have worn plain clothes even, besides the
historical scarlet.

I don't exactly envy, but I sigh for the lot
of those who possess imagination, for I have
none. If I had, I should be contented with
the ideal and imaginative garments of a city,
without meddling with those coarser, plainer
habiliments, which to dull realist eyes they
wear. I should be content with the cities
that poets sing, that painters limn, that
rapturous tourists describe, but for this infusion
of realism in the nectar of ideality, that
shows them very different and changed.

Let me take a city.—Constantinople. What
a holiday dress she wears in Mr. Thomas
Allom's pictures, in the pages of Byron and
Hope, in Mr. Lewis's lithographs, in the eyes
even of the expectant tourist on board the
Peninsular and Oriental Company's steamer,
who, disappointed with Naples, Malta, and
Athens, opens wide his eyes with wonder,
admiration and delight, when he first surveys
the City of the Sultan from the Golden Horn;
when he sees glittering against the blue sky
the thousand minarets, the fairy-like kiosques,
the solemn dome of Saint Sophia, the shining
cupola of the mosque of Achmet, the seraglio,
the arsenal, the palaces of the Pachas, the
grove of masts of all nations, the sparkling
shoals of caiques, with the gaily dressed boatmen.
Let us enter into that tourist for a
moment. He is a native, we will say, of Clapham;
Stockwell was his alma mater; Camberwell
resounds with his erudition. He is well
read in that curious repertory of books that
go to make up in England the usual course
of reading of a young man in the middle
classes of society. He is decidedly imaginative,
passably prejudiced and opiniated, after
the manner of free-born Englishmen, and is
the hope and joy of a wholesale house in the
Manchester line, and in Bread Street, Cheapside.
We will call him Moole.

"A few moments," cries Mr. Moole, "a
few trifling formalities at the Custom House,
and I shall land in the city of Constantine,
the Stamboul of the Muslim, the Istambol to
which the noble Childe fled, leaving behind
him at Athens his heart and soul in the care
of the Maid of Athens— now, Mrs. Black. I
shall pass by the gates of the Seraglio, where
the heads of rebellious pachas scorch in the
noontide sun; where fierce eunuchs guard the
sacred approaches: but all their glittering
blades will not prevent me from revelling in
imagination amidst the fragrant gardens of
the Seraglio, in the soul-entrancing glances
of the gazelle-eyed Gulbeyaz, Dudus,
Gulnares, and other lights of the harem. I shall
listen to the dulcet notes of the mandolin,
hear ths pattering fall of perfumed waters,
catch heavenly glimpses of dark-eyed beauties
behind lattices, puffing lazily at the aromatic
chibouque, or perchance become an unwilling
witness of some dark and terrible tragedy,
—the impalement of a grand vizier, or the
sacking and salt-waterising of some
inconstant houri of the Padisha. A few moments,"
this enthusiast from the Surrey hills
continues, "and I shall pace by the sacred
mosques; and, entering them, gaze at the
fretted roofs, and the out-spread carpets
checkered with worshippers, with their faces
turned towards Mecca. I shall see the stately
Moslem career by on his Arab Barb, wrapped
in his furred pelisse, his brows bound with
his snow-white turban, his glittering handjar
by his side, his embroidered papouches on his
feet. I shall stroll through the crowded
Bezesteen, where the rich and varied wares
of the Oriental world are displayed. Courtly
Armenian merchants, with coal-black beards,
will invite me into their cushioned ware-
rooms, present me with coffee and pipes, and
show me gorgeous wares and intoxicating
perfumes. Anon, the clamour of military
music heralds the passage of a legion of
janissaries, clad in 'barbaric pearl and gold.'
Anon, I stroll into a coffee-house, where a
Greek storyteller is relating the legend of the
'Fisherman and the Geni' to the Capitan
Basha, the Kislar Aga, the Bostangi-bashi,
and the Sheikh-al-Islam. Now, a horde of
dancing dervishes whirl fiercely by; now, a
band of Almé remind me, in their graceful
poses, of Herodias, Esmeralda, and
Mademoiselle Cerito. Now, a black slave invites
me to the splendid mansion of a venerable
Barmecide close by; who— after making believe
to eat, pretending to wash his hands, and to
get drunk with visionary wine— entertains me
with a banquet of pilaffs and stewed kids,
stuffed with pistachio nuts, washed down by
wine of Cypress and sherbet, cooled with
snow. And now, oh! joy of joys, I catch a
pair of black eyes circled with henna, fixed
on me with a glance of tender meaning,
through the folds of a silken veil. I see a
little fairy foot peeping from loose Turkish
trowsers: the vision disappears— but an old
woman (the universal messenger of love in
the East) accosts me mysteriously, and
presents me with a bouquet composed of
dandelions, bachelor's buttons, and the fragrant
flower known as "cherry pie," all of which
say as plainly as the language of flowers
(known at Stamboul as at Stockwell) can
speak: 'Meet me at eight this evening at
the secret gate opposite the third kiosque
past Seraglio point.' What tales I shall have
to tell when I get back to Clapham." Land,
if you like, at Pera, the European suburb.
Plenty of plain clothes here. A mangy
hill spotted with leprous houses, and
infested by scurvy dogs. The English embassy,
looking like an hospital; the Russian ditto
looking like a gaol. A circus for horse-riders,
and one or two ramshackle hotels, claiming
decided kindred in the way of accommodation
and general aspect with the fifteenth-rate
foreign houses in the back settlements of
Leicester Square; and in respect to prices,
with the Clarendon or Mivart's. A population
strongly resembling that of London, when