is to see him no more; with that devoted wife who will long look through her doubting tears for his return; and with those children now to be left without a father.

The executioner, knowing nothing of the guilt or innocence of his victim, but knowing that he acts under orders that admit of no delay, tells him to kiss the mandate of his sovereign and submit. He brings it to his lips, kneels, and bares his neck; the scimetar flashes through its quick circuit; the sinking body and severed head fall together; the countenance, for an instant, betrays the parting pang; the eye twinkles a moment, then closes in everlasting night! How sudden, how appalling this transition-life, light, and all the busy promises of hope exchanged, at once, for the silence and perpetual darkness of death!

Were life a taper, that, if quenched, could be relit, we might with less dread undergo the darkening change; but there is no Promethean spark that can rekindle, if once extinguished, this vital flame. Henceforth only remain the shroud, the windingsheet, and the worm; we are never more to be what we have been-never to come back to this varied world.

It is this unreturning thought that fills us with dread; the thought that we shall never come back to those whom we left here, so faultless, so beautiful, and young! that we shall never again revisit this

green earth-never stray among its founts and flowers--never hear the glad voices of the waking grove, or the sweet dirge of the murmuring shore-never see the fresh morn break forth in breathing beauty from its purple pavilion, or the evening star go up upon its watch. It is this that strikes a saddening chill to the heart, and makes us shrink from that untried hereafter. Happy he, who, in this hour of final and lonely departure, hath the presence of Him whose countenance lights up that desolate way; who, in the earnest of his own triumph over the powers of darkness, and in the assurances of his unfailing love, hath taken

"from Death its sting,

And from the Grave its victory"

CHAPTER VIII.

WHO thus disturbs the tide near the seraglio?
"Tis no dark cormorants upon the sea that float,—
'Tis no dull plunge of stones,-no oars of Turkish boat,
With measured beat along the water sweeping slow:
"Tis heavy sacks borne each by voiceless eunuch slave;
And could you dare to sound the depth of yon dark tide,
Something like human form would stir within its side.

VICTOR HUGO.

LE LIFE COVETED BY A MUSSULMAN-STILLNESS OF A TURKISH TOWN-INFERENCES OF THE STRANGER-LOVE OF SHOW-CAPABILITIES OF THE TURK-HIS CONJUGAL HABITS-INCONSISTENCIES IN HIS CHARACTERDESTRUCTION OF THE JANIZARIES-MEANS EMPLOYED TO EFFECT IT THEIR FINAL DEPORTMENT-FEATURES IN THE PRESENT GOVERNMENT OF TURKEY CHARACTER OF SULTAN MAHMOUD-SPIRIT OF HIS REFORMS.

LIKE the undisturbed quietude of his last sleep, is that life most coveted by the Osmanlie. He delights in a state of perfect quiescence; he loves to lounge upon his ottoman, sip his mocha, trifle with his chibouque, and let the world without wrangle and rave as it may.

Whatever may be his vocation, this inertness of disposition is seldom overcome, or forced even into a temporary activity. If he is a merchant, and there are fifty customers at his counter impatient to be served at the same moment, he will attend to them, one at a time, leisurely, as if there were but a single

person there, and as indifferently as if it were of no interest to him whether that individual purchased any thing or not.

If he is a mechanic-a cordwainer, for instancehe will drive the last peg in the heel of a boot, for which you may you may be waiting, just as deliberately as he took the first stitch; or, if he is a boatman, his oars will dip the wave just so many times in a minute, and no more, though your business may demand the most pressing haste; or if he is a physician, and your child is dying, he will still finish his pipe, then perfume his beard, then direct respecting his dinner, and then, with a slow, measured tread, walk forth in quest of his young patient, who, probably, ere this, is beyond the reach of human assistance.

These measured and indolent habits are so prominently characteristic of a Turkish town, that the stranger half persuades himself of his arrival in a community exempted, by some benevolent provision of nature, from the necessity of labor. He walks through the streets-they are all silent, save now and then the slow stroke of some smith's hammer, or the nodding blow of some carpenter comes upon his ear; but these sound strange and out of place as the mattock of a sexton breaking among old tombs the close mold for some new grave.

He finds, at the frequent coffee-houses, whatever may be the hour of the day, large and numerous groups of bearded men, sitting slumbering, or smo

king in the shaded courts; so composed, so wordless and still, that only the lulling note of the fountain prevails over the whisper of the light leaf above. And if he joins them-yielding to the infection of the quiet spot-he may be the better able, on his departure, to decide between the comparative merits of those who, in his own land, assemble to exchange thoughts, and perhaps high words, and those who here meet to exchange sleepy, good-natured looks, with here and there a dissatisfied flea.

If he walks into the country the same air of solitude and stillness prevails: not a ploughman's voice or a huntsman's horn disturbs field or grove; the bird sings unmolested on its native tree, the green earth lies unfurrowed, and even untrod save by the Tartar Janizary, who moves between one town and another lonely as a ghost between its sepulchre and the deserted house where it once dwelt.

He returns to the city, looks about him again, finds that the inhabitants eat and drink as in other communities; asks whence they obtain their bread, meat, and fruit; is told they are brought from a distance; but observing as few evidences of capital as of industry, he inquires for the means to purchase these the Mussulman rolls up his eye and says, God is great.

This is the only reply his question wins, the only solution he can obtain for his perplexing problem: and he begins to think, in spite of Malthus and every