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narrow, winding streets offered light and shade and a warm breeze. The rooms were lofty and airy, and could be easily warmed in winter with a mangal. The modern stone houses do not catch fire, but their six stories, their small windows, and smoking chimney-pots, convert Pera and Galata into European towns. Not a single architect has thought of imitating the delicious style of the old wooden houses in the new building material. All have strived to produce clumsy, massive buildings, true to the plumb-line, and to treat the city in the same way as Turkish reform has treated the national garb.

In one district it is a great pity that it was forced to yield to the new style. Galata was joined by the Kaviar-Khan, consisting of several gloomy and dirty lanes, in which were one-storied shops, with iron doors and grated windows, for the sale of caviare and other wares. At certain hours of the day there assembled in these lanes bankers, merchants, money-changers, brokers, agents, and speculators, among whom the Greek element prevailed. They stood on doorsteps, or sat under the awnings of the shops on straw-bottomed chairs, or sometimes on the bare ground, and smoked or let the beads of their rosary slip through their fingers. Here the most contradictory reports passed from mouth to mouth, they gesticulated, yelled, quarrelled, and settled prices. Goods or shares were not the object of this traffic, everything turned on gold, English, French, Russian, Turkish gold, and its relative value in Turkish paper money. Kaviar-Khan was the exchange of Constantinople, and might almost be called a power. The government in vain issued decrees against this system, in vain did it several times order the Khan to be closed, in vain did it erect right facing it an elegant, airy, sheltered exchange -Kaviar-Khan held its own till the paper money was called in. Even now the prices of sugar and caviare are discussed there, but the fate of Turkey will never more be decided in its lanes. While the Khan has fallen into decadence, however, the Exchange is flourishing, and the share-holders are paid very good dividends.

In addition to the Exchange, credit

associations, factories, streets, and railways have sprung into existence. Two years ago an industrial exhibition was got up for the encouragement of agriculture and trade, at the close of which the prize-holders were presented to the Sultan, and decorated by him with the Medjidié. Abd-ul-Asiz, before he ascended the throne, was a man of progress. He possessed a model farm, which he managed himself, on the Asiatic coast, two leagues from Constantinople, and he went to his estate almost daily in his steam yacht. On his accession he gave it to his nephew, Murad Effendi, but made him pledge himself to continue it. The Sultan has also made a fine collection of minerals. He is fond of sport, is an excellent horseman, and has accepted a nomination as member of a jockey club, which has been founded at Smyrna by Count de Bentivoglio. His tastes have naturally led the Turkish youths to imitate him. Every year in spring and autumn, races are held in the vicinity of Constantinople-real races with stands, judges, jockeys, a weighingplace, and everything belonging to it. In the same way a mixed committee get up an annual regatta, in which yachts, boats, and kaïks take part, and there are both rowing and sailing-matches.

The Turks have taken a more rapid and lively interest in all material progress, than the Christians and Jews. There is a natural reason for this. Trade and finances were in the hands of the rayahs, who yielded to their natural sloth, and rarely quitted a circle of operations by which they earned money easily and quickly. The Turk, to whom this system of business had hitherto been strange, but who had a large capital at his disposal, did not hesitate to intrust his money to new societies, recommended by respectable names. While the Christian only saw in these enterprises an oppressive competition.

The whole society on the Bosphorus is extravagantly superstitious. Turks, Armenians, Greeks, and Jews, are alike in this respect, and the Levantines follow the general current. The Greek believes in a domestic spirit (Stikio,) who lives at the bottom of a well, and comes up at night in order to do the inhabitants of the house good or evil, according as they

have pleased or displeased him. The Stikio assumes all possible forms, and appears as a dandy, a girl, a negro, &c. He performs small services for his protégés, but any one who offends him can reckon on tricks being played him, or even on a thrashing. Like the Greeks, the Armenians have taken to the worship of pictures of the saints. The saint demands that a lamp should burn before his picture day and night, and if it ever goes out, he avenges himself by fearful dreams and night-mare. Fortune-felling by the hand or the surface of a well is in universal repute. At the present time, a Muhammadan negress and an old Jewess are carrying on a roaring trade, and are always consulted in illness or robberies. On certain days people make a pilgrimage to Elijah's well, or to the springs of Balukli, whose water on such days possesses a healing power.

Whenever these and similar Oriental fantasies do not show themselves, you might imagine you were in Europe. In Pera and Galata balls and parties are given, which will bear comparison with the salons of Paris. The Orientals are fond of and cultivate music, and they are quite conversant with the Italian operatic repertoire. Their taste, it is true, does not rise above a certain level; in music, they adore Verdi; literature, Alexandre Dumas; and in philosophy, Volney. Pera has a large opera-house, with boxes fitted up in the Italian style, an orchestra of fifty musicians, and an Italian troupe. Scalese, Corsi, Negrini, Madame Penco, and other notabilities have sung on its boards. A French theatre, which has been for two years under the management of an Armenian, plays everything: tragedies and dramas in prose and verse, comedies and farces. In an Armenian theatre, where the language employed is Turkish, you can see both original pieces and translations from the French and Italian. Amateur theatres pullulate; every circle of society can supply a full number of lovers, male and female, noble fathers, respectable ladies, and villains.

The Turkish women have willingly adopted European amusements and fashions. Operas and balls please them far better than the solitary life to which they were formerly condemned. In Eu

rope, however, there are also serious employments for the female sex, which render the wife the husband's assistant. The Oriental wife will not listen to anything of this sort, and belives she has fulfilled her duty when she annually presents society with a child, which she does not suckle herself. If a young Greek, Armenian, or Levantine girl is educated in a convent, she learns to read and write, a little; if she remain at home, she learns to speak French from her European governess. She gets on fastest in those things in which she receives no instruction, and will look out of the window for half the day, or practise positions before the mirror. The mother dreams away three-forths of her time on the sofa, and leaves her children, who are always numerous, to the care of the servants. The lesson she incessantly repeats to her daughter is to look out for a husband. As there are far more girls than young men, the latter are treated by the ladies with that attention which in Europe falls to the share of the fairer sex. The richest toilette, the most provocative desire to please, and employed, and even scandal is not shunned, if it compromise a man; the end justifies the means. Love-letters, rendezvous, secret betrothals, in case of need even an elopement, followed by the paternal blessing—all is permitted, but no mésalliance. In this land, where there is no nobility, no aristocracy of the mind or of wealth, a Castilian arrogance prevails. Everybody is vain of his personal position, so that a cloth-dealer would never give his daughter to a tailor, or a carpenter marry a shoemaker's daughter.

When the daughter has visited the theatres long enough, and shown herself sufficiently at the promenades, followed at some distance by her mother, and her object of marrying has been gained, she asks for a rich equipment, not in clothes and linen, but in silk dresses, jewelery, and, above all, diamonds. No maidservant will marry a shoeblack unless he lays at least a diamond breast-pin on the altar of love. The most necessary things are neglected, but there is a lavish display of superfluities. When married, the young lady rises at a late hour, spends a good part of the day on the sofa, drinks many cups of coffee, receives visits from

time to time, forgets the little she has learned, does not write, read, or work, and leaves all the household duties to her numerous servants, all monetary cares to her husband. The latter goes at daybreak to Galata, spends his day in the office, at Kaviar Khan, or on 'Change, and goes home late at night. In winter, the couple, whether rich or not, visit the theatre, where they have a box or at least the fourth of a box. On Sunday morning, church and a walk offer an excuse for displaying the richest toilette. The embassy balls, which unite all the fractions of society, are naturally attended. So soon as the first beams of the May sun burst forth, everybody flies and settles down either on the quay of Therapia, or at Biyuk-deréh, and YeniKeni, on the shores of the Bosphorus, on the Gulf of Kani-Koi, or under the shady groves of the islands of Kalki and Prinkipo. The town house is entrusted to a poor family, who in this way get free lodgings, and a wooden house is hired for six months, generally at a very high price, in which the lady shuts herself up for the whole day. She dreams till evening on her eternal sofa, and then goes out in a dazzling toilette, to refresh herself in a coffee-house on the beach. As regards the husband, he goes every morning, in all weathers, in a kaïk or steamer, to Galata. The trip takes two hours, and is either dangerous or uncomfortable. In a kaïk you are exposed to be upset by every puff of wind; on the steamer, three to four hundred persons are packed together in the cabins, on deck, and on the paddle-boxes. At night the husband returns home tired and hungry. Thus people live in summer on the Bosphorus, expensively and uncomfortably. Where the money comes from is an insoluble enigma with many families.

On Corpus Christi day everybody hastens from the country into town. The Catholic clergy of the European quarter celebrate this festival with great pomp. On each Thursday and Sunday for a fortnight a procession marches forth from the two churches of Galata and Pera, and proceeds, with various halts at street altars, and under a shower of flowers, through the streets, where houses are adorned with flags and carpets. The boys and girls of the Christian schools carry

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flags, the sons of the most respectable families appear in the costume of St. John, with a shepherd's staff and sheepskin, or else in that of St. George, helmet and lance. In short, the procession is an Italian one, more theatrical than religious. Several Turkish cavasses pre

cede the procession and make way for it, and the banners are followed by a battalion of troops with the band. By the side of the cross, which is borne by a priest, marches a guard of honor, and Turkish officers with drawn sabres surround the Host. A second battalion of troops closes the procession. When there is a halt at an altar and the believers kneel down, the drums roll, the band plays the imperial march, and the soldiers present arms.

The intolerance of the Christians forms a disgraceful contrast with the respect which the Turks display for all confessions. The insults exchanged between Greeks and Catholics at every festival would frequently lead to sanguinary excesses if the Turkish authorities did not interfere. On Easter eve the Greeks assemble in the court-yards near their churches, with a lighted taper in one hand and a pistol in the other. For three days they keep up an incessant firing in honor of the Saviour's resurrection. Woe to any Catholic who fell among these pious people! Trampled on, beaten, singed by pistol-shots, the "dog of a Latin" would for a long time bear the marks of Greek fraternal love. The Jews were formerly exposed to such ill treatment at Easter, that they dared not show themselves in public. At the present day the Turkish authorities have taken such severe measures, that only a symbolic insult still occurs. An enormous sheet of paper, on which a caricaturist has drawn a Jew, is carried through the streets, and the Christians throw copper or silver coins at it. The bearers burn the picture in front of a church, and thence proceed to a pot-house to spend the money in a Christian debauch, which generally ends in fraternal knife-stabs. The disappearance of this religious rancor would mark a progress greater than any of those to which we have referred in our article.

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An abbot of Cirencester, about 1216, conceived himself an etymologist, and, as a specimen of his powers, has left us the Latin word "cadaver," a corpse, thus dissected. "Ca," quoth he, is abbreviation for "caro;" "da," for data; "ver," for vermibus. Hence we have "caro data vermibus," flesh given to the worms! While the reader smiles at this absurdity, it is curious to know that our common word "alms" is constructed on much the same principle, being formed (according to the best authority) of one letter taken from each syllable of the cumbrous Latinized Greek word "eleemosyna."

The aforesaid abbot no doubt pronounced some thousands of times during his life the transubstantiating formula, "Hoc est corpus meum;" whence has grown the conjuror's catchword, and slid into the usage of ordinary life in connection with jugglery or unfair dealing, "hocus-pocus."

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fallow deer, which had a habit of scraping up the earth with their fore-feet to the depth of several inches, sometimes even of half a yard. A wayfaring man through the olden woods was frequently exposed to the danger of tumbling into one of these hollows, when he might truly be said to be "in a scrape." Cambridge students in their little difficulties picked up and applied the phrase to other perplexing matters which had brought a man morally into a fix.

As the season went round those deerscrapes became overgrown with vegetation, and were picturesque discrepancies in the woodland surface. One of the plants that might be found thus helping to cover unsightliness was that named in Latin fumitory, and in English "earthsmoke." Wherefore so called? Because the old botanists believed it to be produced by spontaneous generation from vapors arising out of the earth. Saith one of these credulous folk, "It cometh out of the erthe in grete quantite, lyke smoke: thys grosse or coarse fumositie of the erthe wyndeth and wryeth out, and, by working of the ayre and sunne, turneth intoo thys herbe."

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Another plant, the derivation of which seems equally curious, is mustard. Etymologists have fought over it, and pulled it to pieces in different directions. "Multum ardet," says one, or, in old French, "moult arde," it burns much. "Mustum ardens," hot must, says another, on account of French mustard being said to have been prepared for table with the sweet must of new wine. But a picturesque At the abbot's period, also, a clause story about the name is told as follows: was extant in the tenure of many English Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, estates, to the effect that the owners granted to Dijon certain armorial bearmight not fell the trees, as the best tim- ings, with the motto "Moult me tarde' ber was reserved for the Royal Navy; I long or wish ardently. This was .but any trees that came down without sculptured over the principal gate, and, cutting were the property of the tenant. in course of years, by some accident the Hence was a storm a joyful and a lucra- central word got effaced. The manutive event in proportion to its intensity, facturers of sinapi or senévé (such were and the larger the number of forest pa- the former names of mustard), wishing triarchs it laid low the richer was the lord to label their pots of condiment with the of the land. He had received a verita- the city arms, copied the mutilated motble "windfall." Ours in the nineteenth to; and the unlearned, seeing continually century come in the shape of any unex- the inscription of "moult-tarde," came to pected profit; and those of us who own call the contents by this title. estates rather quake in sympathy with our trembling trees on windy nights.

Under those trees roamed the red and

So, likewise, because a fixed scale of duties were payable to the Moorish occupants of a fortress on Tarifa promontory,

rank as philosophers shows a culpable this vice, as of the former, is the want, carelessness almost amounting to indif- so general and unhappily so increasing, ference to truth; but to set Dugald of a familiarity with the best models, esStewart there also, is to treat the critical spirit as altogether a thing of naught, and, though this is a less matter, to run the risk of depriving him of the reputation which is justly his. Again, Lord Jeffrey-for it is better in such a matter as this to take examples from the past was beyond doubt an accomplished man, and a brilliant writer. But if we compare him with such a critic as M. SainteBeuve, or if we read Mr. Arnold's comparison of him with Joubert, we can hardly fail to see that it would be more becoming if the terms in which his merits are often extolled among us were to suffer some abatement.

The third tendency which it is the appointed duty of criticism to resist, namely, fine writing, is also a peculiarly northern vice. It is a tendency at present extending itself, like some pestilent weed, over all English literature: a writer on this subject in the Cornhill* could select his "samples of fine English" not only from Tupper and Reynolds' Miscellany, but also from the Times, the Literary Gazette, and the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews! But in Scotland the vice is almost universal. It is to be found in our books and our newspapers, it is rampant in our pulpit, it intrudes, when opportunity offers, even upon the dignity of our bench. Were the writer in the Cornhill to set about collecting a few "samples" of fine Scotch, he might produce an amusing and most astonishing paper. This may be partly ascribed to the popularity of writers like the late Professor Wilson, a man of undoubted genius, but of a wild and unregulated genius, and in whose writings the influence of severe cultivation is hardly ever to be traced-an unfortunate popularity, in that it has led weaker men to imitate what is not susceptible, nor, indeed, deserving of imitation. These admiring mimics have caught the faults only of the original-in the well-known words of Johnson, they have "the nodosities of the oak, without its strength; the contortions of the Sybyl without her inspiration." But the main source of

* Vol. iii. p. 205.

pecially of those which antiquity has left us. And this leads us to an objection occasionally urged against Mr. Arnold's critical point of view. He is sometimes spoken of as an upholder of the classical as opposed to the Romantic style, and in a sense he is so. Thus he can not yield to the dogma frequently announced nowa-days, that "the poet who would really fix the public attention must leave the exhausted past, and draw his subjects from matters of present import, and therefore both of interest and novelty." He believes, on the contrary, that the best materials for poetry are to be found not in situations and incidents in themselves mean and disagreeable, however they may be elevated by the power of the imagination, but rather in events and ideas in themselves grand and beautiful, possessing an immediate dignity and interest, irrespective of the force of association; and, so far, he holds with the classicists. He believes, further, that distance from ourselves, either in time or idea, tends to bestow this immediate dignity and interest, while nearness to ourselves tends to take it away. Poetry, according to his idea, should approach, as with the most classic of the great poets it did approach, to sculpture, at once in natural beauty of subject, and in perfection of form. Yet he is far from confining poetry to classical themes in the strict sense of the word. He does not so limit his own choice. Most of his largest poems come from very different sources-from Northern mythology, from Eastern legend, from the cycle of Arthurian romance. His view, in short, is, that all noble subjects are fitting for poetry, only that the more distant the subject the more likely it is to possess this element of nobility, not having been exposed to the vulgarizing influences of familiarity. In this point of view Macbeth becomes as classical as Agamemnon

the Weird Sisters," withered and wild in their attire," as classical as the awful Eumenides-Una, with her lion, as classical as Antigone or Electra. We believe Mr. Arnold to be right in his theory. Despite such successes as those of Wordsworth or of Tennyson, we suspect

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