The approach to Constantinople from the sea of Marmora is likewise thus beautifully described by the same author, and will form an appropriate conclusion:
"With eyes rivetted on the expanding splendour, I watched as they came out of the bosom of the surrounding waters, the pointed minarets, the swelling cupolas, and the innumerable habitations, either stretching along the jagged shore, and reflecting their shape in the mirror of the deep, or creeping up the crested mountain, and tracing their outline on the expanse of the sky. At first agglomerated in a single confused mass, the lesser part of this immense whole seemed, as we advanced, by degrees to unfold, to disengage themselves from each other, and to grow into various groups, divided by wide chasms and deep indentures; until at last the clusters, thus far still distantly connected, became transformed, as if by magic, into three distinct cities, each individually of prodigious extent, and each separated from the other two by a wide arm of that sea whose silver tide encompassed their base, and made its vast circuit rest half on Europe, and half on Asia."
Since writing the above we have visited Mr. Burford's New Panorama of Constantinople, which has lately been opened for exhibition in the Strand; and although we cannot in this Number enter into the detail of its merits, we recommend it to our lionizing friends as one of Mr. Burford's most finished paintings, and equal if not superior in effect to any exhibition in the metropolis; but we reserve an account of its pictorial beauties for our next publication.
TWO SONNETS.
To M—— F——.
(For the Mirror.)
I.
I met thee, ——, when the leaves were green
And living verdure clothed the countless trees