s been exaggerated by travellers. This exception is the
village of Belgrade, over which Mary Montague went into raptures, and set
the fashion for tourists ever since. I must confess to having been wofully
disappointed. The village is a miserable cluster of rickety houses, on an
open piece of barren land, surrounded by the forests, or rather thickets,
which keep alive the springs that supply Constantinople with water. We
reached there with appetites sharpened by our morning's ride, expecting to
find at least a vender of _kibabs_ (bits of fried meat) in so renowned a
place; but the only things to be had were raw salt mackerel, and bread
which belonged to the primitive geological formation.

The general features of Constantinople and the Bosphorus are so well
known, that I am spared the dangerous task of painting scenes which have
been colored by abler pencils. Von Hammer, Lamartine, Willis, Miss Pardoe,
Albert Smith, and thou, most inimitable Thackeray! have made Pera and
Scutari, the Bazaars and Baths, the Seraglio and the Golden Horn, as
familiar to our ears as Cornhill and Wall street. Besides, Constantinople
is not the true Orient, which is to be found rather in Cairo, in Aleppo,
and brightest and most vital, in Damascus. Here, we tread European soil;
the Franks are fast crowding out the followers of the Prophet, and
Stamboul itself, were its mosques and Seraglio removed, would differ
little in outward appearance from a third-rate Italian town. The Sultan
lives in a palace with a Grecian portico; the pointed Saracenic arch, the
arabesque sculptures, the latticed balconies, give place to clumsy
imitations of Palladio, and every fire that sweeps away a recollection of
the palmy times of Ottoman rule, sweeps it away forever.

But the Mosque--that blossom of Oriental architecture, with its crowning
domes, like the inverted bells of the lotus, and its reed-like minarets,
its fountains and marble courts--can only perish with the faith it
typifies. I, for one, rejoice that, so long as the religion of Islam
exists (and yet, may its time be short!), no Christian model can shape its
houses of worship. The minaret must still lift its airy tower for the
muezzin; the dome must rise like a gilded heaven above the prayers of the
Faithful, with its starry lamps and emblazoned phrases; the fountain must
continue to pour its waters of purification. A reformation of the Moslem
faith is impossible. When it begins to give way, the whole fa