It is usual at Constantinople for the Sultan to proceed every Friday (the Mussulman Sabbath) to pray in one of the mosques. The one chosen is named in the morning, and he proceeds thither on horseback or in his caick, according to the quarter in which it is situated. This weekly ceremony is almost the sole occasion on which foreigners can see his highness. During my stay at Constantinople, I had several opportunities of gazing upon the descendant of the Prophet. He is a young man, of slender frame, of grave physiognomy, and a most _distingue_ appearance. A crowd of officers and eunuchs formed his suite, and all heads bowed low at his approach. Abdul Medjid, who was the twentieth-born child of his father Mahmood, was born at Constantinople on the 19th of April 1823. His black and stiff beard cause him to appear older than he is in reality. His eye is very brilliant, and his features regular. His face is somewhat marked with the smallpox; but this is not very apparent, as the young sultan, according to the custom of the harem, has an artificial complexion for days of ceremony. Naturally of a delicate frame, excesses have much enfeebled his constitution; his continual ill-health, his pallor, and his teeth already decayed, announce, that though so young in years, he is expiating the pleasures of a Sultan by a premature decrepitude. Abdul Medjid has several children, who are weak and sickly like their father, and the state of their health inspires constant anxiety. Few sovereigns have been more diversely judged than Mahmood, the father of the present Sultan. Lauded to the skies by some, lowered to the dust by others, he died before Europe was properly enlightened as to his intentions. Now that his work has undergone the ordeal of time, one can appreciate it at its real value. Ascending the throne at an epoch of anarchy and disorder, having at one and the same time to oppose the invasion of Russia, and to put down the rebellion of the Pashas, who were raising their pashalicks into sovereignties, Mahmood gave proofs, during several years, of a force of character almost inconceivable in a man enervated from his childhood by the pleasures of the harem. Unfortunately his intellect was unequal to his obstinacy: every abuse he put down gave rise to or made way for new abuses, which he could not foresee, and was unable to destroy. The established order of affairs, which he fought against, was a hydra, from which, for one head cut off, twenty sprang up. Far from augmenting his power, his greatest enterprises merely tended to enfeeble it. The repression of Ali the Pasha of Janina, cost Mahmood the kingdom of Greece; and had not the powers of Europe intervened, the war against Mehemet Ali would have cost him his throne. Even the destruction of the Janissaries, which was considered so great a cause of triumph by the Sultan, was it in reality so? It is surely permitted to doubt the circumstance. That powerful