You cannot pass the Palace of Azmè Sultane, the elder sister of the Sultan, without being saluted by the sounds of music. The ladies of her harem are many of them consummate musicians, according to Turkish ideas of harmony; and the tinkle of the zebec, the long notes of the violin, the ringing rattle of the tambourine, and a chorus of female voices, are so constantly sweeping over the water through the closed lattices, that your boatmen universally slacken their pace as they reach the Seraïl. Oriental music requires distance to mellow it: and when it floats along the water, as though it rose from the ocean caves; and you suffer your imagination to dwell upon the white arms which are tossed in air as the silver wheels of the elastic tambourine ring out; and the delicate fingers that press the strings, and the rich red lips and large dark eyes that lend new grace to the wild and bounding melodies of the country—you are almost ready to fancy for the moment, that Apollo must have first swept his lyre in a Turkish harem. While you look fixedly towards the lattices, as though to search for the embodiment of your romantic fancies, you may discover proofs that the community is not one vowed to the rosary, though it may wear the veil. Here it is an orange attached by a lock of hair to the outer frame of the small centre window of the trellice-work; there it is a marigold suspended by a red ribbon; while, partially concealed, and twined amid the minute squares of the jealous screen, you may perhaps discover a small cluster of roses. This is the very land of practical romance! An arrow’s flight beyond the Palace of the elder Sultana, stands that of the Imperial bride of Saïd Pasha; a long, irregular, rose-coloured pile, pleasantly situated at the mouth of a lovely bay, whose shores are bright with groves and many-tinted villas; while in the distance, where the channel again narrows, the castles of Europe and Asia may be seen looming out against the pure blue of the sky. We loitered at this sweet spot for a brief space, and then, darting once more forward, soon arrived under the “Hill of the Thousand Nightingales.” Rightly is it named, for the mid-day air was vocal with their melody, and the dense foliage of the forest trees quivered with their song; while, as the melancholy music came to us along the water, its sadness was deepened by the aspect of a few scattered tombs gleaming out amid the rank underwood. The variety of timber which clothed the eminence formed such varying shades of green; from the bright soft tint of the water-willow, whose flexile branches swayed in the breeze like silken streamers, to the tall, dark, silent cypresses, that it was a study for a landscape painter.