Nothing can be conceived more disgusting than the scene that followed; all the actors being actually Jews, selected from the very dregs of the people, and compelled to exhibit the degradation of their social state for the amusement of their task-masters. A wretched bier, borne by four men, was brought forward, on which the supposed corpse was flung with a haste and indecency betokening strong alarm; and it was about to disappear with its loathsome freight, when its passage was obstructed by a party of police, who, occupying the centre of the path along which it was passing, and remaining erect on its approach, were supposed to awaken in the bosoms of the bearers one of the strongest superstitions of the Jews of Turkey; who, when they are carrying a body to the grave that is met by a Christian or a Mahommedan who refuses to bend down and pass under the bier, consider the corpse so contaminated by the contact as to be without the pale of salvation; and, setting down the body under this impression on the spot where the encounter has taken place, they abandon it to the tender mercies of the local authorities. This wretched and revolting superstition was enacted by the degraded wretches who were hired on the present occasion to expose the abjectness of their people, with all the painful exactness which could delude the spectator into the belief that he beheld a scene of actual and unpremeditated horror. A distracted wife tore off her turban, and plucked out handfuls of her dishevelled hair; the body was rolled over into the dust: a scuffle ensued between the Jewish rabble and the armed kavasses, in which a few blows were given that appeared to fall more heavily than was altogether necessary to the effect of the scene; and the Jew, recovering from his trance amid the shouting and yelling of the combatants, was borne off in triumph by his tribe, with a wild chorus that terminated the first act of the drama! At intervals, the disgust which this hateful exhibition tended to excite in my bosom was relieved by the arrival of some tardy Pasha, attended by a train of domestics; who, entering the arena by the passage to which I have already alluded as opening from the shoreward side of the enclosure, guided his richly caparisoned steed, whose housings were bright with gems and embroidery, through the motley throng of actors; while his diamond star glittered in the sunshine, and his gold-wrought sword-belt and jewelled weapon-hilt flashed back the light that glanced upon them. My pen wearies of its office, as I pursue the detail of the morning’s performance; but I compel myself to the task, in order to convey to my readers an accurate idea of the Turkish drama—for this coarse, revolting, and aimless exhibition, whose description I have commenced, is the highest effort that the histrionic art has yet made in Turkey; and I am bound to add that the effect which it produced upon the spectators was one of unequivocal gratification.