The Dardanelles and the Bosphorus have, from the dawn of letters, exercised the descriptive talents of the greatest historians of modern Europe. The truthful chronicle of Villehardouin, and the eloquent pictures of Gibbon and Sismondi of the siege of Constantinople, will immediately occur to every scholar. The following passage, however, will show that no subject can be worn out when it is handled by the pen of genius:-- "It was five in the morning, I was standing on deck; we made sail towards the mouth of the Bosphorus, skirting the walls of Constantinople. After half an hour's navigation through ships at anchor, we touched the walls of the seraglio, which prolongs those of the city, and form, at the extremity of the hill which supports the proud Stamboul, the angle which separates the sea of Marmora from the canal of the Bosphorus, and the harbour of the Golden Horn. It is there that God and man, nature and art, have combined to form the most marvellous spectacle which the human eye can behold. I uttered an involuntary cry when the magnificent panorama opened upon my sight; I forgot for ever the bay of Naples and all its enchantments; to compare any thing to that marvellous and graceful combination would be an injury to the fairest work of creation. "The walls which support the circular terraces of the immense gardens of the seraglio were on our left, with their base perpetually washed by the waters of the Bosphorus, blue and limpid as the Rhone at Geneva; the terraces which rise one above another to the palace of the Sultana, the gilded cupolas of which rose above the gigantic summits of the plane-tree and the cypress, were themselves clothed with enormous trees, the trunks of which overhang the walls, while their branches, overspreading the gardens, spread a deep shadow even far into the sea, beneath the protection of which the panting rowers repose from their toil. These stately groups of trees are from time to time interrupted by palaces, pavilions, kiosks, gilded and sculptured domes, or batteries of cannon. These maritime palaces form part of the seraglio. You see occasionally through the muslin curtains the gilded roofs and sumptuous cornices of those abodes of beauty. At every step, elegant Moorish fountains fall from the higher parts of the gardens, and murmur in marble basins, from whence, before reaching the sea, they are conducted in little cascades to refresh the passengers. As the vessel coasted the walls, the prospect expanded--the coast of Asia appeared, and the mouth of the Bosphorus, properly so called, began to open between hills, on one side of dark green, on the other of smiling verdure, which seemed variegated by all the colours of the rainbow. The smiling shores of Asia, distant