In one corner a group of matronly-looking women were describing the merits and charms of their respective babies, while shouts of merry laughter, proceeding from another, showed where a number of young girls had collected together. The whole scene was singularly picturesque and interesting, and gave us a very favourable impression of the native refinement of Turkish women. Nothing could be more decorous than the appearance and manners of every woman there present, but in one respect we were disappointed. There was a remarkable want of beauty. With the exception of the pretty Georgian, there was scarcely a good-looking woman in the room. The handsomest were, beyond all question, some coal-black Nubian slaves. One of them had the most beautiful figure we had ever seen. Tall, lithe, and supple, her small head exquisitely poised on a throat round and shapely as that of a statue, she moved about with the undulating grace of some wild animal. Coal-black though she was, her features had none of the unseemly coarseness and grotesqueness of the negro; on the contrary, the nose was delicately cut, while her mouth, though full, had the waving lines of beauty, only seen in the Egyptian sphinx. Although a Turkish bath is certainly a most inviting luxury, and has temporarily a flattering effect upon the skin, making it for some hours, even days afterwards, exquisitely white, smooth, and soft, still, owing to the great heat, and the quantity of sulphur with which the air is charged, an undue indulgence in bathing has in the end a deteriorating effect upon female beauty. The muscles become relaxed, and the skin, although it remains soft and delicate, loses its elasticity; the hair also rapidly falls off, and what is left becomes thin and weak. The too devoted votaries of the bath, therefore, speedily become enervated both in mind and body, and whilst still young in years fade into a premature old age. The indolence also which it creates does much to increase the tendency to undue corpulence, so destructive to the fair proportions of Eastern women. Most of them, after middle life, either become shrivelled and dried up, or else have both features and form swelled to very uncomely dimensions. CHAPTER V. THE HAPPY VALLEY. Amongst the many lovely valleys that surround Constantinople, the two most perfectly charming are the Valley of the Sultan and that called by the Franks the Sweet Waters of Asia. Both are carpeted by the freshest and greenest sward; both are shaded by magnificent trees; and numerous little streams, descending from the neighbouring heights, not only charm by the pleasant music of their waters, but enable pleasure-seekers to boil their coffee al fresco.