religion forbids the use of gold or silver spoons. Their food is always highly seasoned, and they take large quantities of opium, which frequently creates a kind of intoxication. Guests of high rank at entertainments, sometimes have their beards perfumed by a female slave of the family. Their common salutation is by an inclination of the head, and laying their right hand on the breast.

The use of wheel carriages is almost unknown in Turkey. All their merchandize is carried by horses, mules, or camels, in every part of the empire. The sultan has a coach or carriage exactly of the same shape as a hearse in England, without springs, drawn by six mules. The pole is of enormous thickness, as well as every other part, the reason of which is, that if any of the material parts were to break, the man who made it would lose his head.

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The method made use of by the Turkish surgeons to set broken bones is deserving of notice they enclose the limb, after the bones are put in their places, in a case of plaster of paris, which takes exactly the form of the limb, without any pressure, and in a few minutes the mass is solid and strong. Mr. Eton says, he saw a most terrible compound fracture of the leg and thigh cured in this manner. The person was seated on the ground, and the plaster extended from below his heel to the upper part of his thigh, whence a bandage, fastened into the plaster, went round his body. He reclined back when he slept,

as he could not lie down.

Europeans are much struck to see Turks work, sitting at every art or handicraft where there is a possibility of it; capenters, for instance, perform the greatest part of their labour sitting. It is deserving of remark, that their toes acquire such a degree of strength by using them, that they hold a board upright and firmly with the toes, while with their hands they guide a saw, sitting the whole time.

Marriages and Funerals.

Marriages are chiefly negotiated by the ladies: it is only a civil contract, which either party may break. The terms being agreed on, the bridegroom pays down a certain sum of money, a license is taken out from the proper

magistrate, and the marriage is solemnized. It is then celebrated with mirth and jollity, and the money is usually expended in furnishing a house.

Their funerals are solemn and decent: the corpse is attended by the relations, chanting passages from the Koran; and after being deposited in a mosque, it is buried in a field by the iman or priest, ho pronounces a funeral sermon at the time of interment. The male relations signify their sorrow by alms and prayers; the women, by decking the tomb on certain days with flowers and green leaves. In mourning for the death of a husband, the widow wears a particular head-dress, and lays aside all finery for twelve months.

Bagnios or Baths.

Among the amusements of the Turks, the bagnios hold the first place. All the cities and towns are provided with public baths, which are well adapted for the purposes of convenience and amusement. The entrance is into a large room, provided, with a fountain or basin of water in the middle, and sofas round the walls: here the company assemble, enter into conversation, and prepare for bathing, by divesting themselves of their upper garments. A door opens from this room to a less spacious apartment which is heated in a small degree, where the person who is about to bathe leaves the remaining part of his dress, and proceeds to the actual bathing-room, which is of a larger stze, About the sides of this room are placed large stone basins, into which warm and cold water is brought by means of different pipes, so that a person may have the bath at any temperature he chooses.

It is not unusual for two hundred ladies, attended by their respective slaves of the same sex, to assemble at one of these bagnios, and, after having undergone the operation of bathing, to recline themselves on sofas, and either employ themselves in working, or engage in conversation, taking coffee, sweetmeats, &c. themselves and attendants remaining unincumbered by dress.

MODERN GREECE.

Aspect of the Country and Antiquities.

The climate of Greece is highly propitious, but its general aspect is rugged and mountainous, yet abounding in beautiful scenery. Among the mountains familiar to classical readers are Parnassus, Olympus, Pelion, Ossa, Athos, Pindus, Eta, Helicon, and Taygetus. Though these mountains are greatly inferior in elevation to the Alps, yet the appearance of many of them, together with the intervening valleys, is uncommonly romantic.

Greece has of late been the favourite resort of travellers. The objects of their curiosity are the remains of ancient cities and edifices, and those scenes which have been rendered memorable by the writings of the ancients. Some of those of the latter kind are the Vale of Tempe, the Straits of Thermopyla, and the wild and picturesque scenes of Attica. In these and other objects of nature there occurs no cause of disappointment; but the waste of time, the ravages of war, and other causes, have concurred to diminish the remains of art. When to these are added the inconveniences attendant on a perigrination in Greece, the traveller who undertakes it, will be found to require the support of all his zeal in the cause of antiquity.

"Such is the aspect of this shore

"Tis Greece-but living Greece no more!
So coldly sweet, so deadly fair,

We start-for soul is wanting there.

Hers is the loveliness of death,

That parts not quite with parting breath;
But beauty with that fearful bloom,
That hue which haunts it to the tomb,
Expression's last receding ray,

A gilded halo hovering round decay,
The farewell beam of feeling past away!"

BYRON.

Instead of the cultivated plains, the flourishing cities, and the magnificent edifices of ancient Greece, the traveller meets with little but a series of villages, composed of wretched cottages, or dwellings of only one story, and without chimnies, scattered over a thinly peopled and ill cultivated country. The only place that has escaped

the destructive combination is Athens: the magnificent remains of her Acropolis, her stadium, her temples, and other monuments, still bear witness to her former splendour.

Some of the most interesting remains of antiquity in the country, besides those at Athens, are found at the following places. Corinth, situated on a gulf and isthmus of the same name, and called, by Dr. Clarke, "the Gibraltar of the Peloponnesus," was once a rich and powerful city, but now reduced to a village. The most interesting remains of antiquity here is the citadel, or Acro-Corinthos, situated on a ridge above the town, and still fortified. The ruins of the city of Mycena, Agamemnon's capital, remain exactly as described by Pausanias in the 2d century. The most conspicuous and most interesting object is a tumulus, which covers a subterraneous dome, the height of which is about 50 feet. At Nemaa, celebrated for the Nemean games, are remains of a temple of Jupiter, with three columns standing, and some other ruins.

Of Sparta, or Lacedæmon, famous for the institutions of Lycurgus, and for the valour and military achievements of its inhabitants, nothing now remains but a confused mass of ruins at Paleo-Chori, about two miles from Misitra. Of Olympia, remarkable for being the place where the Olympic games were celebrated, and also for a temple containing an ivory statue of Jupiter, 50 cubits high, which was reckoned one of the seven wonders of the world, there are but few remains. Argos, Thebes, Eleusis, Phigalea, and some other places, exhibit ruins more or less interesting.

"Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth!

Immortal, though no more; though fallen, great!
Who now shall lead thy scatter'd children forth,
And long accustom'd bondage uncreate?
Not such thy sons who whilome did await,
The hopeless warriors of a willing doom,
In bleak Thermopyla's sepulchral strait—
Oh! who that gallant spirit shall resume,

Leap from Eurotas' banks, and call thee from the tomb?
Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild;
Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields,
Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smiled,
And still his honied wealth Hymettus yields;
There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds,
The freeborn wanderer of thy mountain-air;

Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds,
Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare;
Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair.
Where'er we tread 'tis haunted, holy ground;
No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould,
But one vast realm of wonder spreads around,
And all the Muse's tales seem truly told,
Till the sense aches with gazing to behold
The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon :
Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold
Defies the power which crush'd thy temples gone:
Age shakes Athena's tower, but spares gray Marathon.
Long to the remnants of thy splendour past,
Shall pilgrims, pensive, but unwearied, throng;
Long shall the voyager with th' Ionian blast,
Hail the bright clime of battle and of song;
Long shall thine annals and immortal tongue
Fill with thy fame the youth of many a shore;
Boast of the aged! lesson of the young!
Which sages venerate, and bards adore,
As Pallas and the Muse unveil their awful lore."

BYRON.

PARNASSUS.

Parnassus is a celebrated mountain of Greece, reputed the highest in the country, and has an elevation of about 7,000 feet above the level of the sea. It is situated NW. of Mount Helicon, 80 miles N. by W. of Corinth, from which place it is visible. It is covered in winter with snow and ice, yet it may be ascended even in December and January, if the weather be mild; and from the summit is enjoyed a delightful prospect. On one side is the gulf of Corinth, diminished to the size of a lake; on the other the plains of Thessaly; Olympus with its snowy top is seen; and a great part of Greece with the Peloponnesus, falls under the view of the spectator.

Parnassus has two principal summits, Hyampeia and Phitonia but there are in all no less than 10 peaks in the mountain, which probably gave rise to the poetical fiction of the ancients, that it was the seat of Apollo and the nine muses. The Castalian fountain, which was sacred to the muses, rose between the two summits, and flows near Castri, the ancient Delphi, which was famous for an oracle of Apollo.