because he is surrounded by none of that
ostentatious and costly display with which
Oriental men of rank ordinarily seek to dazzle
and to impose reverence. The retinue of himself
and his son consists of twelve men-servants,
of whom one only is a slave. His harem is
confined to five or six females, who are treated
with a kindness seldom witnessed in the Levant.
His whole stud has but two, though those are
singularly beautiful horses. I know of no
palace in the East where what is glittering and
sumptuous is made so subservient to what is
really comfortable and commodious. His table,
though on great occasions worthy of his enormous
wealth, and loaded with expensive luxuries,
is ordinarily simple. The library is almost
unique. It consists of two thousand eight
hundred volumes, whose value must not be
rated by an European estimate, as all the works
are in manuscript. Very many of them are
rare and costly, and, taken one with another,
are worth two hundred piastres each. Independently
of these he has a large collection of
books in French, English, and German. All
his leisure hours are devoted to study, and he
is, with good reason, considered the most learned
man in the Ottoman dominions. His son is
scarcely less deserving. He follows close upon
his father's footsteps; has devoted himself specially
to the study of the positive sciences, particularly
to chemistry, mechanics, and hydraulics.
He is altogether above the common prejudices
of the people. He occupies a leading
position, and stands high in favour at the court
of the Vizier Ali Pasha.

Wehib Effendi related to me that one of his
relations, named Achmet Aga, whose house is
only a few steps from his father's hotel, had a
wife who had inspired a Djin with a passion
which led to his exercising over her an irresistible
influence. This poor woman, both young
and pretty, as is usually the case when such connexions
are formed, entirely lost her health and
spirits. Her husband was obliged to have her
imprisoned in a room of which the windows
were walled up, preserving only a small light,
that opened upon the corridor of the harem, and
this, although too small to admit of the passage
of a man's body, was protected with two strong
bars of iron. The door of this chamber was
locked and barricaded outside, and no person was
permitted to enter, the woman being in a state
of excitement which rendered it dangerous to
approach her. The husband and his brother constituted
themselves the keepers of this recluse,
who was shut up for a period of eight years.
Notwithstanding this isolation, at the end of
about three years and a half the unfortunate
creature gave birth to a shapeless monster.

Seized with fear at the sight of this phenomenon,
the husband fled from the house, and
made known to Mahomet Effendi the cause ol
his flight, but he dared not ask the minister to
visit the apartment, and personally to inquire
into the circumstances, on account of the
Mahomedan law, which forbids any man, except
the husband and the nearest relations, to look
upon an undressed and unveiled woman, and
Mahomet Effendi being but a cousin, was a
degree too far removed. He urgently exhorted
the husband not to forsake his unfortunate wife,
who would be in danger of dying of starvation if
he discontinued his care of her. Achmet Aga followed
his advice, and at the end of three days the
horrible object to which his wife had given birth
was nowhere to be found. The unhappy idiot
never appeared for a moment to have cared about
it, and she acted precisely as though no living
creature had ever been in the room with her.

At length, after eight years of seclusion, her
husband was much astonished when she one
day said to him that the Djin, who had exercised
so powerful a sway over her, had restored to
her both liberty and reason. Achmet Effendi
hastened to gratify her wishes. She then washed
and purified herself, put on her garments, and
left her prison. She lived for some years afterwards,
in the perfect enjoyment of her senses,
and died much regretted by her husband, only
nineteen months since. (The MS. is dated 26th
June, 1817.) She could never give any account
of the phenomenon which she had brought into
the world, and was indeed in perfect ignorance
with respect to the events that had occurred at
this period of her malady, being extremely astonished
when asked by her husband to relate
them.

During the period of the incarceration of this
luckless woman, Wehib Effendi and other relations
and friends frequently passed an evening
with her husband, in the hopes of administering
some consolation by distracting his mind from
painful thoughts, and more than once they had
unequivocal proofs of the presence of Djins in
the house. Among other anecdotes related to
me by Wehib Effendi, in confirmation of this
view, I will give the following:

One evening, Wehib Effendi, accompanied by
his uncle, the late Omar Effendi (with whom
also I was acquainted), went to the residence of
Achmet Aga. They had been conversing for
about half an hour, when suddenly a bunch of
keys, hung on a nail by the side of the chimneypiece,
vaulted, apparently without assistance,
from their usual position towards the middle of
the room, and taking a bound upwards, sent
forth from the ceiling so fearful a clang, that it
might have been supposed some person was
shaking them violently together. Wehib Effendi
and his uncle were both alarmed, but the master
of the house reassured them by telling them
that, though similar events occurred in his
dwelling most days, no one had ever suffered
any injury in consequence. The rattling of the
keys lasted about a quarter of an hour, after
which the bunch returned to accommodate itself
to the situation it had previously occupied.

Examples of the truth of the science called
Ilionoscopy, vulgarly Platti, or Influence of the
Shoulder of Mutton bone:

1. The principal person among the Greek inhabitants
of Livadia, Signor Yanski Stamos
Logothetti, a straightforward man, and devoid
of prejudice, with a highly instructed and cultivated
mind, related to me, on the 13th of
August, 1816, that one day a tenant farmer of