the air with your screams; lift the roof of the house with the loudness of your shrieks, and cry murder and rapine from the street windows; and if all fail to collect the rabble and shame your lord, shout the zangenvar, till the guard and firemen fill the house, and refuse to go till they are paid for their trouble.

"If he threaten to drown you, make a friend of the Cadi's wife, and if she cannot assist you, nobody else can : if he threaten the sack twice, it is time to think of a divorce. A separate maintenance is a great calamity ; the allowance is always small; but some women think it pleasanter to be divorced than drowned; it is a matter of taste, my child, in which it is difficult to advise !"

"Praise be to Allah!" cried all the women, "these are words of more value than strung pearls!" Each recommended Zuleika to treasure the precious counsel in her heart, and by doing so, and paying proper attention to her diet, in order to arrive at the standard size of beauty, there was no doubt but that she would become a great Sultana, a mistress over innumerable slaves, and pre-eminent amongst many wives, and still more women who were not.

'Zuleika behaved as any other poor girl would have done in any part of the world, whose inexperience was admonished by every matron of her acquaintance a day or two before her wedding; she listened in silence, she wished her counsellors at the bottom of the sea, and when she blushed, modesty had only half the merit of the bright effusion. In the meantime, the ladies, who were tired of smoking and drinking coffee, regaled themselves with sweetmeats and sherbet; and when these were swallowed, lumps of sugar were crunched, till a hakkim, had such been present, might have dreamed there were no such maladies in Turkey as tooth-ache and indigestion.'-vol. i. pp. 275–288.

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The adventures of the Mussulman are told in a lively style throughout his reader's interest is also deeply engaged in the fate of Zuleika, who follows her lover to Egypt, and dies of grief upon hearing that his affections were already decayed in the general ruin of his character.

The object of Mr. Mac Farlane's work is to familiarize us with the manners of the Armenians, who are under the jurisdiction of the Porte. His hero, Constantine, is a Greek Prince, of gay habits, who resides at Constantinople, and falls desperately in love with an Armenian maiden named Veronica, of a respectable family. The author gives us for her portrait that of a lady to whom he was himself attached.

'The figure of Veronica was cast in one of nature's finest moulds; but its smallness, its extreme delicacy, gave an idea of fragileness, that was at times really painful, and could all but induce one to wish to enclose it in a glass case, or sheltered shrine, lest the roughness of the elements should annihilate it. Those exquisite forms were now concealed by the barbarous wrapper or cloak, which she had not laid aside; but the face that the Prince was persuing was disclosed, and by a most favourable light--the rosy hues of evening striking on it obliquely, as she sat on the divan, with her back turned towards the North. The warm glow on her face belonged to the time and tide, or was partially produced by her

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unusual excitement; for in general, Veronica was remarkable for a degree of paleness that seemed unearthly; and even now, that reflex of the sun was delicate and faint, as the rose-hues of fading evening on the loftiest of the eternally snow-covered Alps; as a veil of gauze, light as gossamer, and tinted with red, cast over a marble statue; and you could see it die away like the hues on the mountain, or withdrawn like the veil from the marble; and that face slowly wax paler and paler, as the shades of evening approached on sun-set-so glorious, yet so brief, in the climes of the South and the East. The pleasing, indescribable sensations of excitement, still however continued; and sent, at intervals, a faint blood-flush across her cheeks and forehead, soft and evanescent, which showed her face more pallid still; when it disappeared, in the degree that the lightning-flash increases the gloom of the midnight sky it traverses.

'In the countries of which she was a native, and where Oriental customs and jealousies have been introduced, it is by no means rare to find examples of that pale, fair complexion; for confinement to the house, the covering of the white yashnack, or veil, which, from the time they pass the age of children, they never quit when abroad, and the frequent use of the vapour-bath, would tend to produce it in the Turkish, Armenian, and Jewish females, whose costume and mode of life very nearly resemble each other; but what was somewhat rarer-what indeed was perhaps seldom found in those "Eastern climes," except among the highest of the Turkish ladies, the prides of the harems of the great in the imported exotics of Circassia or Georgia, or in their immediate progeny, was a thinness and transparency of skin which distinguished Veronica of the Tinghir-Oglus. How she came by it, Armenian as she was, heaven knows; for of all the people in the East, even without an exception in favour of the children of Israel, her caste, though it abounds in otherwise beautiful women, have certainly the thickest and coarsest of skins.

'Hers was clear and delicate, and through it the little blue veins (the exquisite tracery of an immortal hand) showed themselves like the scattered threads of mountain streams, beneath their chrystal covering of thin ice. Contrasting with this pallidity and transparency, was the jet black, intense hues of her eyes and eyebrows, and of some straggling locks of hair that had escaped the bondage of her yashmack, and fringed here and there her oval face. The kol, or the surmê, had been employed with effect; the eyes were brilliant and dazzling, while they were languid and caressing, and so long and thick were the lashes on the ample upper-lid, that when downcast, they in reality formed a veil, and nearly hid the whole of the orb; yet the eyes were not faultless, unexceptionable as they were in colour and size; they did not approach the forms of the Greeks, the living, or the works of their ancestors; they were too long, and too full and convex, like Armenian eyes in general. The eyebrows were better,-loftier than those even of Andalusian maids; they were arched in the very line of grace: like those of the Greeks, they approached very near, but did not unite over the nose, as do the eyebrows of Turkish beauties: a defect whose absence, however, was not owing to her, but to the obstinacy of nature; for the Armenians dress their faces after the Turks, and Veronica had laboured with kol and tweezers, and used every proper application to make her two eyebrows one. Her nose was thin, and finely formed, though slightly aquiline; the mouth, that seat of

expression, all but equal to the soul-telling eye, was small; and lips, perhaps, too slightly tinged with the colour of the rose, certainly somewhat too exuberant, disclosed in their opening, teeth, perfect in whiteness, size, and regularity. The chin was delicately turned; the whole contour of the head was good, and supported by a long, lithe, swan-like neck, graceful whether in motion or repose.'-vol. i. pp. 78-83.

The difference between the two religions, interposed, in the opinion of her family, obstacles to her union with a Greek, of an insurmountable character. A great part of the story, and by no means the least interesting, is composed of the various stratagems to which the hero is obliged to have recourse, in order to obtain interviews with the object of his adoration. Several of these stratagems are exceedingly amusing. Sometimes he assumes the disguise of a boatman, and assists in conducting the whole family in an excursion upon the Bosphorus. Sometimes he becomes a shepherd, messenger, milliner, in short he turns his hand to any thing that can bring him within the forbidden circle of her presence. He takes a cottage, in which there is a gazebo that overlooks her father's garden, and for a while their courtship is carried on with delightful secrecy. But one fine morning he concludes that he is discovered, by seeing a number of men employed to raise the wall above the level of his gazebo. He builds a second gazebo, and again the wall rises higher; a third gazebo mounts in the air, and at length the police interpose, and the gentleman is obliged to decamp. The first restlessness of his passion is charmingly depicted in the following passage:

He withdrew the curtains, and threw open the close lattice; the moon, which was riding at its height over the hills of Europe, glanced its peaceful beams through the window; the night breeze, so exquisitely gentle, wafted coolness into the chamber. Constantine was cheered and refreshed. He threw on his cloak, and walked out of the house, by the garden door, which he had opened for Veronica, the first time he had seen her. That door, it has been said, faced the declining bank, or hill, down which a pleasant little wood straggled; the same hill and wood ran on behind the neighbouring house of the Tinghir-Oglus, and there was only the breadth of a footpath between them and the walls of the confined Armenian garden.

Constantine pursued that narrow path, until he came to the wicketgate, by which he had seen Veronica enter; he then ascended the bank a few steps, and sat down on the green moss, where the opening thicket allowed him a full view of the rear of the Seraff's abode- -a cumbrous assemblage of beams and planks, once, to denote its rayah condition, painted black, but now of the hue of a rusty coffin, perforated with sundry windows of various shapes and sizes, but all shut up, with lattices like the blinds of a nunnery, or the gratings of a man-of-war's deck.

But even the house could interest the lover; and other objects, and the summer-night, could scarcely be more beautiful than they were.

A sylvan depth of shade was around him; but he could see from his

recess, the outer and upper branches of the bosquet, and the "fruit-tree tops" in the garden, be-spread with dew, waving to and fro in the broad moon-light, as the gentle breath of the winds shook them: so bright and genial was the night, that hosts of little lizards, that might have thought it day, were seen chasing each other along the tops of the garden walls; their hues of emerald and gold, shining like fugitive gems in the moon's rays. The lucciole, or fire-flies, had paled "their ineffectual fires," or only a few of them displayed their fairy lanterns, as they flitted through the thicket's gloom. Parts of the Bosphorus and its shores, showed themselves through opening trees, and hillocks near the banks: and looking past one end of the Seraff's house, the romantic and Asiatic village of Chiboukli might be discovered, and beyond the other end of the building, the point of Kanlidji-bournon, also on the opposite side of the channel. The waters, placid and waveless, but hurried on like those of a river, by a rapid current, murmured and plashed, as they laved the contiguous quay, producing stilly notes, so sweetly melancholy and heart-cooling! Even thus, were a hallowed type rendered into material reality, might sound the flowing of that stream, which should wash away the sins and sorrows of mankind!

'Other sounds were there none, save the scarcely audible whisper of the breeze on the wooded hill, the occasional cooing of some little turtledoves, that colonized a neighbouring grove, and the rarer hooting of an owl, that maintained "her solitary reign," in a ruined kiosk, half-way up the hill's side.

'On a sudden, a slight noise was heard from the Seraff's house. Constantine listened. The sound was repeated, and seemed like what would be produced by one attempting to open a grating, or a creaking door, gently, so as not to alarm the inmates.

'There was a moment's stillness, and then, after a similar repetition of the noise, a door, opening on a terrace, that ran a yard or too along the garden wall, gave issue to a female figure. It advanced to the edge of the terrace, and leaned on the parapet, turning the face towards the bright moon. Constantine's eyes did but confirm the intimation of his heart, that had whispered, it could be none but Veronica.

The garden walls were low, were nothing to youth-to love: in a moment he might have been by her side, and yet he did not move.

'The figure before him seemed unearthly, and it struck him with awe, while he gazed on it in that intenseness of look, with which we regard a meteor in the air, or any striking object whose stay we feel will be transient.

'Veronica, on leaving her chamber, which had, perhaps, been as restless as that of Constantine, who was gazing at her from the trees, had thrown a thin white cloak over her, which fell in loose broad folds of drapery; but a portion of it drawn over the head like a hood, and framing, as it were, her pale face, over whose brow and cheeks her coal black hair had been allowed to stray negligently, gave an almost sepulchral aspect to her whole person. Her arms that leaned on the parapet, were covered with the loose haik, but when she had turned her face for a moment to the moon, she raised them-the robe fell from those arms, as a wreath of snow from some lovely shrub it had concealed-and their beautiful hue and delicate proportions, were touchingly displayed by the full rays of the planet she seemed supplicating.

Not Juliet on her return from the masquerade, when unrobed, and with her young heart full of love, she seated herself at the balcony, to feel the mysterious influences of moonlight; nor Francesca, on the beleaguered Isthmus by Corinth, when from another world, she appeared to warn her lover, "Alp the Renegade," could offer to the eye a picture more touching than the Armenian maiden at this moment, as she stood with uplifted hands and eyes.

'But it was indeed the spectre rather than the living, that Veronica resembled, and when Constantine saw her fleecy white robe, that " woven air," spread and tremble like the pinions of a dove, prepared for flight, as a nocturnal breeze unusually strong, sped by her from the Euxine, he almost expected to see her float away with it, and leave him there behind, to feel he had been worshipping something too pure and beautiful, to be real. But presently her thin pale lips moved; he listened as intensely as he had gazed; the soft murmur syllabled his name, and he heard his familiar appellation of "Costandi," pronounced in tones that admitted of no misinterpretation!

He would have spoken, but before his confused sense could form the single word "Veronica," she murmured, "to-morrow!" and clasping her hands on her bosom, glided towards the door whence she had issued. Then he found the faculty of speech, and said in a subdued, but eager tone, "Veronica! I am here, do not flee!"

• The fair Armenian's hand was on the door as the prince's adjuration struck her astonished ear; there ensued a struggle between her sense of propriety, and the impatience of her love, and we are inclined to believe (we paint no perfect heroine, but a passionate uninformed child of the East,) that the latter would have prevailed and led her back to the terrace's edge and a minute's converse with her lover, if her uncle Yussuf had not been heard clamouring at that very nick of time," Hatchedue, you sluggard, bring me my morning Nurghile!" She slipped within the house, and closed the door even more silently than she had opened it, whilst the disappointed Constantine, who had distinctly heard the Seraff's orders, remained at the edge of the copse, by the garden wall, irreverently cursing morning pipes.

But morning was indeed approaching, and here the approach of day is as rapid as that of night. The blueish gray of the atmosphere brightened generally with each passing moment, while in the east it was superseded by a glow of yellow gold; the vapours withdrew from the Bosphorus' hilly banks, and gently curled away from the bosom of its waters; the houses, the kiosks, and the minarets, became more separately visible on the one, and the caïks and piadés, at once more numerous and distinct, on the other-in brief space, there was light in heaven, and motion and sound upon earth,-each so impressive, after night, and repose, and silence !

'The Seraff Yussuf, as was his wont, presently came out on the little terrace to smoke his early morning pipe. In his vast calpack and loose beneesh, he might have been taken for the sacerdotal functionary of some Eastern worship, his attendant Chibookji, who was there to arrange the cinder, for his Acolyte, and his shining Narghité, with a column of smoke curling from its capacious bowl, for his altar, on which he was offering up incense to the rising sun-the glorious object of the adoration of the Magi!