The Franks of Smyrna began their carnival with the year, during which a long series of costly balls and suppers were given. Among the musicians employed on these occasions it would be to little purpose, our traveller remarks, to seek for an Orpheus or a Linus; but the favourite dance of the Greek women, which surely could not be the Romaika, or “dull roundabout,” of the tiresomeness of which Lord Byron complains, greatly delighted our traveller. Fifteen young women arranged themselves in a half-moon, and, skilfully keeping time with the sounds of the lute and violin, performed a number of graceful movements, following their leader, who directed their steps by the waving of a scarf which she held in her hand, through various intricate figures, admirably imitating the mazes of a labyrinth. The girls accompanied their movements with songs, which Hasselquist, though a snake and beetle collector, seems to have enjoyed exceedingly. Of the dress of the dancers, he merely observes that it was in the ancient mode,—that is, if we may judge from vases and bas-reliefs, a single tunic covering only one of the breasts, and open at the sides from the girdle downwards. With the month of February commenced the spring; and Hasselquist, who was really actuated by passion for the objects of his studies, willingly quitted the city and its amusements to ramble abroad among the fields and woods. Here the orange, the pomegranate, the fig-tree, the olive, the palm, and the cypress intermingled their foliage; and it would, perhaps, be necessary to have imbibed something of the tastes of a naturalist to conceive the pleasure with which our traveller, to whom most of them were new, beheld them put forth their blossoms, or otherwise manifest their being under the influence of spring. One of the greatest ornaments of the gardens in the environs of Smyrna, which are enclosed by hedges of willows planted along the brink of a ditch, is a species of ivy, which, when it finds a proper support, bends round into arches, or hangs from tree to tree in festoons, in so rich and beautiful a manner, that Hasselquist, who seems to have had a high notion of royalty, thought it ought to have adorned the garden of a king. Nature, however, is no respecter of persons. Kings or no kings, Turks, Jews, and gentiles are all one to her. In fact, if we may judge of her political opinions by facts, Nature abhors the foppery and rhodomontade of courts, since, when she has any magnificent or sublime spectacle to exhibit to mankind, she retires to scenes where palaces would be exceedingly out of place, and piles her eternal snows, or pours down her cataracts, or puts her terrible sand-columns in motion in barrenness and solitude.