of "_Domestic_ Manners of the Turks,"[28] given to the
volumes before us, can scarcely be considered as a correct
designation; since it is not in the privacy of their own families, in
their harems and among their children, (scenes in which it would
indeed be rash to challenge comparison with the eloquent author of the
_Spirit of the East_,) that Mr White has depicted the Turks of the
present day: but rather in the places "where men most do
congregate"--in the _bezestans_ and _tcharshys_ or markets, commonly
called bazars:[29] in the exercise of the various trades and callings,
and the intercourse of professional and commercial relations. The work
is rather a treatise on the corporate bodies and municipal
institutions of Constantinople--a subject hitherto almost untouched by
European writers, and in the investigation of which Mr White has
diligently availed himself of the opportunities afforded him by the
liberal spirit which the events of late years have fostered among the
Turks. The results of these researches are now laid before us, in a
form which, though perhaps not the most popular which might have been
adopted, is not ill calculated to embrace the vast variety of subjects
included in the range of the author's observations. Taking the
bezestans and markets--the focus of business and commerce to which the
various classes of the Stamboul population converge--as the
ground-work of his lucubrations, Mr White proceeds to enumerate in
detail the various trades and handicrafts carried on within the
precincts of these great national marts, the articles therein sold,
and the guilds or incorporated companies, to many of which extensive
privileges have been granted by the sultans for their services to the
state. These topics are diversified by numerous digressions on
politics, religion, criminal law, the imperial harem, the language of
flowers--in short, _de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis_--in the
course of which Mr White gives his readers the benefit of all the
miscellaneous information which has fallen in his way during his three
years' residence among the Osmanlis. Of a work so diffuse in its
nature, it is impossible to give more than an outline; and
accordingly, omitting all mention of those subjects which have been
rendered tolerably familiar to European readers by the narratives of
former travellers, we shall select from these "orient pearls," strung
most literally "at random," such topics as possess most novelty, or