erest. He praised
the picturesque beauties of the town itself, and its surrounding
scenery; and seemed of opinion that nothing else was worth looking at.
He spoke of the Turks in a manner which might have given reason to
suppose that he had made a long residence among them, and closed his
observations with these words:--'The Greeks will, sooner or later,
rise against them; but if they do not make haste, I hope Buonaparte
will come, and drive the useless rascals away.'"[139]

During his stay at Constantinople, the English minister, Mr. Adair,
being indisposed the greater part of the time, had but few
opportunities of seeing him. He, however, pressed him, with much
hospitality, to accept a lodging at the English palace, which Lord
Byron, preferring the freedom of his homely inn, declined. At the
audience granted to the ambassador, on his taking leave, by the
Sultan, the noble poet attended in the train of Mr. Adair,--having
shown an anxiety as to the place he was to hold in the procession, not
a little characteristic of his jealous pride of rank. In vain had the
minister assured him that no particular station could be allotted to
him;--that the Turks, in their arrangements for the ceremonial,
considered only the persons connected with the embassy, and neither
attended to, nor acknowledged, the precedence which our forms assign
to nobility. Seeing the young peer still unconvinced by these
representations, Mr. Adair was, at length, obliged to refer him to an
authority, considered infallible on such points of etiquette, the old
Austrian Internuncio;--on consulting whom, and finding his opinions
agree fully with those of the English minister, Lord Byron declared
himself perfectly satisfied.

On the 14th of July his fellow-traveller and himself took their
departure from Constantinople on board the Salsette frigate,--Mr.
Hobhouse with the intention of accompanying the ambassador to England,
and Lord Byron with the resolution of visiting his beloved Greece
again. To Mr. Adair he appeared, at this time, (and I find that Mr.
Bruce, who met him afterwards at Athens, conceived the same impression
of him,) to be labouring under great dejection of spirits. One
circumstance related to me, as having occurred in the course of the
passage, is not a little striking. Perceiving, as he walked the deck,
a small yataghan, or Turkish dagger, on one of the benches, he took
it up, unsheathed it, and, having stood for a few moments
contemplatin