BEAUTIES OF THE BOSPHORUS.       151

The habit of opium-eating, is, however, rapidly declining among the Turks. Denounced by the government, despised by the bulk of population, and only practised by the dissipated and the depraved, it will probably soon cease to exist altogether; while the legitimate Coffee-Kiosque, quiet, orderly, and moderate, is as essential a feature of the country as the Mosque, the Khan, or the Tcharchi.

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PLATE: CONSTANTINOPLE; WITH THE THRACIAN BOSPHORUS.

THE BOSPHORUS.

The chain is forged, the web is wrought,
Woven of memory and thought;
And to myself each link is set
A like with fondness and regret.
Oh ! Could I only call to view
Each scene in its own fairy hue,
And the same brightness that it wore
For me, on Bosphor's lovely shore,
The eye, in lingering o'er my line,
Would see the gilded minaret shine,
Trace the stern mountain's lofty peak,
Bound onward with the swift caique,
And count the thousand glories o'er
Of either palace-girdled shore;
Spell-bound by thy bright witcheries,
Fair city of the Triple seas!             MS.

ERE I take my leave of the reader, whom I have endeavoured, in conjunction with Mr. Bartlett, to interest in one of the most glorious portions of the earth, I cannot deny myself the gratification of once more addressing him in my own proper person.

In the volume which is now nearly completed, space was not permitted to me for mention of many things on which it would have been a pleasure to expatate; nor have I made an effort towards this self-indulgence. The work is a purely descriptive one, and I have followed the talented artist wheresoever he has led me, and have found him no inefficient guide. Together we have visited mosques, wandered in burial-places, clombe mountains, and glided over the sun-lighted Bosphorus: and there were times when such a pilgrimage would have been deemed no trifling undertaking; but STEAM has now annihilated both time and space; and we can only hope that our pictorial and literary pictures my induce the traveller on his summer trip to Palmyra, Balbek, or Jerusalem, not to overlook in his haste the fair city of Byzantium.