What a commingling of nations and characters there was in the little party of which I made one, on a serene evening, lang-syne, at Constantinople! We floated gently over the placid bosom of the sunset-tinted Golden Horn, rowed by four stout Mussulmans, and bound for that point of the shore of the Marmora nearest the suburb of Ezoub where horses awaited us for a brisk canter of some miles back to the city. There were, Lord ——, an English nobleman; a Hungarian refugee; a Yankee sea-captain; a dark-eyed youth from one of the Greek Islands; and myself—men severed by birth and education from communion of thought and feeling, yet united, for the moment, by a similarity of purpose; associated by the subtle influence of circumstance, into a serene commingling of one common nature, and capacitated for the interchange of impressions and ideas, at least in an imperfect degree, through the medium of a strange jargon, compounded originally of materials as varied as the native languages of the several individuals composing the group in our old Turkish Caique, which may have been, for aught we knew, the identical one that followed Byron in his Leander-swim!
The conversation naturally partook in character of the scene before us:—Near, towered the time-stained walls of the Seraglio—so long the cradling-place of successive Sultans, and then furnishing the embryo of the voluptuous pleasures of their anticipated paradise. Beyond, rose the ruin-crowned heights, the domes and minarets of old Stamboul, rich in historic suggestions, glowing now in the warmly-lingering smile of the departing day-god,
"Not, as in Northern climes, obscurely bright,
But one unclouded blaze of living light!"
Before us, in our way over the crystal waters, loomed up the gloomy, verdure-draped turrets of the "Irde Koule" of this oft-rebelling and oft-conquered seat of Oriental splendor and imperial power. As with the "Tower" of London, the mere sight of this now silent and deserted castle, conjured up recollections replete with deeds of wild romance, and darker scenes of blood and crime. Around us flowed the waters whose limpid depths had so oft received the sack-shrouded form of helpless beauty, when midnight blackness rivalled the horror of the foul murder it veiled forever from mortal ken. Argosies and fleets had been borne upon these waves, whose names or whose conflicts were of world-wide renown—from the mythical adventurers of the Golden-Fleece to the triumphant squadrons of the Osmanlis, all seemed to float before the eye of fancy!
From the broken sentences that, for some time, seemed most expressive of the contemplative mood engendered both by our surroundings and by the placidity of the hour, there gradually arose a somewhat connected discussion of the present condition of the Ottoman Porte.
It is not my purpose to inflict upon you a detailed report of our discourse; but only to relate, for your amusement, a fragment of it, which somehow has, strangely enough, floated upwards from the darkened waters of the past, with sufficient distinctness to be snatched from the oblivion to which its utter insignificance might properly consign it.
"There is not," said the British noble—a man curious in literature, and a somewhat speculative observer of life—"there is not a single purely literary production in the Turkish language, written by a living author; not a poem, nor romance, nor essay. The Koran would almost seem to constitute their all of earthly lore and heavenly aspiration. What an anomaly in the biography of modern peoples!"
This last sentence was addressed especially to the sea-captain and me, the idiomatical English in which the passing fancy of the speaker found expression being wholly unintelligible to all except ourselves.
"Their total want of a national literature," said the American, "does not so materially affect my comfort, I must confess, as the utter absence of decent civilization in their renowned capital. For instance, they have not an apology for a night-police in their confoundedly dark streets, except the infernal dogs that infest them. The other night, returning to my quarters, with my 'Ibrahim' pilot in front with a lantern, I was persuaded, as one of these 'faithful guardians' fastened his glistening ivories in my boot-top, that, like one of your 'lone stars' at New York, Colonel Lunettes, he had 'mistaken his man,' and supposed me to be the returned spirit of some one of the countless throng of infidel dogs, upon whom his public education had instructed him to make war to—the teeth!"
"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the Greek, in tones as musical as his dress and attitude were picturesque, from the pile of boat cloaks upon which he reposed in the bow of the boat, and opening his dark eyes till one saw far down into the dreamy depths of his half-slumbering soul through his quick-lit orbs. He had caught enough of the sense of the captain's nonsense, to imagine the joke to the full. "Ha, ha, ha!" laughed he, again, and the shadowy walls of the blood-stained "Chateau of Seven Towers," by which we were gliding, gave back the clear, clarion-like tone; "but, while this brave fils de la mer[6] thus sports with the terrors of my country's enslaver [here a frown, deep, dark, threatening, and a quick clenching of the jewelled handle of the yataghan he wore in his belt], the gates of fair Stamboul will close, and nor foe, nor Frank, nor friend, be given to the dogs."