age to that system which he has pursued with an indiscriminate, unrelenting rigor. His great scheme appears to have embraced but little beyond the consolidation of an absolute unrelieved despotism. And it is a singular fact, that just in proportion as he has lowered the rights and liberties of his subjects, he has descended himself, in the awe, respect, and fear of foreign princes. Tyranny in an enlightened age carries down the oppressor with the oppressed.

The day has passed when the blind dictates of irresponsible power can be rendered palatable, even to the Mussulman. He begins to ponder over the absolute tone in which he is addressed from the imperial pavilion; and he will, ere long, begin to question the authority under which the Capijee acts, before he permits his head to roll from his shoulders, like an idle top from the hand of youth. But when he once begins to respect himself, and dares to assert the rights instinctive in a rational and responsible being, consequences of indescribable magnitude must follow.

He is not the tame and submissive being that easily retraces a step once taken; or overlooks an irreparable wrong, that the impenitent offender may have an opportunity of repeating the enormity. When he has once risen in defence of his lofty and aggrieved nature, no threats, perils, or tortures will be able to break his resolution, or drive him from his purpose. He will stand, if surrounded and over

mastered, unshrinking, like an Indian chief among his tormentors, leaving no recanting word or look to dim his stern memory.

Not only will the tyranny that weighs him down be shaken off, but with it must pass the onerous chain of ecclesiastical authority. The sanctions and obligations of his religion are indissolubly connected with temporal power: this is the root from which they derive their life. This power has never existed but in an absolute form; it can accommodate itself to no other mode of being; its very genius is to be supreme and irresponsible; so that the same effort which lifts the Mussulman above the broken fetters of his despotism, will place him on the ruins of his religion.

The sceptre and crescent, the altar and throne, will sink together. It would not, perhaps, be a matter of regret, were this catastrophe to occur without delay. For out of this chaos some new system might perhaps emerge, in which the rights of human nature would be respected, and the precepts of Christianity not wholly forgotten. Islamism is the grave of inspired truth and rational liberty.

CHAPTER IX.

FLOCKS still are grazing on the mound
Of him who felt the Dardan's arrow;-
That mighty heap of gathered ground
Which Ammon's son ran proudly round,
By nations raised, by monarchs crowned,
Is now a lone and nameless barrow!
Within-thy dwelling-place how narrow!

BYRON.

DEPARTURE FROM CONSTANTINOPLE-PLAIN OF TROY-ANCIENT REMAINS -OPINION OF TRAVELLERS ARGUMENTS OF A LADY VIGILS OF A NIGHT ON THE PLAIN-VISIT TO HELEN'S FOUNT-RUINS OF ALEXANDRIA TROAS--A GLOOMY GREEK-MENTAL TORTURES.

Ir is natural for us, on leaving a place to which we may never return, to pay a farewell visit to those objects that have struck most deeply into the heart;. and to experience, at the parting moment, some of those feelings, so tenderly told, of the poor criminal who gave his wife and children a last embrace

Then fitted the halter, then traversed the cart,
And often looked back, as if loth to depart.

But never went a dismayed culprit from his cottage, under the stern mandates of law, so hurriedly as we left the shapeless city of our short residence. We had scarcely time to catch a glance of its min

arets, as they sunk behind us in the bosom of the Marmora. A case of the plague had occurred in the very house in which a portion of us were residing. We had been, for some time, narrowly and nervously dodging death; and we now determined on flight, notwithstanding the admonition of Horace

Mors et fugacem persequitur virum.

Casting our effects, and a few such edibles as the nearest huckster's shop could furnish, into a little Levantine brig that lay idle at Galata, we jumped on board ourselves, and made all sail to a stiff breeze, fortunately prevailing from the north. Our passage

through the Propontis, and down the Dardanelles, was too quick and palpitating for note or comment. It was like the speed of the flying-fish, striking from wave to wave, in its escape from the pursuing dolphin. But as the most violent grief is usually the shortest, so the most sudden and paling panic is generally of the least duration.

The sight of Achilles' tomb, Ida, and the plain of Ilium, seemed to make us forget the fatal contagion which we had just been shaking from the suspected folds of our garments. No one examined again the state of his pulse, felt under his arms for the frightful bubo, or sought the fuming antidotes of the sulphur match. Our consternation was changed into an an tiquarian rapture; and, I really believe, if the Scamander had been a solid stream of plague, we should,

nevertheless, have tracked it to its source.

Such is the spell cast on the soul by that dim spirit of romance which wings its way through the voiceless twilight of ages.

Think me not, reader, threading my way along the reedy banks of this classic stream with the vain purpose of locating anew the city of Priam, or of giving reasonableness and force to the localities assigned to it by the conjecturing fancy of others. I would as soon follow up the course of the Euphrates, with the expectation of determining the site of Eden. That garden of innocence smiled forth, the fairest feature of the infant world, and then, with the hopes of man, passed away! At half the mighty interval which stretches between that primal hour and this, the towers of Ilium rose and fell; the splendors of their perished pride have been embalmed in the verse of Homer; but the harp of a holier inspiration hath hymned the fragrant beauties of man's first abode.

There is not now to be found on the plain of Troy a single relic of art that can be satisfactorily identified with the ancient city; not the fragment of a column, arch, or frieze of its architecture; not a hewn block of marble or granite, that has any evidence of so high an antiquity. How, indeed, can we expect to find what was utterly lost to the learned more than two thousand years ago? The imperial Roman sought in vain for the slightest vestige of the Trojan city. He could subdue the world, bend the strong