ORIGINAL POETRY. A LAMENT FOR THE FLOWERS. A LAMENT for the flowers The gay-robed flowers That bloomed 'neath the summer's sky; That were sent in showers To this world of ours By Him who dwells on high. No song-birds now From the leafy bough Pour forth sweet music, they Have gone to roam In the sunshine's home; They have fled to the south away; And the butterfly No more sails by On veins of gossamer, For the gay-hued door Is oped no more for her. By the hoary mist Now the earth is kissed, When the fair flowers all are gone, And around their bier, By December drear, A shroud of snow is thrown. And the tiny bee No more I see Wand'ring among sweet flowers His trump no more The earth in sunny hours. A lament for the flowers The gay-rob'd flowers That bloomed 'neath the summer's sky, That were sent in showers To this world of ours By Him who dwells on high. I HEARD the clock strike twelve-the night The owlet scream'd in the woods close by, I heard the clock strike one-the hours, And I saw the moon sail through the sky The owlet ceased-but hark! the air O nightingale! sweet nightingale! I love to list to thy melody, And the night seems no more dreary I hear a voice that is borne on the wind, A DAY DREAM. I DREAMT that I had found my kindred soul, All clouds had rolled away, and I beheld Streaming with sunshine, gladdened with dear love, Love from a heart so good, a mind so true, f wearing chains by your own fancy wrought. For though your ideal realized you see, Your standard reached, though lofty it may be. Why should your ideal stoop on you to think? Unworthy one, awake! and from such day-dreams shrink. L'INCONNUE. FLOWERS OF FABLE. THE FOX AND THE CROW. A CROW, having stolen a piece of cheese from a cottage window, flew up into a high tree with it, in order to eat it; which the Fox observing came and sat underneath, and began to compliment the CROW upon the subject of her beauty. "I protest," says he, "I never observed it before, but your feathers are of a more delicate white than any that ever I saw in my life! Ah! what a fine shape and graceful turn of body is there!-and I dare say you have a beautiful voice. If it be but as fine as your complexion, I do not know a bird that can pretend to stand in competition with you.' The CROW, tickled with this very civil language, nestled and wriggled about, and hardly knew where she was; but thinking the Fox a little dubious as to the particular of her voice, and having a mind to set him right in that matter, she began to sing, and, in the same instant, let the cheese drop out of her mouth. This being what the Fox wanted, he snapped it up in a moment; and trotted away, laughing to himself at the easy credulity of the CROW. MORAL. It is a maxim in the schools, That "Flattery's the food of fools;" And whoso likes such airy meat, Will soon have nothing else to eat. THE HUSBANDMAN AND THE STORK. [FROM CROXALL.] THE HUSBANDMAN pitched a net in his fields to take the Cranes and Geese which came to feed upon the new-sown corn, and caught several, both Cranes and Geese. Among them was a STORK, who pleaded hard for his life; and among other apologies which he made, alleged that he was neither Goose nor Crane, but a poor harmless STORK. "That may be true," replies the HUSBANDMAN, "but, as I have taken you in bad company, and in the same crime, you must expect to suffer the same punishment." WOMEN IN TURKEY. THE word Harem has a very various signification. There is that of the poor, of the middle, and the highest classes; the harem of the provinces and the capital, that of the country and the town; the harem of the young, and that of the old; of the faithful Mussulman regretting the old style, and of the sceptical Mahometan wearing a coat, and all for reform. Each of these harems has its own peculiar characteristic, its degree of importance, its manners and customs. The least extraordinary of all, and which comes the nearest to an honest Christian household, is the harem of the poor dweller in the country: obliged to work in the fields and kitchen gardens, to lead the flocks to graze, to journey from one village to another to sell or purchase her provisions, the peasant's wife is not a prisoner within the walls of the harem; and even, when (which happens rarely) the conjugal dwelling has two rooms, one of which is categorically reserved for the females, men are not rigor. ously excluded. It is rare that a peasant has many wives; it happens only in exceptional cases, such as when a day-labourer, a servant, or any inferior, marries his master's widow, an event which only takes place when the lady is no longer of an age to aspire to a more brilliant match. Thanks to this union, the servant is more wealthy than before, and, after some years of wedded life, profits by this fortune to unite himself to a companion more to his taste. I hardly met with any polygamist peasants, but such as had married in their early youth a much older woman possessing some wealth. With this exception, the home of the Moslem peasant resembles that of the Christian one, and, with regret do I say it, the former might often serve as a model to the latter. Should each have equal fidelity, the advantage is on the side of the Turk, for his is not imposed either by religious or civil law, by custom, morality, or public opinion, and the inducement is the kindness of his nature, which revolts from the thought of afflicting his companion. Neither does he make her purchase by ill treatment, nor even by ill humour, the privilege of which he might deprive her, that of being sole mistress of his house; never does he retaliate, by making her unhappy, for the restraint he imposes upon himself for her sake. His simple and generous mind is incapable of these petty meannesses. The tradition of feminine weakness is not regarded as a fable in the East, and therefore the weak are considered to have every claim on the strong. The woman, being reputed feeble, has everything permitted her, or nearly so; to be angry without a cause, not to have ordinary common sense, to say anything she likes, to do precisely the reverse of what is asked, and particularly of what is ordered, to work only just as much as she likes, to spend in her own way the money her husband earns, to feign illness, to complain without rhyme or reason, such are her privileges. By virtue of what law or institution, by the direct or indirect effect of what custom or principle, does she enjoy all this? The law gives her up defenceless to the caprice of her lord and master; custom condemns her. It is therefore only the kindness of heart, the tenderness, the natural generosity of the Turk, which insure his wife an almost absolute impunity. The Turkish peasant has a feeling at once paternal and lover-like for his companion; never does he knowingly and willingly disoblige her, and there is no annoyance to which he would not cheerfully submit for her sake. Woman ages rapidly in these climes; man on the contrary, better adapted for fatigues and privations, enjoys an almost eternal verdure. Nothing is more common here than to see a man between eighty and ninety years of age surrounded by his infant children. Notwithstanding this disproportion, the union contracted almost in childhood is rarely sundered but by death; I have seen women, decrepit, hideous, and infirm, protected, cared for, adored by fine old men, upright as the mountain pine, their silvery beards long and abundant, their eyes bright and serene. "How much you must love your husband!" I said one day to an old woman, blind and paralytic, whom one of those stately old men of whom I have just spoken had brought to me in the hope that I could restore her to sight and motion. The old woman had come astride on a donkey, which her husband led by the bridle as he walked by her side. He had afterwards taken her in his arms, placed her on a bench near my door, and had installed his poor helpmate there on a heap of cushions, with all the solicitude of a mother for her child. "How much you must love your husband!" said I then to the blind woman. "I should love my sight," replied she. I looked at the husband, who smiled sadly, but without a shadow of ill will. "Poor woman!" said he, passing the back of his hand over his eyes; "her blinduess makes her very wretched. She cannot get used to it: but you can restore her to sight, can you not, Bessadée" "Alas! I had one, but he is dead long ago" "And how is it that you have not taken another wife, more robust, and in better health, who might have given you children ?" "Ah! that is easy to say, but this poor creature would have been grieved by it, and that would have prevented me from being happy with another, even with children. You know, Bessadée, one cannot have everything in this world. I have loved my wife forty years, and I cannot make another choice!" exercised over the superior classes by the deplorable constitution of the Mussulman family. The fatal results of this may be most easily judged in the middle classes of Turkish society, by their servile imitation of the example of the higher. Let us enter the harem of a respectable citizen or small country gentleman. Above all, the privileged traveller (female of course) who may wish to pay a visit to this melancholy spot, must not have any illusions, and must be prepared to surmount much repugnance. Picture to yourselves a wing of the house, separated from the building itself, in which the male servants alone dwell and where the master receives his guests. The entrance to this wing is generally a vast courtyard, where the fowls perch on all kinds of dirt and rubbish. A wooden staircase, with broken and worm-eaten steps, leads to the upper apartments, which consist of a large vestibule opening on four rooms; one of these is reserved to the lord of this abode, who dwells there with his favourite for the moment. The other chambers are occupied by the rest of what is called here, the family. Women, children, female visitors, the slaves of the master or mistresses, compose the population. The man who thus spoke was a Turk. His wife belonged to him like household goods; no one would have blamed, no law would have punished him, had he freed himself by some violent measure from so useless a burden. In such a case, the only inquiry would have been as to his motives for thus acting. Fortunately the character of the Turkish nation corrects its odious customs. There is a precious foundation of goodness, In the East there are no beds, properly so gentleness, simplicity, and a remarkable called, nor rooms specially dedicated to instinct of respect for what is great, of pity repose. Large presses contain during the for what is weak. This instinct has resisted, day heaps of mattresses, counterpanes, and and will long yet, we hope, resist the influ- pillows. At night, each of the inhabitants ence of dangerous institutions founded ex- of the harem takes from this press what she clusively on the right of strength and self-requires, makes her bed, no matter where ishness. To be able to understand what mildness and serenity there is in the Turkish nature, one should observe the peasants of Mahometan origin either in the fields, at the market, or in the coffee-house. The harvest, the price of barley, their families, are the invariable subjects of their conversation. No one speaks in a loud voice, nor pushes a joke far enough to wound or even weary his companions. No one ever mingles his talk with those oaths or coarse sayings which the lower orders in other countries delight to use. Do they owe this exquisite reserve, these noble yet simple manners, to education? No, to nature alone. Nature has been lavish to the Turkish people; its institutions tend but to destroy her gifts. As we depart from the classes where the primitive character is preserved, and enter the middle or the yet higher regions, there vice appears, vice which increases, spreads, and ends by reigning alone. We have just witnessed the good instincts of the Turkish nature as revealed in the peasant; we must now study the influence on the floor, and sleeps with her clothes on. When one room is quite full, the new arrivals establish themselves elsewhere, and if all be crowded, the last comers place themselves in the vestibule or on the stairs. Nothing can be more offensive to European eyes than the sight of these ladies rising in the morning, in the habiliments of the preceding day, all faded and tumbled by the pressure of the mattress and the irregular movements of sleep. The principal object of the head of a Turkish family being to multiply this family as much as possible, everything in domestic life is subservient to this consideration. Should a wife remain childless two or three years, she is sent way, her husband replacing her by another. Nobody cares for the regrets or jealousy of the poor forsaken one; but it is right to add, that if, instead of tears and lamentations, she takes upon herself to get rid of her rival in any way, nobody cares for the fate of the other. Í believe, therefore, that nowhere are to be found any creatures more degraded than the but once admired, I turn away and look at them no more, for I am sure to find them again, when it pleases me to look, exactly the same as I left them, without one smile more or less, or the slightest variation of expression. If a child be born or die, if her master adore or detest her, her rival be triumphant or banished, the Georgian countenance "gives no sign." I do not know if time ever brings any change to this statuelike beauty, the soulless brilliancy of which is perfectly irksome. Turkish women of the middle classes; this | teeth, round chin, oval face,-such is the degradation is stamped on their counte-Georgian. I admire the women of this race; nances. It is difficult to pronounce as to their beauty, for their cheeks, lips, eyebrows, and eyelids are disfigured by thick layers of paint, applied without taste or moderation; their shape is spoiled by the ridiculous cut of their garments, and their locks are replaced by goats' hair dyed a deep orange; the expression of their features is that of stupidity, coarse sensuality, hypocrisy, and harshness-not the slightest trace of any principle of morality or religion. Their children at once occupy and weary them; they take care of them, as of the stepping stone which serves to attain the favour of their lord, but all thoughts of maternal love and duty are strangers to them. On their side, the children have as little real affection for their mothers; the boys consider them as servants, give them orders, rebuke them if negligent, and I do not know if they always confine themselves to words. The children despise their mothers, and the habit of living all together makes them lose filial respect, and often communicates to them the deplorable passions which agitate themselves. The rivalry of power among the mothers is a source of animosity, envy, spite, pride, and anger among the children. "My mother is richer, handsomer, younger, or born at Constantinople!" This is what these children boast, when they desire to humiliate those whom they term brothers! 66 The family of the rich and noble Turk of Constantinople, who has frequented Frank society or travelled in Europe, does not present the same aspect; but, alas! save some rare exceptions, the silk and brocade cover but a hideous skeleton. The ladies of these first-rate harems do not wear a whole week or month the same crumpled and soiled costume. Every morning, on leaving their sumptuous couches, they quit the garments of the day before, and replace them by new adornments. Their robes, trousers, and scarfs are of Lyonnese fabric, and though the European manufacturers only send their worst goods to the East, still they have a very striking effect when they envelop the magnificent forms of one of the Georgians or Circassians who people the harems. One word here about these two races which represent to the inexperienced imagination the type of all female beauty. Tall, large, well made, a brilliant complexion, masses of black and shining hair, forehead high and prominent, aquiline nose, immense widely opened black eyes, vermilion lips formed like those of Grecian statues, pearly The Circassian has neither the same advantages nor their opposite defects. It is a beauty of the North, recalling that of Germany, but this resemblance goes no further than outward form. The Circassians are mostly blondes; their complexion is of a lovely freshness, their eyes blue or grey, their features, though delicate and pleasing, are irregular. The Circassian is as false and cunning as the Georgian is foolish and haughty. The one is capable of deceiving her lord, but the other would bore him to death. The great occupation of these ladies is dress. They are to be found at all hours, clad in scarlet crape or sky blue satin, their heads covered with diamonds, necklaces round their throats, drops in their ears, brooches in their corsage, bracelets on both arms and legs, and rings on their fingers. Bare feet sometimes appear beneath the red crape robe, and their hair is cut square over their foreheads, like that of men-but these details of toilet are very unimportant. The manners of the fair sex are looked on as expressive of the deepest respect, mingled with reverential fear, to the lord of the harem. Should he enter, there is instant silence. One of his wives removes his boots, another puts on his slippers, a third offers him his dressing gown, while a fourth brings his pipe, his coffee, or preserves. He alone possesses the right of speaking, and when he deigns to address one of his companions, she blushes, casts down her eyes, smiles, replies in a low voice, as though she feared making the charm dissolve, and waking from a dream too delightful to last! All this is a farce which deceives nobody, any more than we are duped by the assumed timidity of a boarding-school miss. In their hearts, these women have very little sympathy for their lord and master. These beings, so easily and sweetly agitated, whose voice is but a low murmur, address very hard words to each other in a shrill and screaming tone, and there is hardly any extremity to which they will |