life-guardsman was a mere pigmy, and whose skeleton when he dies, would be an excellent companion for that of O'Brien, the celebrated Irish giant, at the College of Surgeons.

Without including the corn and cattle, which are already abundant, and might be indefinitely increased by industry, multiplied population, and a better-defined political condition, the frontier provinces abound in natural and mineral wealth, far beyond what is generally known or supposed. The salt mines of the Carpathian mountains are worked with intervals from Poland to the Danube. Those of Okna in little Wallachia, which the author visited, have long been celebrated, and produce a revenue of fifteen millions of piastres. These mines are reached by shafts, with staircases, 240 feet in depth. When at the bottom, you may walk several miles underground through streets of rock salt, whose only population consists of convicts by whom they are worked, and their escort of militia, by whom the labourers are watched. At the corners, the names of the streets are painted on wooden sign-posts; a long line of lamps gives a glittering appearance to the crystallized walls, and conveys a delusion that you are in a town by night, with rows of shop-windows on either side. In Wallachia, and more especially in the adjoining states of Servia and Bosnia, the author traversed many primæval forests of the finest timber, available for the purposes of ship-building to an incalculable extent, and unsurpassed in the world either for size, quality, or abundance. The Danube, one of the most important rivers in the world, flows through these fertile lands, offering to their produce unequalled means of transit; but Russia frowns at the mouth with undivided influence, with quarantine restrictions, and expensive custom-house impediments, which are fast tending to throw the whole trade under her immediate and indisputable management. The clearing of the bar at Sulina would be a mighty advantage to other nations. The convention between Austria and Russia has expired, and the subject should be taken into serious consideration by Great Britain in particular, to whom it is of paramount importance. Of Servia and Bosnia, much interesting information is given in these volumes, as also of the late insurrections and military movements by which they were suppressed. The wild plan of forming an Illyrian kingdom, which some agitators have conceived, comprising these provinces with many others, is not likely ever to be carried into effect; and less from mere political obstacles than from the heterogeneous elements of which they are compounded, which are little likely ever to come to an understanding or agree on a single united system of government. Again, the absence of nationality is not to be remedied.

In Turkey, many ancient prejudices and customs are giving way before the advance of knowledge, and the spread of intercourse with the people of the Western world; but they still muffle up their females as tenaciously as ever, and consider it utter profanation that they should be gazed on by the eyes of male strangers. A little episode of this nature happened accidentally to the author at a Khan in Bosnia, and with his observations thereupon we must close our extracts.

Behind

In the morning I sat at my window while our horses were being prepared. Long lines of horses and mules, laden with cotton, grain, and other commodities were passing, as there is a great deal of traffic on this road. I heard the sound of horses' feet in the court, and pitied the travellers, who must have been out in so rainy a night. My door was suddenly opened, and a young Turkish lady of great beauty made her appearance with her veil removed, and looking at her dress as she entered, which was evidently wet through. her came the khandji (inn-keeper), carrying a very pretty little boy, about two years old, richly dressed, and crying piteously-from cold in all probability. I got up immediately and motioned to the fire, while I moved towards the door. She looked up, blushed deeply when she saw a man, and retreated, covering her face with her veil; leaving me just time enough to remark that her eyes were black, and as fine as her features and complexion. The Khandji was much disconcerted by her having opened my door by mistake, and hurried her along the passage, and down a back stair to the harem, while a well-armed servant who followed them, showed his teeth, as he looked into my room with the aggravating grin of a lion rampant, because his master's wife had involuntarily shown me her face forsooth!

"What an inconvenient prejudice it must be, for a woman to think herself disgraced by being seen; and how often in the daily course of her life must incidents arise, which become, in consequence, the sources of annoyance. It is not modesty-it is not apprehensive virtue; and if it be meant as precaution, it is, at best, unreasonable; for experience has proved that it wards off no evil from veiled youth, and old age has none to fear. The latter class, moreover, is by far the most particular in this way; perhaps from a wish to enjoy the advantage of a doubt whether the face beneath the yashmak be young or old, pretty or ugly. . . . . In the lower ranks, this prejudice must be a most irksome burden; as the muffled head and enveloped figure can hardly be a comfortable condition for out-door labour. In Bosnia, however, it is modified in favour of unmarried women, and the veil and the loose green férédjé, which I often saw in the fields, are worn only by matrons. When I went out to mount my horse at the door of the Khan on the river Bosna, I saw the Turkish lady on horseback, and completely shrouded from head to foot, coming from the courtyard. When the servant mounted, the child was placed on a small pillow in front of him, and off they set at a rapid amble."

Having examined all that he desired to notice in the advanced districts, the author rapidly traversed Bulgaria and Roumelia, crossed the range of the Balkan at the Zulu pass, and taking the road through Sophia and Adrianople (at which latter ancient capital of European Turkey he paused a day to look at the bazaar of Ali Pasha and the Mosque of Sultan Selim), he reached Constantinople alone in the middle of the night, and had some difficulty in obtaining admittance at that untimely hour into the Hôtel d'Angleterre at Pera, where the remainder of his party had long expected him. He promises another narrative of a subsequent journey, which the pleasure and useful information we have derived from the first, incline us to look forward to with eager anticipation. Everything connected with Turkey and her dependencies, her present state, and probable future, are subjects of interest which recent circumstances have much enhanced, and in which, as Englishmen, we are almost as directly concerned, as if they formed integral portions of the empire of our own sovereign. Correct information is more easily obtained than it was, and there are clear heads and able pens on the spot, capable of recording facts and delivering opinions which may be safely relied on as correct, and appealed to as authority.

LORD CHESTERFIELD.

WITH A PORTRAIT.

THERE are different theories of greatness, and there are different standards of excellence. Judged by the one, it may be denied that Philip Stanhope, fourth Earl of Chesterfield, was a great man. Judged by the other, it is indisputable that he was, par excellence, the finest gentleman of his own or any other age. Men may question his principles, doubt his wisdom, deny his wit, but no one is hardy enough to say a word against his manners.

We have a theory-not, however, peculiarly our own-on this same subject of greatness. There are, doubtless, some qualities greater than others. Philosophy is greater than wit. Poetry is better than slaughter. But philosophers and wits, poets and soldiers, may all be great men after their kind. Whosoever in anything of good repute excels all his fellows, fairly entitles himself to be esteemed a great man. Now, there are few of our readers who have not been from their boyhood upwards familiar with the name of Chesterfield. Little boys addicted to such evil habits as biting their nails, scratching their heads, laughing at wrong times, and calling people uncomplimentary names, have been reminded for nearly a century of the living exhortations, and threatened with the posthumous anger of this incarnation of good breeding. And these little boys have, for the most part, grown up, knowing at least this much of the Earl, and inquiring nothing further about him. It has seemed incomprehensible to ordinary understandings that so very fine a gentleman could be anything but a fine gentleman, a courtier, a man of fashion, an idle lounger, lying late a-bed, sipping chocolate with an air, and rising to no higher effort of activity than a game at loo or a flirtation with a fine lady. But Lord Chesterfield was much more than a man of fashion and a man of wit-he was a diplomatist, a statesman, a parliamentary debater; he wrote well and he spoke well; he spoke so well, indeed, that Horace Walpole declared that the finest speech he ever heard was one of Lord Chesterfield's; and, more than all, he governed Ireland, as Lord Lieutenant, with so much conciliatory firmness, so much vigorous moderation, that Lord Mahon says of him, and says truthfully, that "he left nothing undone, nor for others to do."

Philip Dormer Stanhope was born in the year 1694. Neglected by his parents, but assiduously tended by his maternal grandmother, who performed their duties and filled their place, he grew up, with no great promise of after-celebrity, passed through his university career with credit, and was pushed into the House of Commons, by family interest, before he had attained the legitimate age. Pleasure, however, attracted him more than business; and it was not until the death of his father, in 1726, gave him a seat in