ns and exhausted appearance
of these young men indicate intense labour, or most limited commons."

After thus successfully vindicating the Turks from the charge so often
brought against them by travellers who have only spent a few weeks at
Pera, of ignorance and indifference to knowledge, Mr White thus sums
up the general question of education. "For ten men that _can_ read
among Perotes and Fanariotes, there are an equal number that _do_ read
at Constantinople; and, taking the mass of the better classes
indiscriminately, it will be found also that there are more libraries
of useful books in Turkish houses than in those of Greeks and
Armenians." And though "the number of Turkish ladies that can read is
much less than those of Pera and the Fanar, those who can read among
the former never open a bad book; while among the latter there is
scarcely one that ever reads a good work, unless it be the catechism
or breviary on certain forced occasions. And while neither Greek nor
Armenian women occupy themselves with literature, Constantinople can
boast of more than one female author. Among the most celebrated of
these is Laila Khanum, niece to the above-mentioned Izzet-Mollah. Her
poems are principally satirical, and she is held in great dread by her
sex, who tremble at her cutting pen. Her _divan_ (collection of poems)
has been printed, and amounts to three volumes. Laila Khanum is also
famed for her songs, which are set to music, and highly popular.
Hassena Khanum, wife of the Hakim Bashy, (chief physician,) is
likewise renowned for the purity and elegance of her style as a
letter-writer, which entitles her to the appellation of the Turkish
Sevigne."

But we must again diverge, in following Mr White's desultory steps,
from the Turkish fair ones--whom he has so satisfactorily cleared from
Lord Byron's imputation, that

"They cannot read, and so don't lisp in criticism;
Nor write, and so they don't affect the muse--"

to his dissertation on the _wakoofs_ above referred to;--a word
implying a deposit or mortgage, and used to designate a species of
tenure under which the greater part of the landed property throughout
the empire is held, and the nature of which is but imperfectly
understood in Europe. These institutions have existed from the
earliest period of Islam; but nowhere to so great an extent as in the
Ottoman empire; where they were divided by Soliman the Magnificent
into three classes, all alike held sacred, an