BOSPHORUS COMPARED. 327 



direction of the sun's light, especially towards 

 its rising and setting. The Bosphorus has its 

 advantage in the cypress groves rising here and 

 there along its shores, in the stateliness of some 

 of its palaces, its picturesque minarets, and in 

 the purity and azure blue of its waters, and I 

 may add in the greater animation imparted to its 

 course, not only in the many graceful caiques 

 constantly plying in its channel, but also in the 

 innumerable sea-fowl, many of them as grace- 

 ful, there in restless movement, and from 

 being unmolested, showing a strange (to us 

 strange) fearlessness of man. Nor let me 

 forget another peculiarity and charm in this 

 month, of which Windermere is destitute, the 

 nightingales, which abound in its groves, and 

 early and late fill the air with melody. Perhaps 

 you may consider the wandering voice of the 

 cuckoo, the song of the thrush, and of the many 

 warblers which come to us so pleasantly over 

 the water from the nearest wood, a tolerable 

 substitute. Pray think so. Were we a fort- 

 night later, we might have a pleasure which I 

 never experienced on the Bosphorus, the breeze 

 scented delicately and deliciously by the lily of 

 the valley, a flower growing wild and abun- 



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