ing into the air, instantly gives chase, and soon gains on the fish-hawk; each exerts his utmost to mount above the other, displaying, in these rencontres, the most elegant and sublime aerial evolutions. The unencumbered eagle rapidly advances, and is just on the point of reaching his opponent, when, with a sudden scream, probably of despair and honest execration, the latter drops his fish; the eagle, poising himself for a moment, as if to take a more certain aim, descends like a whirlwind, snatches it in his grasp ere it reaches the water, and bears his ill-gotten booty silently away to the woods.

A SENSIBLE HORSE.

We do not think the records of instinct ever contained a more extraordinary instance than that we are now about to relate, and for the truth whereof many respectable witnesses pledge themselves. Some time since, Mr. J. Lane, of Fascomb, Gloucestershire, on his return home, turned his horse into a field in which it had been accustomed to graze. A few days before this, it had been shod all fours, but unluckily had been pinched in the shoeing of one foot. In the morning Mr. Lane missed the horse, and caused an active search to be made in the vicinity, when the following singular circumstance transpired. The animal, as may be supposed, feeling lame, made his way out of the field, by unhanging the gate with his mouth, and went straight to the same farrier's shop, a distance of a mile and a half. The farrier had no sooner opened his shed than the horse, which had evidently been standing there some time, advanced to the forge, and held up the ailing foot. The farrier instantly began to examine the hoof, discovered the injury, took off the shoe, and replaced it more carefully, on which the horse immediately turned about, and set off at a merry pace for his well-known pasture. While Mr. Lane's servants were on the search, they chanced to pass by the forge, and on mentioning their supposed loss, the farrier replied, "O, he has been here and shod, and gone home again ;" which, on their returning, they found to be the

case.

EELS TRAVELLING OVER LAND.

The eel (says Mr. Jesse, in his "Gleanings in Natural History") is evidently a link between the fish and the serpent; but, unlike the former, it

can exist a long time out of water, which its nocturnal migrations prove, though probably a certain degree of moisture on the grass is necessary to enable it to do this. That they do wander from one place to another is evident. I have been informed, upon the authority of a nobleman well known for his attachment to field sports, that, if an eel is found on land, its head is inva riably turned towards the sea, for which it is always observed to make in the most direct line possible. If this information is correct (and there seems no reason to doubt it), it shews that the eel, like the swallow, is possessed of strong migratory instinct. An annual migration of young eels takes place in the river Thames in the month of May; and they have generally made their appearance at Kingston, in their way upwards, about the second week in that month. These young eels are about two inches in length, and they make their approach in one regular and undeviating column of about five inches in breadth, and as thick together as it is possible for them to be. As this overland procession of eels generally lasts two or three days, and as they appear to move at the rate of nearly two miles and a half an hour, some idea may be formed of their enormous number.

Ah! who can see fair Woman lend to man,
In soft submission and full homage free,
The sum of all her powers unasked, nor feel
The need of such sweet comforter, the joy
Of being her protector, the high mark
Of all her earthly hopes, her world entire,
Centre and continent of all she owns?
This creature beautiful, this finer part
Of our coarse nature, claims not half our smiles,
The gem, the essence of terrestrial life,
Yet wipes off all our tears; she is the rose,
The hope, the pride, the honour: to our side
She grows, its ornament supreme, and holds
Among all nations, as her best loved due,
The very dearest title tongue can name
"Mother!"-Oh! sacred sound! whose endless
charm

Is felt wherever throbs a heart humane;
Thy echo lives among the very stars,
And tongues of heaven repeat thee, wondering
That abject earth hath aught of such a price.
And could lean Envy hold a seat above,
Thou wert her only mark below.

Two travellers having been robbed in a wood, and tied to trees at some distance from each other, one of them in despair exclaimed, "Oh! I'm undone!" "Are you?" said the other, "Then I wish you'd come and undo me."

SKETCHES OF TURKEY. No. II.

BY N. P. WILLIS.

Scutari-Tomb of the Sultana Validé--Mosque of the Howling Dervishes-A Clerical Shoemaker-Visit to a Turkish Cemetery-Bird'seye view of Stamboul and its environs-Seraglio-point-The Seven Towers.

PULLED over to Scutari in a caique, for a day's ramble. The Chrysopolis, the "golden city" of the ancients, forms the Asian side of the bay, and, though reckoned generally as a part of Constantinople, is in itself a large and populous capital. It is built on a hill, very bold upon the side washed by the sea of Marmora, but leaning toward the seraglio, on the opposite shore, with the grace of a lady (Asia) bowing to her partner, (Europe). You will find the simile very beautifully elaborated in the first chapter of " The Armenians."

We strolled through the bazaar awhile, meeting, occasionally, a caravan of tired and dusty merchants, coming in from Asia, some with Syrian horses, and some with dusky, Nubian slaves, following barefoot, in their blankets; and, emerging from the crowded street upon a square, we stopped a moment to look at the cemetery and gilded fountains of a noble mosque. Close to the street, defended by a railing of gilt iron, and planted about closely with cypresses, stands a small temple of airy architecture, supported on four slender columns, and enclosed by a net of gilt wire, forming a spacious aviary. Within sleeps the Sultana Validé. Her costly monument, elaborately inscribed in red and gold, occupies the area of this poetical sepulchre; small, sweet-scented shrubs half bury it in their rich flowers, and birds of the gayest plumage flutter and sing above her in their beautiful prison. If the soul of the departed sultana is still susceptible of sentiment, she must look down with some complacency upon the disposition of her "mortal coil." I have not seen so fanciful a grave in my travels.

We ascended the hill to the mosque of the Howling Dervishes. It stands at the edge of the great cemetery of Scutari, the favourite burial-place of the Turks. The self-torturing worship of this singular class of devotees takes place only on a certain day of the week, and we found the gates closed. A small café stood opposite, sheltered by large planetrees, and on a bench, at the door, sat a dervish, employed in the unclerical vocation of mending slippers. Calling for a

cup of the fragrant Turkish coffee, we seated ourselves on the matted bench beside him, and, entering into conversation, my friend and he were soon upon the most courteous terms. He laid down his last and accepted a proffered narghile, and, between the heavily-drawn puffs of the bubbling vase, gave us some information respecting his order, of which the peculiarity that most struck me was a law compelling them to follow some secularprofession. In this point, at least, they are more apostolic than the clergy of christendom. Whatever may be the dervish's excellence as a "mender of souls," thought I as I took up the last, and looked at the stitching of the bright new patch, (may I get well out of this sentence without a pun!) I doubt whether there is a divine within the christian pale who could turn out so pretty a piece of work in any corresponding calling. Our coffee drunk and our chibouques smoked to ashes, we took leave of our papoosh-mending friend, who laid his hand on his breast, and said, with the expressive phraseology of the east, "You shall be welcomed again."

We entered the gloomy shadow of the vast cemetery, and found its cool and damp air a grateful exchange for the sunshine. The author of Anastasius gives a very graphic description of this place, throwing in some horrors, however, for which he is indebted to his admirable imagination. I never was in a more agreeable place for a summer-morning's lounge, and, as I sat down on a turbaned head-stone, near the tomb of Mahomet the second's horse, and indulged in a train of reflections arising from the superior distinction of the brute's ashes over those of his master, I could remember no place, except Plato's Academy at Athens, where I had mused so absolutely at my ease.

We strolled on. A slender and elegantly-carved slab, capped with a small turban, fretted and gilt, arrested my attention. "It is the tomb," said my companion, "of one of the ichoglans or sultan's pages. The peculiar turban is distinctive of his rank, and the inscription says, he died at eighteen, after having seen enough of the world! Similar sentiments are to be found on almost every stone. Close by stood the ambitious cenotaph of a former pasha of Widin, with a swollen turban, crossed with folds of gold, and a footstone painted and carved, only less gorgeously than the other; and under his name and titles was written, "I enjoyed not the world."

Farther on, we stopped at the blackbanded turban of a cadi, and read again, underneath, "I took no pleasure in this evil world." You would think the Turks a philosophizing people, judging by these posthumous declarations; but one need not travel to learn that tombstones are sad liars.

The cemetery of Scutari covers as much ground as a city. Its black cy press pall spreads away over hill and dale, and terminates, at last, on a long point projecting into Marmora, as if it would pour into the sea the dead it could no longer cover. From the Armenian village, immediately above, it forms a dark, and not unpicturesque foreground to a brilliant picture of the gulf of Ni comedia and the clustering Princes' Islands. With the economy of room which the Turks practise in their burying-grounds, laying the dead, literally side by side, and the immense extent of this forest of cypresses, it is probable that on no one spot on the earth are so many of the human race gathered together.

We wandered about among the tombs till we began to desire to see the cheerful light of day, and, crossing toward the height of Bulgurlu, commenced its ascent, with the design of descending by the other side of the Bosphorus, and returning, by caique, to the city. Walking leisurely on between fields of the brightest cultivation, we passed, half way up, a small and rural serai, the summer residence of Esmeh Sultana, the younger sister of the sultan, and soon after stood, well breathed, on the lofty summit of Bulgurlu. The constantly-occurring sairgahs, or small grass platforms for spreading the carpet and "taking kaif," shew how well the Turks appreciate the advantages of a position, commanding, perhaps, views unparalleled in the world for their extraordinary beauty. But let us take breath and look around us.

We stood some three miles back from the Bosphorus, perhaps a thousand feet above its level. There lay Constantinople! The "temptation of Satan" could not have been more sublime. It seemed as if all the "kingdoms of the earth" were swept confusedly to the borders of the two continents. From Seraglio Point, seven miles down the coast of Roumelia, the eye followed a continued wall; and from the same Point, twenty miles up the Bosphorus, on either shore, stretched one crowded and unbroken city! The star-shaped bay in the midst, crowded with flying boats; the Golden Horn sweeping from behind the hills,

and pouring through the city like a broad river, studded with ships; and, in the palace-lined and hill-sheltered Bosphorus, the sultan's fleet at anchor, the lofty men-of-war flaunting their bloodred flags, and thrusting their tapering spars almost into the balconies of the fairy dwellings, and among the bright foliage of the terraced gardens above them.

Could a scene be more strangely

and beautifully mingled!

But sit down upon this silky grass, and let us listen to my polyglot friend, while he explains the details of the pa

norama.

First, clear over the sea of Marmora, you observe a snow-white cloud resting on the edge of the horizon. That is Olympus. Within sight of his snowy summit, and along toward the extremity of this long line of eastern hills, lie Bythinia, Phrygia, Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, and the whole scene of the apostles' travels in Asia Minor; and just at his feet, if you will condescend to be modern, lies Brusa, famous for its silks, and one of the most populous and thriving of the sultan's cities. Returning over Marmora by the Princes' Islands, at the western extremity of Constantinople, stands the fortress of the Seven Towers, where fell the Emperor Constantine Palæologos, where Othman the second was strangled, where refractory ambassadors are left to come to their senses and the sultan's terms, and where, in short, that "zealous public butcher," the seraskier, cuts any Gordian knot that may tangle his political meshes; and here was the famous "Golden Gate," attended no more by its "fifty porters with white wands," and its crowds of "ichoglans and mutes, turban-keepers, nail-cutters and slipper-bearers," as in the days of the Selims.

Between the Seven Towers and the Golden Horn you may count the "seven hills" of ancient Stamboul, the towering arches of the aqueduct of Valens, crossing from one to the other, and the swelling dome and gold-tipped minarets of a hundred imperial mosques crowning and surrounding their summits. What an orient look do those gallery-bound and sky-piercing shafts give to the varied picture!

There is but one "Seraglio Point" in the world. Look at that tapering cape, shaped like a lady's foot, projecting from Stamboul toward the shore of Asia, and dividing the bay from the sea of Marmora. It is cut off from the rest of the

city, you observe, by a high wall, flanked

with towers, and the circumference of the whole seraglio may be three miles. But what a gem of beauty it is! In what varied foliage its unapproachable palaces are buried; and how exquisitely gleam from the midst of the bright leaves its gilded cupolas, its gay balconies, its airy belvideres, and its glittering domes! And mark the height of those dark and arrowy cypresses, shooting from every corner of its imperial gardens, and throwing their deep shadows on every bright cluster of foliage, and every gilded lattice of the sacred enclosure. They seem to remind one, that amid all its splendour and with all its secluded retirement, this gorgeous sanctuary of royalty has been stained, from its first appropriation by the monarchs of the east till now, with the blood of victims to the ambition of its changing masters. The cypresses are still young over the graves of an uncle and brother, whose cold murder within those lovely precincts, prepared the throne for the present sultan. The seraglio, no longer the residence of Mahmoud himself, is at present occupied by his children, two noble boys, of whom one, by the usual system, must fall a sacrifice to the security of the other.

Keeping on toward the Black Sea, we cross the Golden Horn to Pera, the European and diplomatic quarter of the city. The high hill on which it stands overlooks all Constantinople; and along its ridge toward the beautiful cemetery on the brow, runs the principal street of the Franks, the promenade of dragoman exquisites, and the Bond-street of shops and belles. Here meet, on the narrow pave, the veiled Armenian, who would die with shame to shew her chin to a stranger, and the wife of the European merchant, in a Paris hat and short petticoats, mutually each other's sincere horror. Here the street is somewhat cleaner, the dogs somewhat less antiChristian, and hat and trowsers somewhat less objects of contempt. It is a poor abortion of a place, withal, neither Turkish nor Christian; and nobody who could claim a shelter for his head elsewhere, would take the whole of its slatecoloured and shingled palaces as a gift.

Just beyond is the mercantile suburb of Galata, which your dainty diplomatist would not write on his card for an embassy, but for which, as being honestly what it calls itself, I entertain a certain respect, wanting in my opinion of its mongrel neighbour. Heavy gates divide these different quarters of the city, and if you would pass after sunset, you must anoint the hinges with a piastre.

MR. H:

OR BEWARE OF A BAD NAME.

NEVER had the tranquillity of the beautiful little village of M—, in Somersetshire, been so put to the rout as it was a little before noon on the thirtieth day of May, anno domini 1810. The weather was warm for the season, but delightfully pleasant; thanks to a cloudless sky, a bright sun, and just breeze enough to keep the air fresh, and the foliage in motion, and the Æolian harp in Isabel Hartley's boudoir in the full tide of its wild and mysterious harmony. The girls and boys of the village were all at the school; the men out at work in the fields; the housewives busy over their cooking; and, in short, the most profound quiet reigned through the place, unbroken, save by the barber's ambitious fiddle, the drone of old Goody Smith's spinning-wheel, and the roystering uproar kept up by a party of harddrinking ducks that used to meet every day to talk over the news, in the shade of the willows that drooped with their long pendulous branches over the pond in front of the Arundel Arms, the head inn of the village. On a sudden the general calm was disturbed by the rattling of wheels over the smooth macadamized road, and the clatter of horses' feet—the unexpected noises increased, and in another minute, up to the door of the Arundel Arms whirled a neat, new, dashing curricle with two horses, followed by two mounted grooms in a rich, though not conspicuous, livery.

There is something wonderful—almost supernatural-in the celerity with which the tidings of an arrival are spread through the population of your small quiet villages, where such an event is of unfrequent occurrence; the knowledge becomes universal in spaces of time so exceedingly brief, that it seems to be the result rather of intuition than of any ascertained mode of communication. Such was the case in the present instance. From the gate at the Londonward end of the main street to the door of the Arundel Arms, was a ride of only a few minutes, and yet its passage was witnessed by more than two-thirds of the population. The women abandoned their kettles and spits to their own devices, and ran to the door to see who was coming; Goody Smith's wheel was hushed; the barber ran, fiddle in hand, to the corner, for his shop was a short distance down a cross street; the windows of the schoolhouse were thronged with clustering heads piled tier above tier; the village

milliner and her four apprentices dropped their unfinished bonnets and caps; the blacksmith suffered his iron to cool; the apothecary broke off short in the very act of making up a prescription; and, even the half-pay lieutenant, the fat curate, the retired cheesemonger, and the parish clerk, who had assembled as usual in the tap-room of the Arundel Arms to discuss the County Gazette, over a pipe and a cool tankard, brought their debate to an abrupt close and sallied out into the porch-where the landlord was already standing in fearful hope of a guest, and prompt to receive the occupant of the approaching vehicle with a degree of attention adequate to his distinguished appearance. It was not every day that a curricle with out-riders was to be seen in the village of M-.

A week had now passed away, and still the curricle and the four horses remained at the Arundel Arms; but the proprietor had installed himself and his servants in lodgings. He had taken the four best rooms in the house of the widow Johnson; furnished them anew, and in a style that amazed the whole village; and was understood to intend making a long stay in M-. He was rich; and paid, not like a prince, for those gentlemen often pay only in promises, but with an unquestioning and most agreeable liberality; young, handsome, and accomplished, gay and polite to the highest pitch of refinement. In short, the man was a paragon, and never were the people in and about M-. so delighted with either woman or man, as with the lord of the new curricle. He had a particular faculty of making himself acquainted with everybody; and by the end of the first week of his stay, was on visiting terms, not only with every family of the least note in the village, but with all the neighbouring gentry within a circuit of twenty miles. There was but one thing that diminished in the slightest degree the general satisfaction and even delight felt and expressed at the presence, manners and conduct of the new-comer; and this was the mystery in which, for some reason or other, he thought proper to envelope his birth, parentage and connexions. It was very remarkable, but nevertheless a fact, that he choose to be known simply as Mr. H; and all efforts were vain to discover the remaining vowels and consonants that made up his legitimate appellation. His servants were skilfully pumped, but to no purpose; they protested that they were no wiser than those by whom they were questioned, and on being still farther

pressed, observed that they considered their master's name to be none of their business, with a manner so marked, that the questioners could not but take the hint, and abandon their efforts in that quarter. Speculation was on the alert in every direction, and all sorts of conjectures were thrown out as modes of accounting for the remarkable circumstance. Some would have it that there was a bet in the case; others that it was merely a whim; other again invented a long and plausible story about a strange will, under which Mr. H had come to his fortune upon condition of taking that letter or aspirate for his only appellative; and a few old dealers in scandal shook their heads with an ominous look, and muttered dark hints to the effect that there must be something wrong in the business. As for the party himself, he had taken the first occasion to let all the world know that the subject was one on which he did not choose to be questioned. One of his first visits was at the Hall, about a mile from the village, where lived Squire Hartley; the father of that same Isabel whose Æolian harp has already been mentioned. He had presented himself at the Hall with an introduction from the squire's very particular friend, Sir Egerton Martyn, of Egerton House, in the county of York; and the high terms in which he was spoken of in the letter, had secured for him a degree of consideration which was confirmed by his own striking appearance, elegant manners and sensible conversation. He was, of course, invited to dinner; and on arriving at the Hall on the appointed day, found a large party assembled to meet him.

Among the guests there was a foxhunting gentleman of the neighbourhood, who had already taken infinite pains to solve the mystery of the stranger's name, and now, having well fortified himself with the courage of port and champagne, very soon after the cloth was removed commenced a series of jesting interrogations, in which there was more of point than politeness, ending at last in a direct, and as some thought, impertinent query as to the real cognomen, of which H was supposed to be nothing more than the initial. The attack was parried with great address and good-humour, so long as it was kept within admissible bounds; but when the last point-blank interrogation was put, there was a decided change both of tone and manner, and the reply was such as to put a stop to all questioning on the subject.

'My name, sir," he said, "as you