On the 6th of June, 1718, she left Constantinople with regret. And at this I do not wonder, for there was in her character a coarse sensual bent, closely approximating to the oriental cast of mind, which in a wild unpoliced capital, where, according to her own account, women live in a state of perpetual masquerade, might still more easily be yielded to even than in London. Of study and the sciences she had by this time grown tired. She regretted that her youth had been spent in the acquisition of knowledge. The Turks, who consumed their lives “in music, gardens, wine, and delicate eating,” appeared upon the whole much wiser than the English, who tormented their brains with some scheme of politics, I use her own words, or in studying some science to which they could never attain. “Considering what short-lived weak animals men are,” she adds, “is there any study so beneficial as the study of _present pleasure?_” And lest any one should mistake her after all, she subjoins, “but I allow you to laugh at me for my sensual declaration in saying that I had rather be a rich _effendi_ with all his ignorance, than Sir Isaac Newton with all his knowledge.” No doubt; and Lais, Cleopatra, or Ninon would have said the same thing. Sailing down the Dardanelles, they cast anchor between the castles of Sestos and Abydos, where, ————In the month of cold December, Leander, daring boy, was wont,— What maid will not the tale remember?— To cross thy stream, broad Hellespont! Here she enjoyed a full view of Mount Ida, Where Juno once caressed her amorous Jove, And the world’s master lay subdued by love. The quotation is Lady Montague’s. Descending a league farther down the Hellespont, she landed at the promontory of Sigeum, and climbed up to visit the barrow beneath which the heroic bones of Achilles repose. Experiencing no enthusiasm at the sight of these Homeric scenes, she was unquestionably right in not affecting what she did not feel; but who, save herself, could have viewed the plains of Troy, the Simois, and the Scamander without having any other ideas awakened in the mind than such as the adventure of Æschines’s companion and the lewd tale of Lafontaine had implanted there? However, to do her justice, though she gives her favourite ideas the precedence, she afterward observes, “there is some pleasure in seeing the valley where I imagined the famous duel of Menelaus and Paris had been fought, and where the greatest city in the world was situated.” Here, though she is mistaken about the magnitude of the city, there is some sign of the only feeling which ever ought to lead a traveller out of his way to behold such a scene; and she goes on to say, “I spent several hours here in as agreeable cogitations as ever Don Quixote had on Mount Montesinos;” in which cogitations let us be charitable enough to suppose that “the tale of Troy divine” was not forgotten.