Women, who give themselves up to debauchery from mercenary motives, are sometimes treated with severity by the officers of police, and sometimes with cruelty by their jealous or satiated paramours. Women of this description are as easily known by their gait and gesture as girls of the town in London. There are instances, however, of such a venial crime having been punished by tieing up the unfortunate woman in a sack, and throwing her into the sea.

The situation of eunuchs, the guardians of women in Turkey, has been justly observed to be the most pitiable that can be imagined,-separated from themselves, exposed to all the force of the passions, surrounded with every object which can excite desire, and humbled and irritated with the unceasing reflection on their own insignificance. Montesquieu, indeed, heightens their distress, by unveiling to them every charm, and insults their weakness by trusting to their hands, in the most minute detail, the office of preparing pleasures for the tyrant who has annihilated their own. It would indeed be a needless aggravation of their unhappiness to compel them to live with young and beautiful women, to banish the female servants from the harem, and to trust to their awkward hands the dressing and undressing, the bathing, the perfuming, and the adorning of every object of their master's affections; but they are not made

to fill such a ridiculous situation; nor should it seem that they have that dislike to women generally believed; for the kislar aga, in 1808, kept a harem of women for private and domestic amusements, a proof that the virile desire was still in existence, though the power was left, which is confirmed by the following statement :

"A lady, in his harem, was indisposed from excess of affection, and a Tuscan gentleman, surgeon to the grand Signior, was sent for, and consulted on the occasion. On making his report to the kislar aga, he repeated, like an experienced courtier, the endearing expressions which the lady had uttered: the eunuch was enraptured, and interrupted the relation by exclaiming, in his childish treble, kouzoum, djyerim, djanem, expressions equivalent to my life, my soul, my dear lambkin; and kissed the lady, in imagination, with all the rapture of real passion."

It is in the middle rank of life, among men subsisting by their own industry, and equally removed from poverty and riches, that we must look for the national character: and among the Turks of this class, the domestic and social virtues are united with knowledge adequate to their wants, and with patriarchal urbanity of manners. Honesty is the characteristic of the Turkish merchant, and distinguishes him from the Jew, the Greek, and the Armenian, against whose artifices no precau

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tion can suffice. In the Turkish villages, where there are no mixture of Greeks, innocence of life and simplicity of manners are conspicuous, and roguery and deceit are unknown.

The luxuries of a Turkish life would sink in the estimation of most people, on a comparison with the artificial enjoyments of Europe. The houses of the Turks are built in contempt of the rules of architecture: their gardens are laid out without order, and with little taste: their furniture is simple, and suited rather to the habits of a military or vagrant people, than to the usages of settled life; their meals are frugal, and neither enlivened by wine nor conversation. Every custom invites to repose, and every object inspires an indolent voluptuousness. Their delight is to recline on soft verdure under the shade of trees, and to muse without fixing their attention, lulled by the tinkling of a fountain or the murmuring of a rivulet, and inhaling through their pipe a gentle inebriating vapour. Such pleasures, the highest which the rich can enjoy, are equally within the reach of the artisan or the peasant. Under their own vines and their own fig-trees, they equally feel the pride of independence, and the uninterrupted sweets of domestic comfort. If they enjoy not the anxieties of courtship, and the triumph over coyness and modesty, their desires are inflamed and their passions are heightened by the grace of mo

tion, the elegance and suppleness of form, and the beautiful symmetry of shape and features. The Turks delight and excel in conversation. The ombres chinoises supply the place of dramatic exhibitions, and young men born in the Greek islands of the Archipelago, exercise the infamous profession of public dancers, and the Turkish women of this description, as Denon has observed in his travels in Egypt, are more studious to exhibit obscene attitudes than the variety and grace of their steps.

The Turks of the capital are somewhat removed from the simplicity of nature in their mode of clothing their new-born infants, whom they bind and swaddle so as necessarily to obstruct the motion of the principal organs of life, and to exhaust them with excessive perspiration; but they do not attempt by art nor dress to correct or improve the human shape. The clothes of persons of both sexes and of all ages, though more in quantity than the climate seems to require, are free from ligatures. They neither confine the neck nor the waist, the wrist, the knees, nor the feet; and though their clothes may encumber them in quick motion, yet they sit easily and gracefully upon them when walking with their usual gravity, or when reclining on the sopha. The turban is, however, a part of the Turkish dress, which is not recommended by any convenience. It is apt to

overheat the head by its bulk and weight; and its form is exceedingly inconvenient to a people, whose chief exercise and diversion are in horsemanship.

The use of the warm bath is universal among persons of both sexes and all classes, as well for the purposes of purification from worldly and carnal stains, as for cleanliness and health. Some writers are of opinion, that it induces debility among the women; but in the men it certainly develops and invigorates the powers of the body. The Russians are wont to plunge themselves into cold water immediately on coming out of the hot bath; which I have seen them do, (and I must confess with some degree of astonishment,) in the severest winter, and exposed to the blast of the north-east. Busbequius's physician, an Hungarian, practised the same method as a medicine at Constantinople; but such custom, if at all practised, is not usual among the Turks.

The public baths are elegant and noble structures, built with hewn stones: the inner chambers are capacious, and paved with slabs of the rarest and most beautiful marble. Savary has described the luxuries of an oriental bath with an enthusiasm which nothing that we have experienced enables us to account for. A very comfortable sensation is communicated during the continuance in the hcated rooms; and it is heightened into luxury