likely to be misunderstood by stating clearly the object of ny journey, while information derived from the fountain-head was most valuable. The Defterdar, after commending my openness, said, 'I suspect that you will find very little to remark in the pashalik of Silistria. It is an agricultural country, and the majority of the inhabitants are Turks. The Rayahs are very peaceable, and pay few taxes, considering the agricultural wealth of the country. You may rest assured that there is not a province of the empire better governed than the pashalik of Silistria. We have no malcontents within the province; but there are a few Hetarist scoundrels at Braila, who wish to disturb the tranquillity of Bulgaria; but the Walachian government has taken measures to prevent them from carrying their projects into execution.'" Having thus put his readers in possession of this full, true, and particular account, derived from exclusive official sources, of all that is to be learned of the pashalik of Silistria, we next find Mr Paton, after two days steaming on the Danube, at Widdin, where the exiled Servian minister, M. Petronovich, was then resident, under the protection of the Pasha, whose name is known to all the world as the destroyer of the Janissaries and the defender of Shumla, the once formidable Hussein. To this redoubted personage, now apparently verging on eighty, Mr Paton was introduced by M. Petronevich at an evening audience, it being contrary to etiquette to receive visits by day during the Ramadan--and found him "sitting in the corner of the divan at his ease, being afflicted with gout, in the old ample Turkish costume. The white beard, the dress of the Pasha, the rich but faded carpet, the roof of elaborate but dingy wooden arabesque, were all in perfect keeping; and the dubious light of two thick wax candles rising two or three feet from the floor, but seemed to bring out the picture, which carried me a generation back to the pashas of the old school." Hussein has since retired from his government, to enjoy the immense fortune which he has accumulated by commercial speculations--the last specimen of the "malignant and turbaned Turk" of former days, whose war shout was heard under the walls of Vienna; and who will now be replaced by a smooth-faced hybrid in fez and frock-coat, waging a paper war with the ambassadors of the _protecting_ powers in defence of the few sovereign rights still permitted to the Porte--such is the Pasha of the present day! The town of Widdin found even less favour in our traveller's eyes than Roustchouk. "Lying so nicely on the bank of the Danube, which here makes such beautiful curves, and marked on the map with capital letters, it ought (such was my notion) to be a place having at least one well-built and well-stocked bazar, a handsome seraglio, and some good-looking mosques. Nothing of the sort;"--and thus, sorely disappointed in his reasonable expectations, he proceeded on his way in