just beyond the shadow, all but red-hot. They
think nothing of the dead men's charity or of the
carving fine as needlework; but they munch
their chesnuts and are happy. Often, too, a
boatman's oars and a hammal's elastic pole rest
up against the carved brackets, while the
owners snatch a nap under the grateful shadow,
having first drunk of the fountain. Hundreds
of times in the day, those brass cups, all in a
under the stanchioned grating, are filled
and emptied.

There is something humane and poetical in
the perpetual enforcement of charity that you
receive in a Turkish street: there are the
scavenger dogs, waiters on Providence, which
abound in every street, who, though a good deal
drubbed and bruised, are still partly maintained
by the kindness of old Turks, who feed certain
of them daily. Then there are the countless
clouds of pigeons, harboured on the mosque
domes, and guarded with as much care as if
they were young angels. To crown the whole,
these innumerable fountains, of all sizes, from
that at the Seraglio gate with its square bulk
and circular towers at the angles, to the mere
boarded-over arch, tap, and tank.

Having sketched the long, square, pagoda-roofed
street fountain, and the latticed-in fountain
of the mosque-yard, I must describe a
beautiful variation from these; and that is the
rural fountain, such as I have seen in villages on
the Bosphorus, and never can forget. It seems
but yesterday that my boatman followed me from
the boat, and rested his oars against one of its
recesses. It was a tall, square, little kiosk, overlooking
the waters: its central crescented dome
surrounded by four lesser domes. The under
part of its broad roof was striped with shadowy
patterns, and below this, in panels, ran the
inscriptions of the founder. The ornaments were
simple and shell-like. To the fluted basin that
received the water, you ascended by four steps,
as to an altar. It always seemed to me like
a little chapel raised to some water spirit, some
Turkish Undine, and I felt grateful in that
burning climate to the dead man who had reared
this evidence of his sympathy with those whom
he had left behind, to toil out their time.

As an European, accustomed to the romance of
old palaces and manor-houses, I had attached
a far different poetry to the fountain. I had
thought of it as the silver column melting into
silver rain; as the bright arrow shot heavenward,
ever sinking ever to rise again in impotent
effort. I had seen it sprinkling English elms
and scattering its lavish pearl over English
flower-beds, but here I found a new poetry
attaching to it.

Water was here no longer a juggling Undine,
a tricky water-goblin, tossing silver into the air
for mere unmeaning amusement; here I saw it,
a gracious angel of blessing, from whose hands,
day and night, poured blessings to all, rich and
poor, to the weary porter resting his burden, to
the rich pasha strolling out for a moment's air
between the dreary pauses of a levee. Here it
was God's archangel tempering the horrors of
thirst, and wandering in the streets to comfort
the afflicted.

Always under the never-refused shelter of the
fountain, I found the poor Circassian exiles,
starving and fevered, huddled up in their white
woolly cloaks, grateful for the friendly shadow.
There, the tired vendor came to rest his heavy
wattled baskets of green peaches; there, the
burnt-up beggar, to con his prayers and rattle
his alms-dish; there, the lounging soldier,
weary of idleness, to chat with his gossip
the water-carrier about "those barbarians the
Inglis, whom the Sultan had hired to punish the
Muscovites for refusing to pay him tribute;"
there, the Arabian story is told, though not by
the professional story-teller, for the trade is
now extinct; there, the opium-eater dozes, or, if
he wakes, stares at you as if you were less
substantial and real than the creatures of his last
dream; there, though opium-eating is now
unusual, and the clusters or opium-shops no longer
exist outside the Sulieman mosque, I have seen
the miserable narcotist lying staring at nothing,
fixedly, with vacant and glistening eyes.

Near these fountains, only a few years ago,
reckless public executions sometimes took place,
when, after a secret trial and confession —
forced, perhaps, by torture— the wretch was
led out suddenly, and hung at the first
convenient house he came to. Was it not
Windybank who saw the Greek tailor who had been
detected in an intrigue with the Turkish lady
lying near the Fish-market fountain, with his
head placed neatly between his knees? It was
near a fountain that Dr. Legoff saw a pirate
and murderer hung at a fruit-shop door.
The soldiers leading the man, said Windybank,
suddenly stopped, knocked a nail into the wall
of a fruit-shop, tarred the boards where the
body was to rest, slipped a rope round the
pale wretch's neck, placed him on a hencoop,
drew the rope three or four times round the
nail, kicked away the hencoop, and left liim
hanging. That was some years ago, and the
tag of rope still remains suspended to the nail,
as it probably will do, in that conservative city,
until sun and rain rot it off. Lately, the Turks
have almost abolished capital punishment, and
the greatest villains on earth are given back to
the world.

And in thinking of fountains, the gentleman
who on a fine day feels it so hot in Regent-street,
London, or on the Italian Boulevard at
Paris, that he must really, perforce, go in
for a strawberry ice, must remember that it
is not to relieve such trivial thirst that Eastern
fountains were erected. It was not for slight,
damp warmth, languor, and dry mouth, that the
Turks have spent millions in public fountains.
It was for a heat that dries up all saliva, that
inflames the mouth and blackens the lips, that
dims the eyes and makes the head giddy, and
the whole man faint and sick; that becomes, if
not relieved incessantly, an intolerable torture.

In that toilsome city, indeed, all up hill,
whose streets are paved with loose boulders,
walking at noonday is a work of the greatest