POLYGAMY, 253 XXVIII. MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE, 259 XXIX. SULTAN'S HAREM AND HOUSEHOLD, 264 XXX. CIRCASSIAN AND NUBIAN SLAVES, 274 XXXI. THE WATERING PLACES, 280 XXXII. THE BAZAARS, 293 XXXIII. THE KAHVÉS, 299 XXXIV. THE HAMAMS, OR BATHS, 320 XXXV. THE RAYAS, OR NON-MUSSULMAN SUBJECTS--ARMENIANS, 340 XXXVI. THE RAYAS, OR NON-MUSSULMAN SUBJECTS--GREEKS, 364 XXXVII. THE RAYAS, OR NON-MUSSULMAN SUBJECTS--JEWS, 376 XXXVIII. PERA AND THE PEROTES, OR FRANKS, 381 XXXIX. THE ARISTOCRACY AND THE PEOPLE, 393 XL. THE FUTURE OF TURKEY, 419 THE SULTAN AND HIS PEOPLE. PRELIMINARY CHAPTER. Mutability is the appropriate motto of humanity; for what are men but creatures of a day; monarchs, but transient shadows of earthly greatness; empires, but passing events? Time, with more than eagle swiftness, hurls all things into the great bosom of Eternity. Futurity is dark and impenetrable, but the present is with us, and still more the past, teeming with vast records of human life, of rising and falling empires, bloody tales of extinguished armies and extirpated races of mankind, detailing the effects of the wild ambition of kings, emperors, sultans, themselves but atoms, yet involving the whole mass in their career. Contrast is often the greatest source of pleasure to the mind; therefore do the citizens of this New World delight to revel in the scenes of the olden hemisphere, which was in full glory when this vast continent lay in undiscovered obscurity. Orientalism! Talisman to conjure up the shades of the very parents of our race, and of the old patriarchs of Israel, to array in picturesque and savage beauty the vision of Arabian horsemen, flying steeds, vast encampments on arid plains, tribes of wandering Tartars, and almost to awaken the echoes of the clashing and blood-stained scimitars of the desperate champions of the Crescent, the followers of the Prophet. And while there is a wall of iron between us and our future, the eventful record of by-gone times displays to us the development of all that was hidden to our ancestors. There is a great difference between the primitive condition of the human race and the effects which Time has produced upon that wonderful structure, MAN! Simplicity, almost childlike, seems to characterize the living mind of man in its embryo state, while years of successive re-conceptions have continued to develop this noble emanation from the great spirit of the universe.