This Tumultuous Movement Was Calmed By
Thinking Of That Dreadful Statement Of Travellers, That In One Of
The Most Elegant
Halls there is a trap-door, on peeping below which
you may see the Bosphorus running underneath, into which some
Luckless beauty is plunged occasionally, and the trap-door is shut,
and the dancing and the singing, and the smoking and the laughing
go on as before. They say it is death to pick up any of the sacks
thereabouts, if a stray one should float by you. There were none
any day when I passed, AT LEAST, ON THE SURFACE OF THE WATER.
It has been rather a fashion of our travellers to apologise for
Turkish life, of late, and paint glowing agreeable pictures of many
of its institutions. The celebrated author of "Palm-Leaves" (his
name is famous under the date-trees of the Nile, and uttered with
respect beneath the tents of the Bedaween) has touchingly described
Ibrahim Pasha's paternal fondness, who cut off a black slave's head
for having dropped and maimed one of his children; and has penned a
melodious panegyric of "The Harem," and of the fond and beautiful
duties of the inmates of that place of love, obedience, and
seclusion. I saw, at the mausoleum of the late Sultan Mahmoud's
family, a good subject for a Ghazul, in the true new Oriental
manner.
These Royal burial-places are the resort of the pious Moslems.
Lamps are kept burning there; and in the antechambers, copies of
the Koran are provided for the use of believers; and you never pass
these cemeteries but you see Turks washing at the cisterns,
previous to entering for prayer, or squatted on the benches,
chanting passages from the sacred volume.
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