is many a merchant in America better lodged than the padishah of the Ottoman empire. We have not seen the old seraglio, however, and in its inaccessible recesses, probably, moulders that true oriental splendor which this upholsterer monarch abandons in his rage, for the novel luxuries of Europe.

LETTER XLIV.

Farewell to Constantinople-Europe and the East compared-The Departure-Smyrna, the Great Mart for Figs-An Excursion into Asia Minor-Travelling Equipments— Character of the Hajjis-Encampment of Gipsies--A Youthful Hebe-Note-Horror of the Turks for the "Unclean Animal"-An Anecdote.

I HAVE spent the last day or two in farewell visits to my favorite haunts in Constantinople. I galloped up the Bosphorus, almost envying les ames damnées that skim so swiftly and perpetually from the Symplegades to Marmora, and from Marmora back to the Symplegades. I took a caique to the Valley of Sweet Waters, and rambled away an hour on its silken sward. I lounged a morning in the bazars, smoked a parting pipe with my old Turk in the Bezestein, and exchanged a last salaam with the venerable Armenian bookseller, still poring over his illuminated Hafiz. And last night, with the sundown boat waiting at the pier, I loitered till twilight in the small and elevated cemetery between Galata and Pera, and, with feelings of even painful regret, gazed my last upon the matchless scene around me. In the words of the eloquent author of Anastasius, when taking the same farewell, "For the last time, my eye wandered over the dimpled bills, glided along the winding waters, and dived into the deep and delicious dells, in which branch out its jagged shores.

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Reverting from these smiling outlets of its sea-beat suburbs to its busy centre, I surveyed, in slow succession, every chaplet of swelling cupolas, every grove of slender minarets, and every avenue of glittering porticoes, whose pinnacles dart their golden shafts from between the dark cypress-trees into the azure sky. I dwelt on them as on things I never was to behold more ; and not until the evening had deepened the veil it cast over the varied scene from orange to purple, and from purple to the sable hue of night, did I tear myself away from the impressive spot. I then bade the city of Constantine farewell for ever, descended the high-crested hill, stepped into the heaving boat, turned my back upon the shore, and sank my regrets in the sparkling wave, across which the moon had already flung a trembling bar of silvery light, pointing my way, as it were, to other unknown regions."

There are few intellectual pleasures like that of finding our own thoughts and feelings well described by another!

I certainly would not live in the east; and when I sum up its inconveniences and the deprivations to which the traveller from Europe, with his refined wants, is subjected, I marvel at the heart-ache with which I turn my back upon it, and the deep die it has infused into my imagination. Its few peculiar luxuries do not compensate for the total absence of comfort; its lovely scenery cannot reconcile you to wretched lodgings; its picturesque costumes and poetical people, and golden sky, fine food for a summer's fancy as they are, cannot make you forget the civilized pleasures you abandon for them-the fresh literature, the arts and music, the refined society, the elegant pursuits, and the stirring intellectual collision of the cities of Europe.

Yet the world contains nothing like Constantinople! If wo

could compel all our senses into one, and live by the pleasures of the eye, it were a paradise untranscended. The Bosphorus-the superb, peculiar, incomparable Bosphorus! the dream-like, fairybuilt seraglio! the sights within the city so richly strange, and the valleys and streams around it so exquisitely fair! the voluptuous softness of the dark eyes haunting your every step on shore, and the spirit-like swiftness and elegance of your darting caique upon the waters! In what land is the priceless sight such a treasure? Where is the fancy so delicately and divinely pampered?

Every heave at the capstan-bars drew upon my heart; and when the unwilling anchor at last let go its hold, and the frigate swung free with the outward current, I felt as if, in that moment, I had parted my hold upon a land of faëry. The dark cypresses and golden pinnacles of Seraglio Point, and the higher shafts of Sophia's sky-touching minarets were the last objects in my swiftly-receding eye, and, in a short hour or two, the whole bright vision had sunk below the horizon.

We crossed Marmora, and shot down the rapid Dardanelles in as many hours as a passage up had occupied days, and, rounding the coast of Anatolia, entered between Mitylene and the Asian shore, and, on the third day, anchored in the bay of Smyrna.

Everybody knows Smyrna," says Mac Farlane," it is such a place for figs!" It is a low-built town, at the head of the long gulf, which bears its name, and, with the exception of the high rock immediately over it, topped by the ruins of an old castle, said to imbody in its walls the ancient Christian church, it has no very striking features. Extensive gardens spread away on every side, and, without exciting much of your admiration for its

beauty, there is a look of peace and rural comfort about the neighborhood that affects the mind pleasantly.

Almost immediately on my arrival, I joined a party for a few days' tour in Asia Minor. We were five, and, with a baggagehorse, and a mounted suridjee, our caravan was rather respectable. Our appointments were orientally simple. We had each a Turkish bed (alias, a small carpet), a nightcap, and a "copy. hold" upon a pair of saddlebags, containing certain things forbidden by the Koran, and therefore not likely to be found by the way. Our attendant was a most ill-favored Turk, whose pilgrimage to Mecca (he was a hajji, and wore a green turban) had, at least, imparted no sanctity to his visage. If he was not a rogue, Lature had mis-labelled him, and I shelter my want of charity under the Arabic proverb: "Distrust thy neighbor if he has made a hajji; if he has made two, make haste to leave thy house"

We wound our way slowly out of the narrow and ill-paved streets of Smyrna, and passing through the suburban gardens, yellow with lemons and oranges, crossed a small bridge over the Hermus. This is the favorite walk of the Smyrniotes, and if its classic river, whose "golden sands" (here, at least), are not golden, and its "Bath of Diana" near by, whose waters would scarce purify her "silver bow," are something less than their sounding names; there is a cool, dark cemetery beyond, less famous, but more practicable for sentiment, and many a shadowy vine and drooping tree in the gardens around, that might recompense lovers, perhaps, for the dirty labyrinth of the intervening suburb.

We spurred away over the long plain of Hadjilar, leaving to the right and left the pretty villages, ornamented by the summer