blankets and crouching in corners, and in whom sense and feeling were evidently at the very lowest ebb, had much better chance of such happiness as they were capable of enjoying, if sold as slaves than if left to their own savage resources. "I should be very sorry," he says, "to run against any proper feelings on the subject, but I do honestly believe that if any person of average propriety and right-mindedness were shown these creatures, and told that their lot was to become the property of others, and work in return for food and lodging, he would come to the conclusion it was all they were fit for.... The truth is, that the 'virtuous indignation' side of the question holds out grander opportunities to an author for fine writing than the practical fact. But this style of composition should not always be implicitly relied upon. I knew a man who was said, by certain reviews and literary _cliques_, to be 'a creature of large sympathies for the poor and oppressed,' because he wrote touching things about them; but who would abuse his wife, and brutally treat his children, and harass his family, and then go and drink until his large heart was sufficiently full to take up the 'man-and-brother' line of literary business, and suggest that a tipsy Chartist was as good as quiet gentleman." Mr Albert Smith is evidently a hard-hearted person, and we begin to repent of noticing his book. In the same pitiless matter-of-fact manner he continues to tilt at the several articles of our Eastern creed, pressing into his service as a witness Demetri the Second, (not him of Athens, but a Constantinople cicerone,) a terrible fellow for rubbing the romantic lacquer off Turkish manners and customs. After the slaves, the sack and scimitar are disposed of. "Not many executions now," quoth Demetri,--"only English subjects. Here's where they cut the heads off; just here, where these two streets meet, and the body is left here a day or two, and sometimes the dogs get at it." This was rather startling intelligence, until explained. The "English subjects" proved to be emigrants from Malta and the Ionian islands--the greatest scamps in Pera--which is saying no little, for Pera abounds with scamps. At that time, however, there had not been an execution for a whole year past. "All English gentlemen," continued Demetri, "think they cut off heads every day in Stamboul, and put them, all of a row, on plates at the Seraglio gate. And they think people are always being drowned in the Bosphorus. Not true. I know a fellow who is a dragoman, and shows that wooden shoot which comes from the wall of the Seraglio Point, as the place they slide them down. It is only to get rid of the garden rubbish. Same with lots of other things."