The sensation which this gorgeous scene produced upon me, for the first few moments, was almost painful. I deemed myself thralled—I doubted my own identity—I almost expected the earth to fail beneath my feet, for earth had no share in the spectacle on which I looked—I saw boats passing and repassing over a lake of molten silver—I saw palaces of fire based upon its surface, and heaving with its undulations—a marine monster, whose eyes were dazzling, and whose nostrils vomited forth flames that shot high into the air, wound its slow way among the gliding barks, and none heeded its vicinity—I beheld huge dark masses covered with stars of light, which were reflected in the stream beneath, looking like rocky craters that would shortly burst, and cast forth the imprisoned fires—carriages and horses, guided by spectral hands, followed over the same cold clear surface—and suddenly, with a hissing sound which startled me from my reverie, and a burst of light almost blinding, up sprang a cluster of fiery serpents into the pure ether, mocking the pale moon with their transient brilliancy, and then falling back in starry showers. The dream of fancy was dispelled at once:—A handful of rockets sufficed to arouse me from one of the wildest visions in which I ever remember to have indulged—for I no sooner saw them run shimmering along the sky, than I sickened at the memory of the frightful catastrophe which attended their preparation; when eighty-four miserable human beings fell victims to the explosion of the powder-room of the manufactory. My enthusiasm was at an end: but my admiration of the magnificent scene, amid which I stood, continued unabated; the channel of the Bosphorus, beautiful under all circumstances, and at all times, offered facilities, and enhanced effects, in an exhibition like that on which I looked, that cannot probably be exceeded in the world; and I felt at once that, even had man done less, nature would still have made the pageant peerless. We at length turned reluctantly away from the City of Fire on which we had been so long looking; and, threading among the tents that occupied the crest of the hill, we passed out through the fair of the Great Cemetery. Every booth was thronged. In one, a set of Fantoccini were performing their miniature drama; in another, an Improvvisatore was regaling a circle of listeners with a gesticulation and volubility which appeared to excite great admiration in his auditors; while in a third, a trio of Bohemian minstrels, squatted upon a mat, were accompanying their wild recitative by a few chords struck almost at random upon their mandolins.