Then came a third, gliding along like a nautilus, with its small white sail; and bearing a bevy of Greeks, whose large flashing eyes gleamed out beneath the unbecoming _fèz_, or cap of red cloth, with its purple silk tassel, and ornament of cut paper, bound round the head among the lower classes, by a thick black shawl, tightly twisted. This was followed by a fourth, impelled by two lusty rowers, wherein the round hats and angular costume of a party of Franks forced your thoughts back upon the country that you had left, only to be recalled the next instant by a freight of Armenian merchants returning from the Charshees of Constantinople to their dwellings at Galata and Pera. As I looked on the fine countenances, the noble figures, and the animated expression of the party, how did I deprecate their shaven heads, and the use of the frightful _calpac_, which I cannot more appropriately describe than by comparing it to the iron pots used in English kitchens, inverted! The graceful pelisse, however, almost makes amends for the monstrous head-gear, as its costly garniture of sable or marten-skin falls back, and reveals the robe of rich silk, and the cachemire shawl folded about the waist. Altogether, I was more struck with the Armenian than the Turkish costume; and there is a refinement and _tenue_ about the wearers singularly attractive. Their well-trimmed mustachioes, their stained and carefully-shaped eyebrows, their exceeding cleanliness, in short, their whole appearance, interests the eye at once; nor must I pass over without remark their jewelled rings, and their pipes of almost countless cost, grasped by fingers so white and slender that they would grace a woman. While I am on the subject of costume, I cannot forbear to record my regret as I beheld in every direction the hideous and unmeaning _fèz_, which has almost superseded the gorgeous turban of muslin and cachemire: indeed, I was nearly tempted in my woman wrath to consider all the admirable reforms, wrought by Sultan Mahmoud in his capital, overbalanced by the frightful changes that he has made in the national costume, by introducing a mere caricature of that worst of all originals—the stiff, starch, angular European dress. The costly turban, that bound the brow like a diadem, and relieved by the richness of its tints the dark hue of the other garments, has now almost entirely disappeared from the streets; and a group of Turks look in the distance like a bed of poppies; the flowing robe of silk or of woollen has been flung aside for the ill-made and awkward surtout of blue cloth; and the waist, which was once girdled with a shawl of cachemire, is now compressed by two brass buttons!