their romping-labels for Rosoglio and other liqueurs-painted boxes half full of confectionery, and various pieces of embroidery -together with much dirt, and other indications of sluttishness. The private apartment of the Sultan opening into the garden of hyacinths, which Dr Clarke only surveyed by looking into the windows, seems by far the most comfortable, as well as the most superb, that fell under his observation.

Three sides of it,' he observes, were surrounded by a divân, the cushions and pillows of which were of black embroidered satin. Opposite the windows of the chamber was a fire-place, after the ordinary European fashion; and on each side of this, a door covered with hangings of crimson cloth. Between each of these doors and the fire-place appeared a glass-case, containing the Sultan's private library, upon shelves; every volume being in manuscript, lying one above the other, and the title of each book written on the edges of its leaves. From the ceiling of the room, which was of burnished gold, opposite each of the doors, and also opposite to the fire-place, hung three gilt cages, containing small figures of artificial birds: these sung by mechanism. In the centre of the room stood an enormous gilt brazier, supported, in an ewer, by four massive claws, like vessels seen under sideboards in England. Opposite to the entrance, on one side of the apartment, was a raised bench, crossing a door, on which were placed an embroidered napkin, a vase, and bason, for washing the beard and hands. Over this bench, upon the wall, was suspended the large embroidered porte-feuille, worked with silver thread on yellow leather, which is carried in procession when the Sultan goes to mosque, or elsewhere in public, to contain the petitions presented by his subjects. In a nook close to the door was also a pair of yellow boots; and on the bench, by the ewer, a pair of slippers of the same materials. These are placed at the entrance of every apartment frequented by the Sultan. The floor was covered with Gobelins tapestry; and the ceiling, as before stated, magnificently gilded and burnished. Groupes of arms, such as pistols, sabres, and poniards, were disposed, with very singular taste and effect, on the different compartments of the walls; the handles and scabbards of which were covered with diamonds of very large size : these, as they glittered around, gave a most gorgeous effect to the splendour of this sumptuous chamber.' p. 26, 27.

This is faithfully and correctly represented;—and had our traveller been permitted to enter this part of the palace, he would have found several other rooms fitted up with equal taste and magnificence. It may, perhaps, surprise our readers to learn, that the floors of these chambers were laid with English Wilton carpets; and that the walls of a gallery, which runs behind them, were hung with English prints. It is very likely, however, that these have been removed since the death of Selim,--who was too humane, too liberal, and too virtuous for his situation. He was possessed of considerable knowledge. The best French

works had been translated for his perusal; and the piety of the rigid Mahometans was shocked, while the voice of scandal whispered, that the Commander of the Faithful was an admirer of the arts, and that he read the writings of infidels. It was indeed too publicly known for his security, that he was no friend to intolerance-that he had established a printing-press-that he wished to enlighten the people-that he fancied he could ameliorate the laws of his country-that he sought to curb the power of the Janissaries-and that he had actually introduced a new system of tactics into his army. The consequence was, that he paid, with the loss of his life, for the boldness of his projects, and for the liberality of his sentiments.

We shall now accompany Dr Clarke to the plain of Troy, as by courtesy it is called. There can be no doubt that tradition, during a long lapse of ages, has pointed out one of the plains in Anatolia, which is watered by the Mender-sou, the Thym breck, and some smaller streams, as the identical territory which Homer has described as the plain of Troy. Is modern criticism to be permitted to dispute the authority of antient tradition? The followers of Bryant will answer in the affirmative. They contend, that the detection of error can never be less meritorious, though it may be somewhat more difficult, from the length of time that the error has prevailed;-and it must be admitted, that this aphorism sounds plausibly enough: But if we once begin to quarrel with antient traditions, merely because they seem to be at variance with probability, there is no saying where we shall stop. If we reject the traditions of the Greeks, because they do not satisfy our reason, we can scarcely admit those of the Egyptians, of the Romans, or, indeed, of any other nation. But these literary sceptics tell us, that Anaxagoras was as incredulous two thousand years ago, concerning the Trojan war, as they are themselves at the present day; and they seem really to think that the Greeks may have done as much for Homer, as we Caledonians are sometimes supposed to have accomplished for Ossian-that the countrymen of Homer, vain of the lustre which his poetry had shed upon the Grecian nation, might have sought, at an early period, for a scene to suit the action of his fabulous Iliad; and might have bestowed various names mentioned in that poem upon the rivers, plains, and mountains of Anatolia, with as much precision and certainty as a Highlander of Scotland can now point out the tomb of Ossian, and the cave of Fingal. With all our abhorrence for scepticism, we must acknowledge, that there seem to be siderable difficulties in admitting some of the reports of Homer, and in adjusting the topography of the district of Troas 40 his descriptions. Still, however, it is much easier, as well as

con

more popular, to believe with the many, than to doubt with the few. Why should we discredit the story, when we are told, that Priam and Hecuba lost their kingdom, because one of their fifty sons had run away with a Grecian princess, on account of her beauty, when she must have been an hundred years old? Why should we be surprised, that the ruins of Troy could never be found, since it is easy to suppose, that they were swept away. by the waters, when Neptune and Apollo turned half a dozen rivers fifty miles out of their course, in order to destroy the rampart of the Greeks?

Dr Clarke, however, takes a decided part against these literary infidels. It had been idly observed, that Homer would not have given the epithet halus, broad, to the Hellespont, if he had meant to indicate the narrow straits of the Dardanelles. But why should not a poet, and especially such a poet as Homer, be at liberty to call a narrow sea a broad one, if he choose to do so? The objection, however, if it be one, says Mr Walpole, may be obviated at once, by translating πλαὺς Ελλήσποντος, the Salt Hellesport. Some objectors may indeed contend, that there is not the least likelihood that Homer would have employed the word in that most unusual acceptation: and they may add, that since all seas are salt, salt can be no distinctive epithet; and moreover, that Homer has also called the Hellespont egy, or boundless, an epithet applied with no peculiar felicity to a sea, even though it be salt, which is only a mile in breadth. This is all very pretty cavilling; but we assure ourselves, that none of our readers will suspect us of thinking in the same way with these objectors.

The same spirit of cavil must have guided these objectors, when they contended that the rivers of Troas do not answer to Homer's description of the Simois and the Scamander. This, however, is being literal and prosaic to a degree of absolute stupidity. Surely we do not imagine, from the language of the poets, that the Tiber is of a bright yellow colour, or that the Pactolus rolls over a golden bed. It has always been permitted to the Muses to alter the face of Nature; and if we expect to trace localities by their descriptions, we must often encounter disappointment. Neither the brook of Bournabashi, nor the torrent of the Mender-sou, do indeed very much resemble the divine Scamander: But are we, therefore, to question the authority of tradition, or to deny that Ilium stood somewhere in the country which is called Troas? Walter Scott, our Scottish Homer, has called a river, to which we should not hesitate to give the epithets of dis and Buludims, Lyndock's lovely rill. Shall we doubt, on this account, that the river Almond beautifies the charming spot, which is the seat of Sir Thomas Graham?

We are not, however, quite so positive and dogmatical as to refuse to admit, that some very extraordinary changes had ta-** ken place in the district of Troas, between the age of Homer, and the epoch when Mr Chevalier arrived there. Some sceptical persons urged, indeed, that these changes could not have happened in the nature of things, and rejected the hypothesis of Mr Chevalier as altogether illusory. But they ought to have recollected, that the orthodox Homerites never thought of referring those changes to the ordinary course of things-but were entitled, and bound indeed, to attribute the whole of them to the mischievous agency of the Gods of Olympus. It is known, on the authority of the poet himself, that the Gods destroyedthe rampart of the Greeks; and it may be shrewdly suspected," that these same Gods endeavoured, by all other means in their power, to obliterate the local monuments, by which the site of Troy could be recognized by any future inquirer, Accordingly, when Mr Chevalier visited the district of Troas, he found things wonderfully altered. The ruins of the city, which stood in the plain in Homer's time, had climbed to the top of the hill of Bournabashi-the great, deep, and vortiginous Scamander had dwindled into a scanty rivulet-and the two fountains, the hot and the cold, which rose near the wall, had departed to the distance of a mile and a half, and had been changed into forty tepid springs, which are consequently neither hot nor cold! These, and many more surprising alterations had taken place: But Mr Chevalier persevered. The site of Ilium, the gardens of Priam, the throsmos, the callicolone, the Scamander and the Simois, are all clearly pointed out in his map. We should have continued to think, that the Gods had been discomfited by Mr Chevalier, if Dr Clarke had not put in his pretensions to the victory, and made us waver between the claims of these literary Titans.

Dr Clarke boldly denies, that the ruins of Troy, which cer. tainly once were in the plain, can ever be found on the summit of Bournabashi; but he has found out another site for the city, which, it appears, neither Apollo nor Neptune could hide from him, though a coup de soleil, and a storm at sea, which he afterwards encountered, were pretty plain intimations of the resentment they felt at his presumptuous sagacity. Strabo says, that the inhabitants of the Iliensian village believed that it stood on the site of Troy; and the same writer places this village at the distance of 30 stadia to the east of New Ilium. It follows, then, that he who finds the ruins of New Ilium, will be precisely 30 stadia, or three miles and three quarters to the west of the spot, which, in the time of Strabo, was believed to have

been the site of Troy. From some medals which were brought to him by the peasants, Dr Clarke is persuaded that he disco vered the site of New Ilium at a place called Palais-Califut; and he therefore concludes, that Troy must have stood three miles and three quarters to the eastward-that is to say, at a place now called Tchiblack, or in its vicinity.

That this conjecture sounds almost as plausibly as Mr Chevalier's, can scarcely be denied; but we are afraid that it will not satisfy the sceptics. Dr Clarke says, that the Califut-Osmack (of which we find no traces whatever in Chevalier's map) was the Simois of Homer, and that the Mender-sou was his Scamander, -But here again the sceptical doubts come thick upon us. It had been believed, that Homer had described the Scamander as rising from two fountains close to the walls of Troy. After mentioning that Achilles and Hector had passed the fig-tree, and run by the carriage-road under the wall, the poet addsΚρενώ δ ̓ ἵκανον καλλιῤῥόω, ἔνθα δὲ πηγαί

Δοιαὶ ἀναΐσσεσι Σκαμάνδρες δινήεντος. I. X.

Now, Dr Clarke, being aware of the difficulty attending the more obvious interpretation of this passage, is incredibly comforted to find it thus rendered by Cowper.

And now they reached the running rivulets clear,
Where, from Scamander's dizzy food, arise

Two fountains.

We fairly avow, that we cannot comprehend a word of this translation-running rivulets, where two fountains rise from a river! Rivers, we had thought, generally rise from fountains, and not fountains from rivers. We should translate these verses literally-They arrived at two clear-flowing springs, where two fountains of eddying Scamander rise. But if this version be right, it offers an insuperable obstacle to Dr Clarke's conjecture. The Mender-sou, which he would have to be the Scamander, vise at the distance of several leagues from Tchiblack; nor is it possible, if Tchiblack be the spot where Troy stood, that the fountains of Bournabashi, at the distance of six or seven miles from that place, should be the hot and cold springs, mentioned by Homer as being close to the wall. But it is essential for De Clarke, if he would reconcile himself to Homer, to find two fountains of the Scamander, one hot, and the other cold, near to Tchiblack. Now, this he certainly has not done. Nor, indeed, would the task be an easy one; for the Mender-sou, the Doctor's Scamander, rises at a great distance from his Pagus Iliensium; and no where approaches this supposed site of Troy, nearer than four or five miles. In what way, then, is it possible to suppose, if Tchiblack be the site of Troy, that Homer