youth of her age, and the re
taining force of our affection, death has sadly tri
umphed !
The delicate virtues that had bloomed, and those
that were timidly expanding to the light, have pe
rished from the earth! The form that moved so
lightly ; the eye that beamed with such tenderness
and hope ; the lips that ever breathed the accents
of gentleness and truth ; the ear on which music
never sacrificed its charm ; the rich locks, that ren
dered the cheek still more transparent in the relief
of their raven darkness ; and the face filled with the
expressions of sweetness and beauty, and where no
frown ever cast its shadow — all have gone down
into the silent recesses of the grave !

346 APPENDIX — OBITUARY.
The ship in which she had traversed the ocean —
where she had seen the wonders of God display
ed in the deep — had returned from its long ab
sence : the green hills of her native land were break
ing the horizon ; another day, and she would tread
that beloved shore. Many were gathered there to
whom she was tenderly allied, and who waited to
embrace her with a sister's yearning love ; she had
redeemed the pledge in which they parted ; and
often beguiled their lonely hours with the graphic
beauties of her pen: they now waited to enfold
her in their arms, and half blamed the breeze that
brought the ship so slowly to her anchor.
They were the first on board, and sought first the
one they most loved. Alas ! the pale form was there,
but the spirit that gave it light and animation had
fled ! Still the tokens of its peaceful departure lin
gered in the sweet composure of her face ; the calm
brow was still written with thought ; the cheek
softly tinged with the dreams of her rest. They
had come to greet her, to hear her speak, and wel
come her home; but the only office that now re
mained, was to consign to the earth this beautiful
relick : with breaking hearts, they dressed her grave
on the banks of that stream where she strayed in her
childhood, and where long the melancholy wave
will murmur the music of her name.
What avails it now that she so widely surveyed
the scenes which lend attraction to other shores ?

APPENDIX — OBITUARY. 347
that she wandered among the hills of Greece, and
gazed at the bright isle's of the iEgean ? — that she
lifted her eye to the solemn dome of St. Sophia, and
walked in the deep shadows of the Colosseum at
Rome ? — that she saw Venice emerging in splendor
from the wave, and Etna still sending up its steep
column of cloud ?*— that she glanced through the
gay saloons of Parisian pride, and lingered along the
banks of the Nile ?— that she surveyed the pyramids
of mouldered Egypt, and made her pilgrimage to the
desolate city of David ? — that she stood in the gar
den, where persecuted love resigned itself to the
bitterness of its cup — on that mount where the Inno
cent suffered, that the guilty might live — and by that
tomb which once sepulchred the Hopes of the world 1
Ah! these availed her; for these mementoes of
a dying Saviour's affection, and of his triumph over
death, were themes upon which her latest and fond
est thoughts dwelt: she knew at length that her
hour had come, but her confidence in the faithfulness
of this Redeemer made her a stranger to dismay ; she
felt that she was passing beyond the assiduities of
mortal friendship and affection, but she cast herself
resignedly upon the love of this compassionate Jesus ;
her last faint accents whispered of the Cross, and
of that land where tears and farewells are unknown.
Shall we see one dying so young, and with so
many objects to attach her to life, and not be remind
ed of the hastening hour when we must follow her ?

348 APPENDIX — OBITUARY.
Shall the admonition, that tenderly speaks from her
grave, be lightly regarded? Shall the seraphiq
look in which she died be soon forgotten ? Shall
the religion, displaying the signet of her resignation
and triumphant hopes, continue to be a stranger to
these hearts ? If one so faultless could not die with
out the light of a Saviour's love, how shall we, in
our sins of deeper shade, meet the King of Terrors ?
Ah ! there is only one being that can sustain in that
last hour of need ; only one that can furnish, in this
extremity of nature, a refuge for the soul. This
one has long been near us, waiting to be gracious ;
he has tarried without, suing for admission to our
confidence, till his locks are wet with the drops of
the night. Happy he who admits this Saviour to
his inmost heart : death may then break down and
lay in ruins this mortal form ; but the spirit will
have given it ' the wings of the dove, that it may fly
away and be at rest.'

THE END.

COMPREHENSIVE SYSTEM
OF
MODERN GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY:
KEVISED AND ENLARGED
From the London edition of "Pinnock's Modern Geography," and
adapted ts the use of Academies and Schools in
the United States, with an Atlas.

BY EDWIN WILLIAMS,
Author of the New Universal Gazetteer, New- York Annual Re
gister, etc.

BIW-TORK :
LEAVITT, LORD & CO:,
180 Broadway.

Extracted critical remarks from the English Reviews of Pinnock "s
Modern Geography and History.
" Mr. PinnocKs Catechisms and other publication!!
have made his name universally known throughout the
country, as one of the most meritorious and successful au
thors in this department of literature, who have ever di
rected their attention to inform the rising generation.
The presenj volume is, in all respects, worthy of his name ;
it is well conceived, well arranged, diligently edited, and
beautifully got up, at a very moderate cost. By mingling
the attractions of history with the dry details of geographical
science, the study is rendered pleasing and interesting.
Ample intelligence is produced, in the first instance, and
then the learner is judiciously exercised by questions on
the subjects as they occur." — Literary Gazette.
" This is truly the age of intellectual improvement,
and in every form and manner exertions are multiplied to
advance it. Daily the unwearied press teems with new
, publications in aid of truth and knowledge. Compendi-
ums. abridgments, and cortipressments of scientific lore,
rapidly succeed each other in their pretensions to public
favor; and it is now a point of competition amongst au
thors and publishers to give the greatest quantity of valu-

able information for the least money. It was, however, it
seems, reserved for the experienced author of the work
-before us to excel all his predecessors in this particular ;
and we cannot restrain our admiration when we observe
the immense collection of geographical and historical
learning comprised in this little book. It is impossible,
in the limits to which this notice can extend, to givea de
tailed account of the plan of Mr. Pinnock's work : suffice
it, that its title is fully answered in the compilation, and
that it is, in our judgment, eminently calculated to super
sede the use of those elementary geographical works in
present use, which, however useful they may be, are ut
terly poor and meagre when compared to this. The as
tronomical portion of Mr. Pinnock's book is excellent,
and the historical memoranda, which follow the account
of each country, are highly interesting, and tend to en
liven the study of geography, while they furnish a fund
of instruction to the learner.
" On the whole, this multum in parvo, for such it pre
eminently is, is calculated to become a universal instruc-
ter in the knowledge of the earth. It will not be con
fined to the use of schools, for adults will find it a valua
ble addition to their Biblical store." — Courier.
" This is unquestionably the very cheapest work of
the sort that has hitherto issued from the press; and it is
but doing a bare act of justice to the public-spirited pub
lishers to say, that they deserve the most unlimited pat
ronage. The literary arrangement of the whole does
great credit to the well known talents and indefatigable
research of Mr. Pinnock ; and instead of the study being,
as was the case some twenty years ago, dry and almost
appalling, it is rendered familiar and entertaining, from
its being mixed up with numerous anecdotes associated
with the history of the countries described." — Berkshire
Chronicle. " A truly comprehensive compendium of geographical
and historical information, judiciously blended, has been
heretofore a great desideratum. Mr. Pinnock's name
has for many years been a standard warranty to school
books ; and this, his last labor, fully sustains his estab-

lished reputation. It is a very comprehensive condensa
tion of all which is necessary in teaching the important
science of geography. The statistical details of coun
tries are pleasantly relieved by a series of admirable histo
rical memoranda, which bear evidence of fidelity and a
deep research. We are surprised, in looking -through the
book, to observe what a vast quantity of instruction is
comprised in its 446 pages." — Sunday Times.
" We have just now before us a handsome and com
pact little volume, ' got up' with great care, taste, and
judgment : ' A Grammar of Modern Geography and His
tory.' The quantity of really useful information that it
contains is astonishing." — La Belle Assemblee.
"To Mr. Pinnock belongs the merit of inventing those
Catechisms of Science and General Knowledge, which'
even a Lord Chancellor condescended to read and to
praise. Nothing more is necessary to be said to recom
mend his book in every quarter." — London Magazine. ¦
" Grammar of Geography and History. — Every per
son engaged in the education of children, will be much
pleased to turn over the pages of one of the best, because
most simplified, and at the same time compendious, works
on geography that has ever yet appeared. The name of Pin
nock stands at the head of modern pioneers in the march of
Juvenile Intellect; and the present volume is another exhi
bition of his meritorious industry. It is announced among
our advertisements, and we are sure that our readers will be
thankful for thus having specially directed their attention
to so useful, elegant, and withal very cheap a publication."
Taunton Courier.
" Pinnock's Modern Geography. — We call the atten
tion of our readers, and more especially the heads of se
minaries, to a useful, splendid, and singularly cheap work,
just published by Poole if Edwards, entitled ' A Com
prehensive Grammar of Modern Geography and History.'
Without any exception, it is the best book of the sort
hitherto published." — Windsor Herald.
" This little book is of a description much superior to
the ordinary class of school books. Its author needs no

praise from us, as his long and faithful services to the cause
of education have met that general approbation which is
their fittest and highest reward. We are happy to say, that
the same judicious industry which distinguished his
smaller works for the benefit of children, is displayed in
full force in the little volume now on our table. It is
well arranged, and written in a clear, simple style. But
it is also much more than a mere outline of geography,
for it also contains an admirable summary of the most
important points in history and chronology : and its pages
are interspersed with interesting physical facts relating
to the various countries under consideration. We ap
prove much the catechetical system of teaching, which is
provided for by questions appended to each section. These
will enable the self-instructer to ascertain with ease and
certainty what real progress he has made in the acquisi
tion of knowledge. A good treatise of this comprehen
sive nature has long been wanting in our schools. To those
whose time will not permit them to turn to more ponder
ous sources of information, and to those who may wish to
refresh their memories by looking over an accurate sum
mary of facts already known, we heartily recommend this
Geography as the best elementary work we have seen." —
London Weekly Review.
From the New-York Evening Post.
To the publishers, the public are indebted for an ele
mentary work on Geography, which, from a more atten
tive examination than we are usually able to give to books
of that description, we think will prove a very useful vol
ume in the education of young persons. The work we al
lude to is a very neat and well printed edition of Pin
nock's Modern Geography and History, wholly revised and
much enlarged by Edwin Williams, of whose accuracy
and research, as a statistical writer, the public have al
ready had various satisfactory evidences. The depart
ment of knowledge in which the labors of Mr. Williams
have been mainly exerted, have necessarily furnished him
with a copious store of materials highly useful to be em
ployed in a work like that which has now engaged his pen.
The original work of Mr. Pinnock bore a high reputation

both in England and this country, and its value is now very
greatly increased by the extensive and judicious improve
ments made by Mr. Williams. To convey some idea of
the superior excellence of the present edition over any pre
vious one, it needs only to be stated that the portion rela
ting to America, has been wholly rewritten and enlarged
so as to extend through more than a hundred additional
pages. The recent changes in the political divisions of
South America are also carefully noted, and a succinct and
clear history of its various revolutions is given. Numer
ous other improvements of the original work have been
made by Mr. Williams, but what we have stated, will
serve to convey some idea of the additional value he has
imparted to a production which before enjoyed a high rep
utation. The publishers deserve credit fo the exceedingly
neat style in which they have published this useful ele
mentary work. From the Commercial Advertiser.
Pinnock has done very essential service to the cause
of education, by his excellent editions of established
school books. To go no farther, this is the best compendium
of geography we have yet seen for schools. The Euro
pean States are never treated with the importance they de
serve in our ordinary school books of this description.
Here they receive great attention, and the American de
partment, under Mr Williams' careful and accurate super
intendence, is not behind them, while the history of each
State is woven in its leading facts with its description.
From the New- York American.
This is a well printed, and we dare say, a well digested
compound of geography and history, adapted for young
persons. The portion relating to America has been re
written here and much extended, and in that very fact we
see evidence to strengthen a conviction we have lopg en
tertained, and occasionally expressed, that the elementary
works — those of history especially — designed for Ameri
can schools, should be written at home.
From the New. York Weekly Messenger.
We have rarely met with.a work of this size embrac-
*

ing so large a fund of useful, we might say necessary,
knowledge of a geographical and historical character.
This work is formed on the basis of Pinnock's celebra
ted Manual of Geography, combining the leading facts of
history. It has been revised by Edwin Williams, Esq., a
gentleman well known as the author of the New- York An
nual Register, and New Universal Gazetteer, &c. That
part of the work relating to our own country has
been entirely rewritten, and occupies about one hundred
closely printed pages. It will command a place, as a
class book, in all our respectable seminaries of learning ;
but a work of this kind ought not and will not be con
fined to schools. It will be found in the library of the
scholar — the cheerful and happy dwelling of the farmer —
the workshop of the mechanic — the closet of the student
— and the counting-room of the merchant, by all of whom
it may be advantageously consulted as a book of refer
ence. From the Knickerbocker.
Mr. Edwin Williams, whose " Annual Register" and
" Universal Gazetteer" are so favorably known to the
public, has recently issued — revised and enlarged from the
London edition, and adapted to the use of Academies
and Schools in the United States — Pinnock's celebrated
Modern Geography. The part relating to America has
received numerous important additions in the revision, and
the whole may be relied on us affording a faithful picture of
the present state of the world, as far as known. The
work presents a combination of geography and history,
which renders it both useful and entertaining. The latter
quality is an unusual feature in most of our modern school
geographies. From the New- York Courier and Enquirer.
Williams' Geography. — The habits and studies of Mr.
Williams render him peculiarly fitted for an undertaking
of this sort, and he has performed the task well. Pinnock's
original work is in some respects one of the best to be
found, but the labors of Mr. Williams have rendered this
edition exceedingly valuable. We have looked this book
through with considerable attention, and find a mass of

American information there embodied far beyond our ex
pectation. We question, indeed, whether any other book
in print contains as much ; and we are mistaken if it is not
extensively made use of hereafter in our schools and acad
emies. Few men in the country have amassed more sta
tistical material than Mr. Williams, and none have spread
it before the public with more accuracy. This book alone
is sufficient to entitle him to the thanks of the commu
nity. From the New-Yorker.
Pinnock's Geography. — Mr. Edwin Williams, favora-
bly known as the compiler of several statistical works of
acknowledged merit, has just submitted to the public an
Americanized edition of Pinnock's " Comprehensive System
of Geography and History" — the part relating to the Uni
ted States having been entirely re-written and extended
over one hundred pages. The high reputation of the original
author as a geographer, affords a satisfactory guaranty for
the character of the worlf,, which is adapted to the use of
seminaries without forfeiting its claims on the attention of
the more abstract student of geography and history.
From the New-York Observer.
Williams' Geography and History. — Mr. Edwin Wil
liams, the publisher and compiler of the New- York Annual
Register, has prepared a new geography for the use of
schools, founded on Pinnock's work on modern geography,
which has been revised and extended. The plan is to com
bine a summary of the history of each country with its
geography, and to adapt it to the use of schools and acade
mies, by references to the maps, and by questions. The
part of the work relating to America has been entirely re- -
written, and copious additions have been made to other
parts of the volume. We have not found time to examine
the work critically, but we have no doubt, from what we
know of the qualifications of the author, that it is one of
the most valuable works of the kind in the market.
From the Albany Argus.
Modern Geography and History. — Mr. Edwin Williams,
the publisher and compiler of the New -York Annual Re-

8
gister, has added another to the valuable publications for
which the public are indebted to his industry and enter
prise, in a revision and extension of Pinnock's celebrated
work on modern geography. The plan qf this geography
is to combine a summary of the history and present condi
tion of each country with its geography, and to adapt it to
the use of schools and academies, by references to the maps,
and by questions designed to elicit from the learner the
facts stated in -the historical and statistical parts of the
work. Numerous additions have been made in the revi
sion, particularly in that part relating to America, which,
it appears, has been entirely re-written and extended over
one hundred pages. It gives also full descriptions of the
West India Islands, not particularly noticed in any other
geography ; extended notices of the modern divisions and
revolutions in South America, and in Greece and Belgium,
&c. &c. The entire work appears to have been prepar
ed with the usual care and accuracy of the America edit
or : and his own additions are among the most valuable of
the many important and interesting facts with which the
book is replete. The character of both the American and
the English author must commend the work to the favora
ble notice of teachers and all interested in facilitating the
business of public instruction.
Pinnock's Modern Geography and History, revised
by Edwin Williams, is an excellent compendium of the
branches on which it treats, and we cheerfully recommend
it for adoption by teachers and others. Were this work
in general use by the higher classes in academies and
schools, the labors of instruction would be greatly dimin
ished and the youth of our country, of both sexes, would
exhibit a knowledge of Geography and History which is
far from being frequent at present.
John F. Jenkins, Principal of ~|
the Male Department ; I Mechanics'
Arabella Clark, Principal of [ Society
the Female Department ; J School.
February 22, 1836.
Pinnock's Geography — This is an excellent book,

9
and not inferior in value to any which have been put forth
by this most industrious compiler and author.
The work is of that ter$e, comprehensive character,
which distinguishes his former productions. It is full of
entertainment and instruction, clear and . judicious in style
and arrangement, discriminating in the selection of topics,
abundant in details, and conducted with that peculiar bre
vity which leaves not a word redundant or deficient. It is a
valuable class book, and merits general adoption in the
schools. — Silliman's " American Journal of Science and
Arts." Vol. XXVII. No. 2. July, 1835.

Works Published by Leavitt, Lord, Sf Co.
RECOMMENDATIONS OF BARNES' NOTES.
From Abbott's Religious Magazine.
We have previously, in a brief notice, recommended to. our readers
Barnes' Notes on the Gospels. But a more extended acquaintance with
that work has very much increased oar sense of its value. We never
have opened any commentary on the Gospels, which has afforded us so
much satisfaction. Without intending, in the least degree, to disparage
the many valuable commentaries which now aid the Christian in the
study of the Bible, we cannot refrain from expressing our gratitude to the
Author, for the interesting and profitable instructions he Has given us. —
The volumes are characterized by the following merits.
1. The spirit which imbues them is highly devotional. It is a devotion
founded on knowledge. It is a zeal guided by discretion.
2. The notes are eminently intellectual. Apparent difficulties are fairly
met. They are either explainedj or the want of a fully satisfactory expla^
nation admitted. There is none of that slipping by a knot which is too
common in many commentaries.
3. The notes are written in language definite, pointed and forcible. There
is no interminable flow of lazy words. Every word is active and does its
work well. There are no fanciful expositions. There are no tedious dis
play of learning.
There may be passages in which we should diffe- from the writer in
some of the minor shades of meaning. There may be sometimes an un
guarded expression which has escaped our notice. We have not scruti
nized the volumes with the eye of a critic. But we have used them
m our private reading. Wejiave used them in our family. And we have
invariably read them with profit and delight.
We have just opened the book to select some passage as an illustration
of the spirit of the work. The Parable of the rich man and Lazarus now
lies before us. The notes explanatory of the meaning of the parables, are
full and to the point. The following are the inferences, which Mr. Barnes
deduces. " From this impressive and instructive parable, we may learn,
"l. That the souls of men do not die with their bodies.
" 2. That the souls of men are conscious after death ; that they do not
sleep, as some have supposed, till the morning of the resurrection.
" 3. That the righteous are taken to a place of happiness immediately
at death, and the wicked consigned to misery.
" 4. That wealth does not secure us from death.
" How vain are riches to secure
Their haughty owners from the grave.
" The rich, tne beautiful, the gay, as well as the poor, go down to the
grave. All their pomp and apparel ; all their honors, their palaces and
their gold cannot save them. Death can as easily find his way into the
mansions of the rich as into the cottages of the poor, and the rich shall
turn to the same corruption, and soon, like the poor, be undistinguished
from common dust, and be unknown.
" 6. We should not envy the condition of the rich.
" On slippery rocks I see them stand,
And fiery billows roll below.
"6. We should strive for a better inheritance, than can be possessed in
this life. " ' Now I esteem their mirth and wine.
Too dear to purchase with my blood,
Lord 'tis enough that thou art mine,
My life, my portion, and my God.' "
" 7. The sufferings of the wicked in hell will be indiscnbably great.
Think what is represented by torment, by burning flame, by insupportable
thirst, by that state when a single drop of water would afford relief. Re
member that all this is but a representation of the pains of the damned,
and that this will have no relief, day nor night, but will continue from
f

Works Published by Leavitt, Lord, <$• Co.
RECOMMENDATIONS OF BARNES' NOTES.
year to year, and age to age, and without any end, and you have a faint
view of the sufferings of those who are in hell.
"8. There is a place of suffering beyond the grave, a hell. If there is
not, then this parable has no meaning. It is impossible to m ake anything
of it unless it is designed to teach that.
" 9. There will never be any escape from those gloomy regions. There
is a gulf fixed—; fixed, not moveable. Nor can any of the damned beat a
pathway across this gulf, to the world of holiness.
" 10. We see the amazing folly of those, who suppose there may be an
end to the sufferings of the wicked, and who on that supposition seem
willing to go down to hell to suffer a longtime, rather than go at once to
heaven. If man were to suffer but a thousand years, or even one year,
why should he be so foolish as to choose that suffering, rather than go at
once to heaven, and be happy at once when he dies'?
"11. God gives us warning sufficient to prepare for death. Hehassent
his word, his servants, his son ; he warns us by his Spirit and his provi
dence, by the entreaties of our friends, and by the death of sinners. He
offers us heaven, and he threatens hell. If all this will not move sinners,
what would do it ? There is nothing that would.
" 12. God will give us nothing farther to warn us. No dead man wul
come to life, to tell us what he has seen. If he did, we would not believe
him. Religion appeals to man, not by ghosts and frightful appantionB.
It appeals to their reason, their conscience, their hopes, and their fears.—
It sets life and death soberly before men, and if they will not choose the
former they must die. If you will not hear the Son of God, and the truth
of the Scriptures, there is nothing which you will or can hear ; you will
never be persuaded, and never will escape the place of torment.
If we have any influence with our readers, we would recommend them
to buy these volumes. There is hardly any Chris tian in the land, who will
not find them an invaluable treasure.
Extract of a Letter from a distinguished Divine of Nero England
It (Barnes' Notes) supplies an important and much needed desideratum
in the means of Sabbath' School and Bible Class instruction.
Without descending to minute criticism, or attempting a display ot
learning, it embraces a wide range of general reading, and brings out the
results of an extended and careful investigation of the most important
sources of Biblical knowledge. .... , . . , ..„, „„„_
The style of the work is as it should be, plain, simple, direct ; olten
vigorous and striking; always serious and earnest. .
ft abounds in fine analyses of thought and trains of argument, admira
bly adapted to aid Sabbath School Teachers in their responsible duties:
often too very useful to Ministers when called suddenly to prepare for
religious meetings, and always helpful in conducting the exercises ot a
Without vouching for the correctness of every explanation and sentiment
contained in the Notes, its author appears to have succeeded very nappily
in expressing the mind of the Holy Spirit as revealed in those parts ol tne
New Testament which he has undertaken to explain. . . i>u„
The theology taught in these volumes, drawn as it is from the pure
fountain of truth, is eminently common sense and practical.
It has little to do with theory or speculation. . .
The Author appears not to be unduly wedded to \nyParticuar school or
system of theology, but to have a mind trained to habits of independent
trdnkfaa readUy submissive to the teachings of inspiration, but ^posed
to Si any man master, or to setup anything in opposition to the plain
testimony of the Bible.
We would here say, once for all, we consider; Barnes' Notes the best
somnvntary for famutes we have seen.— N. B. Spectator.

Works Published by Leavitt, Lord, £f Co.
RECOMMENDATIONS OF BARNES' NOTES.
If the degree of popular favor with which a work of biblical instruc
tion is received by an intelligent Christian community be a just criterion
of its value, the volumes which the Rev. Mr. Barnes is giving the Church
are entitled to a high place in the scale of merit.— N. Y. Evangelist.
From Review of the Qospels -in Biblical Repertory.
We have only to say further, by way of introduction, that we admire
the practical wisdom evinced by Mr. Barnes in selecting means by which
to act upon the public mind, as well as his self-denyingdiligence in labor
ing to supply the grand defect of our religious education. Masterly expo
sition, in a popular form, is the great desideratum of the Christian public.
The Notes are always readable, and almost always to the point. No
thing appears to have been said for the sake of saying something. This is
right. It is the only principle on which our books of popular instruction
can be written with success. Its practical value is evinced by the exten
sive circulation of the work before us, as well as by the absence of that
Heaviness and langour, which inevitably follow from a verbose style, or the
want of a definite object.
Mr. Barnes' explanations are in general brief and clear, comprising
the fruit of very diligent research.
We have been much pleased with his condensed synopsis of the usual
arguments on some disputed points, as well as with his satisfactory solu
tion of objections.
But Mr. Barnes' has not been satisfied with merely explaining the
language of the text. He has taken pains to add those illustrations which
verbal exposition, in the strict sense cannot furnish. The book is rich in
a.-cha3ologicaLinformation. All t hat could well be gathered from the com
mon works on biblical antiquities, is wrought into the Notes upon those
passages which need such elucidation.
In general we admire the skill with which he sheds the light of archae
ology and history upon the text of scripture, and especially the power of
compression which enables him to crowd a mass of knowledge into a
narrow space without obscurity.
While the explanation of the text is the primary object kept in view
throughout these notes, religious edification is by no means slighted.
Mr. Barnes' devotional and practical remarks bear a due proportion to
the whole.
From what we have said it follows of course, that the work before us
has uncommon merit. Correct explanation, felicitous illustration, and
impressive application, are the characteristic attributes of a successful
commentary. Though nothing can be added in the way of commendation
which is not involved in something said already, there are two detached
points which deserve perhaps to be distinctly stated. We are glad to see
that Mr. Barnes not only shuns the controversial mode of exposition, hut
often uses expressions on certain disputed subjects, which in their obvious
sense, convey sound doctrine in its strictest form. What variety of
meaning these expressions may admit of, or are likely to convey, we do
not knows but we are sure that in their simple obvious meaning they are
strongly Calvanistic in the good old sense.
The other point to which, we have alluded is Mr. Barnes' frankness
and decision in condemning fanatical extravagance and inculcating Christ
ian prudence.
With respect to Mr. Barnes' style we have little to say beyond a gene
ral commendation. . The pains which he has wisely taken to be Brief,
have compelled him to write well.

WORKS RECENTLY PUBLISHED
bv
LEAVITT, LORD & CO
WITH SOME EXTRACTS FROM NOTICES OF THEM.

SHIP AND SHORE, or Leaves from the Journal of a
Cruise to the Levant — by an officer of the Navy.
Another contribution from a source, to which nobody would have
thought of turning, but a few years.ago ; but which is now beginning
to yield fruit abundantly and of an excellent flavor, sound, wholesome
and trustworthy; not those warm cheeked and golden pippins of the
Red Sea, which ' turn lo ashes on the lips' — but something you may
bite with all your strength, of a grapy, and oftentimes of a peachy
flavor. The preface itself is a gem. — New-England Galaxy.
This book is written with sprightliness and ease, and may justly
claim to be considered an agreeable as well as an instructive compan
ion. It is inscribed in a brief but modest "dedicatiomo Mrs. E. D. Reed —
a lady of uncommon refinement, of manners and intellectual accom
plishments. The descriptions of Madeira and Lisbon are the best we
have read. The pages are uniformly enriched with sentiment, or enli
vened by incident. The author, whoever he is, is a man of sentiment,
ta3te and feeling. — Boston Courier.
MEMOIRS OF MRS. WINSLOW, late Missionary to
India, by her husband, Rev. Miroa Winslow — in a neat 12mo,
with a Portrait.
The book contains a good history of that mission, including the
plan and labors of the Missionaries, and the success attending' them,
together with almost every important event connected with the mission.
It also presents much minute information on various topics which must
be interesting lo the friends of missions, relating to the character, cus
toms and religion of the people — their manner of thinking and livings
and the scenery of their country and its climate. It also describes the
perplexities and encouragements of Missionaries in all the departments
of their labor, and throws open to inspection the whole interior of a
mission and a mission family, exhibiting to the reader ukat.missionary
¦work and missionary life are, better perhaps than any thing before
published. — Missionary Herald.
Mrs. Winslow would have been a remarkable character under any
circumstances, and in any situation. Had jhe not possessed a mind
of unusual power and decision, she never could have triumphed over

the obstacles which were thrown in her Way. We hope thai M fAitf
memoir many a pious young lady, will find incitements to prayerfulnesa
and zeal — and that our readers will enjoy the privilege of reading all
the pages of this interesting volume. —Abbott's Magazine.
PASTOR'S DAUGHTER— or the Way of Salvation ex
plained to a Young Inquirer ; from reminiscences Of the conver
sations of the late Dr. Payson with his daughter.
ZINZENDORFP, a new original Poem— by Mrs. L. H.
Sigourney, with other Poems, 12mo. This book is in a neat
style, and well calculated for Holiday presents.
HARLAN PAGE'S MEMOIRS, one of the most useful
books ever published.
There has been much fear that the attention of the church was
becoming too exclusively turned towards the great external forms of sin.
These fears are not groundless. Here, however, is one remedy. The
circulation of such a work as this, holding up a high standard of ardent
personal piety, and piety, too, showing itself in the right way — by quiet,
unpretending efforts to spread the kingdom of Christ from soul to
soul. — Abbotts Magazine.
COMMENTARY ON THE BOOK OF PSALMS ; on
a plan embracing the Hebrew Text, with a New Literal Version.
By Oeorge Bush, Prof, of Heb. and Orient, lit. in the New-
York City University.
This commentary, although it every where discovers evidence of
highly respectable research, is not designed exclusively for the use of
mere biblical critics. It is true the author has constant recourse to the
Hebrew and to ancient translations and commentaries, &c. in the ex
planation of difficult passages : but he does it with such clearness of
perception and such tact of language that even unlettered readers can
hardly fail to be profited by his comments. He has hit with an admira
ble degree of precision, the happy medium between a commentary pure
ly scholastic and critical, which could be interesting to only a few very
learned men, and one exclusively practical, which would be likely to be
unsatisfactory to men of exact and scrutinizing minds. It is a pleas
ing circumstance, although some perhaps may be disposed to make it
a ground of carping and disparagement, that the work is an American
one. It is written in our own land and by one of our awn beloved breth
ren, and is therefore entitled on the ground of country andpatriotism, as
well asof religion, to all that kindness and favor of reception, which may
be justified by its intrinsic merits. The work is published in a highly
creditable style by the house of Leavitt, Lord & Co. New- York. —
Christian Mirror.
We have spent so much time, delightfully, in reading this number,
that we have little left for description'of its contents. We have first
an admirable preface of two.pages, stating the plan and object of the
work. Persons wishing to revive their knowledge of neglected Hebrew,
or desirous to learn it anew without a teacher, can find no book better
adapted to facilitate the acquisition than this, in addition to a grammar
and dictionary.
The good sense of Mr. Bush, is well indicated by his remarks on the
word Selah where it first occurs. No mere empiric would have made
such an acknowledgment. — lb.

While the work is adapted to be a real treat, more particularly for
scholars, it is so conducted that readers merely of the English version
can hardly fail to receive from it much profit and delight.— Pittsburgh.
Friend. s
We have not examined critically all the notes, but we have examined
them enough to satisfy ourselves of the author's competency to his
work, and of his fidelity.— Christian Register.
The mechanical execution of the work is beautiful, particularly the
Hebrew text, and fully equal to any thing that has come from the
Andover Press, which hitherto has stood unrivalled in this country for
biblical printing. The introduction and notes give evidence of laborious
and patient investigation, extensive biblical learning, and heartfelt piety.
It promises tojbe a work of great value, and we hope it will meet with
ample encouragement. — Cincinnati Journal.
A GRAMMAR OF THE HEBREW LANGUAGE, with
a brief Chrestomathy for the use of beginners, by George Bush,
Prof. Heb. and Orient. Lit. in the N. Y. city University.
We hail sincerely this finely executed volume, with its tasteful dis
play of the University front labelled in gilt on the back. But the out
ward dress is a matter of minor moment. It is the marrow of the book
which gives us pleasure. That it is calculated to be an important ac- .
cession to the elementary works on Hebrew, no one acquainted with
the ripe scholarship of Prof B. can doubt, much less any one who has
examined the book. The main object of the author in preparing it, as
we learn from his well-written preface, was to facilitate the acquisition
of the holy tongue by the simplification of its elements. With the
book as a guide, the student will find the entrance upon the language
instead of difficult and repulsive, easy and inviting. Taken altogether,
we regard the grammar of Prof. B. as eminently adapted to the use of
students in our Theological Seminaries ; and we see not why it should
not successfully compete with the ablest of its predecessors. In addi
tion to its intrinsic rights it has moreover the recommendation of being
sold at the low price of $1 25. — N. Y. Evangelist.
It is enough to say, for the information of students in this most in
teresting and valuable department of human (rather divine) knowledge,
that in this grammar they will find all the information requisite for
ordinary purposes in a form more accessible and inviting than has usu
ally been given it. Minor recommendations are, the inviting character
of the print, and the moderate price of $1 25 (the chrestomathy being
part of the same volume.) Students in Hebrew, especially if they have
made trial of other grammars, will deem this work a valuable acces
sion to our facilities for the acquisition of this original and sacred tongue.
It need scarce be added that this commendation is given without any
disposition to injure the deserved repute of the almost father of Hebrew
literature in this country. He will not, surely, regret that a spirit which
haB done so much to promote, should develop itself in new and felici
tous attempts to improve the field that he so arduously and success
fully cultivates. — N. Y. Churchman.
Prof. Stuart's grammar is full and copious. Prof. Bush bears tes
timony to its merit and observes that his design has been by a greater
simplification of the elements, to produce a work better adapted to the
wants of those who are beginning a course of careful study of the
language, while the grammar of Prof. Stuart, which leads at once
into the deeper complexities of the language, answers in a great degreo
the purpose of an ample Thesaurus.to the advanced student. We believe
*

there is a greater simplification, combined with as much fullness and
detail as are requisite to aid the student in attaining an accurate know
ledge of the language. We are glad to see that Prof. Bush has returned,
or rather adheres to the old system of the distinction of vowels into
long and short. It"has always appeared to us that the change adopted
by Prof. Stuart from Gesenius, substituting for the distinction into
long and short vowels, a classification into three analogous orders,
brought with it much greater complexity, without any adequate com
pensation in the advantage which might result from it. — Christian
Intelligencer. His grammar is more intelligible, and contains less of unnecessary
and doubtful matter, than any other equally complete work with which
we are acquainted. We have no doubt that its circulation will prove an
important means of recommending the study of the Hebrew language.
—If. Y. Observer.
• S3r The publishers are happy to state, from information recently
received from the author, that the above work has_been adopted as the
text-book on Hebrew Grammar at the Theological Seminary, Prince-
Ion, N. J., and that it is under consideration, with a like view, at seve
ral other institutions in the country.
FEMALE STUDENT.— LECTURES TO YOUNG LA
DIES, comprising Outlines and Applications on the different
branches of- Female Education. For the use of Female
Schools, and private Libraries ; delivered to the Pupils of the
Troy Female Seminary. By Mrs. Almira H. Lincoln Phelps,
late Vice Principal of that Institution;: Author of Familiar
Lectures on Botany, etc.
This lady is advantageously known as the writer of "Familiar
Lectures on Botany," and other popular works for the use of students
and the young generally. Her present work may be safely commend
ed to the class for whom it is more especially designed, and to the use
of schools in particular, as one of various interest, and of very judicious
and useful composition. — Evening Gazette.
We recommend the work to teachers and all others who are sensi
ble of the vast amount of influence which woman exerts on society,
and how inadequately she has hitherto in general been prepared to make
that influence beneficial to our race. — Boston Mercantile Journal.
Her views of the various methods of instructing are practical, for
they are the results of experience. Toparcnis, particularly mothers de
sirous of pursuing the most judicious course in the education of their
children, I would recommend this book as useful beyond any other
I am acquainted with, in arming them against that parental blindness
from which the best of parents are not wholly exempt, and which often
leads them unawares to injure in various ways the character of their
children, and lay the foundation of future misfortune for their offspring
and sorrow lor themselves. To young women, who cannot afford the
expense of attending such schools as afford the highest advantages,
Mrs. P.'s lectures afford substantial aid in the work of setf-education.
Young Ladies about to go abroad to schools, or those already from
home, may consult this book as they would a judicious mother, or
faithful and experienced friend s it will warn them of the dangers to
which they will be exposed, or the faults into which they are liable to
fall, so that being " forewarned," they may be forearmed to escape

5
them.— In my opinion the peculiar tendency of this 'work is to prdduce
in the mind that "humility" which "goes before 'honor," to impart
to the thoughtless, a sense of the a wfuF restraints of morality.— Mrs.
Willard, Prin. Troy Female Seminary.
The present work is intended to unfold the natural objects of female
education. This is accomplished in a series of lectures written in a
perspicuous, pleasing style, and treating of the various studies pursued
in a well regulated school for young ladies. It is really and truly what
it proposes to be, a guide in the intellectual education of woman, and
will, we have no doubt, become a standard work in our schools and
families. — Ladies' Magazine.
We think this plan is generally executed in a manner calculated
to instruct pupils and to furnish useful hints and maxims for teachers.
We can cordially recommend the work, generally, as sound in its prin
ciples of education, interesting in its style, and excellent in its spirit — a
Valuable gift to pupils and teachers. — Annals of Education.
We know not when we met with a book which we have perused
with more pleasure, or from which we have derived more profit. The
authoress is evidently possessed of a vigorous understanding, with just
so much of imagination as to chasten down thematter-of-factnessof her
style, which is eminently beautiful. She is perfectly acquainted with
her subject, and expresses herself in a manner at once clear and forci
ble, affectionate and convincing. It is well known how much the
intellectual character of the chdd depends on that of the mother, and
yet girls are brought up and educated as if they were born only to buzz
and flutter on the stage of life, instead of forming the character of a
future generation of men.— Montreal Gazette.
Mrs. Phelps's course of lectures furnishes a guide in the education
of females, for mothers as well as for the young ! all may profit by
the just and practical ideas it contains relative to the various branches
of education. It should be in the hands of all who are educating
others, or attempting to instruct themselves.— Mad'lle Montgolfier of
France. Mothers may find in this book a valuable assistant to aid them in
bringing up their daughters to prefer duty to pleasure, and knowledge
to amusement ; and who would teach them to be learned without pe
dantry and graceful without affectation. Educate your daughters " to
be wise without.vanity, happy without witnesses and contented without
admirers." — Southern Religious Intelligencer.
Of Mrs. Phelp3' Lectures to young ladies, I cannot speak in suffi
ciently high terms of commendation. Such a work was greatly needed
and must prove of inestimable value. I am in the practice of reading
E onions of it to my school, &c. I shall recommend to all young
idies who are or may be under my care to possess themselves of copies
of the book. — Miss E., Principal^of the celebrated school for young
ladies at Georgetown, D. C.
Rev. Wm. Cogswell, Sec. A.B.C. F. M., writes the publishers, I un
derstand that you are about issuing a second edition of Mrs. Phelps'
"Lectures on Female Education." This fact I am happy to learn.
I can cordially recommend them as being well adapted not only to inter
est and instruct the young ladies, of the institution for whom they were
originally designed, but also others in similar institutions. The style
and execution of the work is highly commendable; and the subjeets on
which it treats, important to young Ladies, acquiring a finished educa
tion. Its originality and value, entitle it to an extensive circulation,
which I doubt not it will obtain.
Boston, Oct. 16, 1836.

6
FOREIGN CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE LIBER
TIES OF THE UNITED STATES.— 2d edition.
One excellence of the publication before us, almost peculiar to this
writer, when compared to others who have written upon this subject in
our country, is, that it handles the matter of discussion with calmness,
the writer not suffering himself to indite his letters under the influence
of exacerbated feelings, but wisely avoids those harsh and blackening
epithets which do more to irritate the passions than to convince ana
enlighten the judgment. On this account the book may be read with
profit by all. — iV." Y. Christian Advocate. (Methodist.)
The letters of Brutus deserve an extensive circulation. — Missouri,
St. Louis Observer. (Presbyterian.)
" From what I have seen and know, the fears entertained by the
writer in the New- York Observer, under the caption of 'Foreign Con
spiracy,' &c. are not without foundation, especially in the West." — Let
ter of a Traveller in the West. (Maryland,) Methodist Protestant.
" Bhutus. — The able pieces over this signature, relative to the de
signs of Catholicity in our highly favored land, originally published in
the New-York Observer, it is now ascertained were written, not by an
individual who was barely indulging in conjectures, but by one who
has witnessed the Papacy in all its deformity. One who has, not long
since, travelled extensively in the Romish countries, and has spent
much time in the Italian States, where the seat of the Beast is. Rome
is familiar to him, and he has watched the movements there w ith great
particularity. We may, therefore, yield a good degree of credence to
what Brutus has told us. His numbers are now published in a pam
phlet, and the fact which has just come out in regard to his peculiar
qualification to write on this great subject, will give them extensive cir
culation."— Ulica Baptist Register.
The numbers of Brutus. — " Our readers are already acquainted with
their contents. The object is to awaken the attention of the American
public to a design, supposed to be entertained by the despotic govern
ments of Europe, particularly of Austria, in conjunction with his Holi
ness the Pope, to undermine gradually our free institutions by the pro
motion of the Catholic Religion in America. The letters are interest
ing, from the numerous facts which they disclose; and are deserving
the careful attention of the citizens of these United States, who should
guard with vigilance the sacred trust which has been confided to us by
our fathers." — N. Y. Weekly Messenger.
The work embodies a mass of facts, collected from authentic sour
ces, of the deepest interest to every friend of civil liberty and Protestant
Christianity. The efforts of despotic European sovereigns, to inocu
late our country with the religion of Rome, are fully proved. Could
they succeed in these efforts, and annihilate the spirit of liberty on our
shores, the march of free principles in our own dominions would cease.
They could then sit securely on their thrones, and rule with a rod of
iron over their abject vassals.— Ohio, Cincinnati Journal. (Presbyte
rian.)

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3 9002 08837 1969