When, therefore, we see the words "Turkish Bath" in grand letters paraded through our metropolis; when we see a human being performing the part of a sandwich, with a broadsheet of Turkish bath in front, and a similar sheet behind, himself representing a flattened anchovy between the two slices, we shall know that the ancient Roman bath, after being kept alive for many centuries by the fostering care of the Turks, has at last come back to revisit its ancient haunts, and to offer to modern Britons the enjoyments from which our forefathers turned away with contempt as a custom of their conquerors. And we are led to recognise the truth of my preliminary proposition--that the bath is an instinct, and that, being an instinct, its survival of a race is no longer a wonder, but is a law of nature--a law of the universe. Let me now describe the Hamâm, or Turkish Bath as it exists at the present moment in Constantinople; and in this description I shall take as my groundwork the account given of it by Mr. Urquhart. It is a large building, with a domed roof, a square massive body, from which minarets shoot up, and against which wings abut containing side apartments. The essential apartments of the hamâm are three in number--a great hall or _mustaby_, a _middle chamber_, and an _inner chamber_. We raise the curtain which covers the entrance to the street, and we find ourselves in the _mustaby_, a circular or octagonal hall, maybe a hundred feet high, with a domed roof, and open in the centre to the vault of heaven. In the middle of the floor is a basin of water four feet high, with a fountain playing in the centre, and around it are plants and trellises; and resting against it, at some one point, the stall whence comes the supply of coffee and pipes or chibouques. Around the circumference of the hall is a low platform, from four to twelve feet in breadth and three feet high. This is divided by dwarf balustrades into small compartments, each containing one or more couches. These compartments are the dressing-rooms, and the couches, shaped like a straddling letter W, and adapted by their angles to the bends of the body, are the _couches of repose_. It is here that the bather disrobes; his clothes are folded and placed in a napkin, and the napkin is carefully tied up. He then assumes the bathing garb; a long Turkish towel (_peshtimal_ or _futa_) is wound turban-wise around his head; a second around his hips, descending to the middle of the leg; and a third, disposed like a scarf over one or both shoulders. Two attendants shield him from view while changing his linen, by holding a napkin before him; and when he is ready, the same attendants help him to descend from the platform; they place wooden pattens (called _nalma_ in Turkish, and _cob cob_ in Arabic) on his feet, and taking each arm, lead him to the middle apartment. The wooden pattens are intended to protect the feet from the heat of the inner rooms, and from the dirty water and slop of the passages.