years' interval, I found that the rough diamond had been charmingly polished, and now shone with refined beauty. The Circassians are mostly Mohammedans. A small number of them have been made to accept the Russian religion, but these converts have always a strong tendency towards the faith of the Arabian Prophet; and it is only the fear of the wrath of their conquerors that prevents them from denouncing the doctrine of Holy Synod. This tendency is attributable either to the hatred burned into their hearts towards the Muscovite on account of the destruction of their national independence and the loss of their primitive happiness, which has resulted from the sanguinary and fiercely resisted Russian conquest, or to the reason that the precepts of Islam may perhaps suit their native simplicity better. There is Circassian blood in the veins of almost all the members of the existing dynasties of the Mohammedan Orient. For many generations past the mothers of the Ottoman Sultans have been Circassians; just as in the bygone centuries, when the power and influence of Turkey were so great in Eastern Europe, the Sultanas were women mostly belonging to one or other of the Christian States which were tributary to the Ottoman empire. Many of the Mameluke rulers of Egypt were, as well as their wives, Circassians. The female members of the Khedivial harem have always been and are still of Circassian origin, and there are said to be Circassian ladies in the household of the Persian sovereign. The Nizam of Hyderabad was at one time anxious to marry a Circassian woman. I heard this from a man whose name is widely known throughout India, and who, I believe, has been introduced to English readers in a well known novel under the fictitious name of 'Mr Isaacs.' This gentleman is a native of Diarbekir, in Asiatic Turkey. After living over thirty years in British India, he paid a visit to Constantinople some nine years ago. There, one day, he asked my advice as to how he might procure Circassian slave-girls, saying that he wished to buy one or two to be admitted to the household of His Highness the Nizam. This anglicised gentleman imagined, as many Englishmen do, that there is still a public market for slave traffic in Constantinople, and that anyone can go and purchase as many slave-women as he pleases. It is true that some destitute parents among the refugees from the Caucasus are willing to part with their young girls for a reasonable sum of money, but only on obtaining a sufficient guarantee beforehand that these young girls will be adopted by the buyers (well-to-do families without daughters often adopt orphans and other poor girls), or else that the girls sold in this fashion will be married either by the buyers themselves or by some relation of theirs.