CHAPTEE XYL 
TURKISH BEAUTIES. 
There has been such a halo of romance thrown around the 
whole East by a certain class of writers who see every thing 
through highly-colored spectacles, with bubbles in the centre, 
that the idea of a Harem is enough to set one off in ecstasies. 
Who is there with a spark of enthusiasm that can approach 
Constantinople for the first time without a palpitating heart 
and a thrilling anticipation of something extraordinary, some¬ 
thing to lift up the soul above this earth to a realm of houris ? 
The essence of all that one has ever read on the subject comes 
bubbling up through the memory, and gives rise to the most 
visionary aspirations for the beautiful. All the fervid imagery 
of Lalla Eookh; the fascinating splendor of Anastasius ; the 
glowing eloquence of Eothen, fill the mind somehow or other 
with extraordinary anticipations ; a glimmering of something 
unearthly ; a foreshadowing of Paradise. The Harem becomes 
a chief ornament in this Paradise, and the perfumes of flow¬ 
ers, and the cooling spray of fountains, and all the witchery 
of beauty and innocence reclining on soft Persian rugs, invol¬ 
untary crowd upon the senses. Every yashmack is supposed 
to cover the features of a Gulbeyez or a Dudu ; every grated 
window to shed light upon an inner world of beauty, the 
living and breathing realization of that voluptuous picture 
in Don Juan, of the sleeping beauties of the Harem, where 
innocent maidens dream of apples, and bees, and butterflies, 
and such things. Never was an unfortunate admirer of the 
sex worked up to such a pitch of enthusiastic expectation 
as your friend of the present writing. It was a purely Pla¬ 
tonic devotion to beauty, of course. The first thought upon 
