The supreme head of judicature is the mufti. His decrees the emperor himself will not question, for, indeed, they are secretly guided by his assent, and the grand vizier's. These judges are all, except the mufti, limited to set precincts, and, when convicted of corruption, they are made horrid examples of. The main points wherein Turkish justice differs from that of other nations are three. It is more severe, more speedy, and more arbitrary. They hold the foundation of all empire to consist in exact obedience, and that to depend upon exemplary severity, which is undeniable in all the world, but more notable in their state, made up of several people, different in blood, sect, and interest. The second point, wherein their justice excels, is that of quick dispatch. If the business be present matter of fact, then upon the least complaint the parties and witnesses are taken, and suddenly brought before the judge by certain Janizaries, who with great staves guard each street, as our night-watchmen with halberts at London. The cause is even in less than two hours dispatched, and execution instantly performed, unless it appear a cause so important that an appeal to the moulacadi is allowed, where also it is as speedily decided. If it be matter of title or right, the parties name their witnesses, who shall presently be forced to come in, for they have no old deeds nor any other reckonings beyond the memory of man. In such cases possession and modern right carry it, without that odious course of looking too far backward. This expedition avoids confusion, and clears the court; whereby it becomes sufficient for many causes, and so, for a great people. As for the particular person, though sometimes he seem disadvantaged by the haste, which may make judgment rash, yet that haste not being passionate, it happens not often, nor then likely is his damage greater than with us, where, after the suspense, delay, and charge of suit, the oversight of a lawyer may with error of pleading cost a good cause, so that after a man hath been miserably detained, to such disadvantage of his other affairs that he had better have lost suit at first, then doth it finally depend not so much on its own bare right as upon the advocate's sufficiency. The last notable point of their judicature is, they have little fixed law, and therewith flourishing make good that saying

of Tacitus, In pessima republica plurimæ leges. Yet they pretend to judge by the Alcoran, whereby the opinion of divine authority does countenance those arbitrary decisions which, without some authentic law to justify them, would hardly be endured. This Alcoran is manifestly no book of particular law cases, wherefore they pretend its study does not inform the judge literally, but by way of illumination, which, not being given to secular persons, does neatly put losers off from referring themselves to the text."

"One custom in their justice I have found, which confutes our vulgar maxim, that says 'no commerce can be maintained without fidelity of oath;' for all Turkey is but a miscellany of people, whose religions have little effect upon the conscience, and that drowned in faction against each other. Some of them, as the Zingara (Gipsies), do not so much as pretend to any God. In this case an oath were of too slender credit for matters of importance; for he who will commit testimony to oath, must be sure to uphold in the people an awful and tender sense of divine power, or else, in trusting oaths, he exalts knavery in the oppression of truth. Wherefore, they put not the witnesses to oath, but examine them apart, wherein some wise Daniels may have such art of questions so unexpected, and of such secret consequence, as no premeditated agreement can prevent. A false witness endures what the accused should have done had he been guilty. The word of a known Turk upon the faith of a Mussulman, bears down all other testimony unless relieved by strong circumstances. Three women make but one witness.”

One of the very latest Turkish reforms consists in the issue of a firman, by which, other things being equal, Christian is put upon a level with Turkish testimony. Upon what ground at present female testimony stands, we are not informed, though, among the many other changes at Constantinople, the doctrine of women's rights is evidently making a certain progress.

Respecting the tenure and descent of property, our author makes the following statements:-"When any man dies, the land in most parts of Turkey is in the emperor's gift, who also hath the tenth of his movables. The rest first pays the widows their jointure agreed and enrolled, then what remains is

equally divided among his children. The son of any great commander neither inherits his father's dignities nor is admitted to new. Thus are both riches and honor hindered from continuing in a family, whereby none hath any credit with the people but as instruments to the Grand-Seignior, who, being sole giver of all, every man fits himself to his employments, without possibility of any greatness unserviceable, independent, or dangerous to the crown." But whatever might be the political results of this democratical system, in enhancing the authority of the sultans, preventing the growth of a landed aristocracy, and in giving permanency and stability to the Turkish empire, in its economical effects it has proved highly ruinous. No man will spend much in the improvement of a property in which he has only a life estate; and the stationary and in many parts declining condition of Turkey, made more striking by the rapid development, during the last two centuries, of the industry of the North and West of Europe, may be chiefly ascribed to this want of any fixed tenure of landed property. It is from a change in this respect that the regeneration of the Turkish empire is principally to be expected; and without referring to this necessary consequence of a system, which, like most other of the Turkish institutions, he seems a little too much disposed to admire, our author incidentally observes some facts which go to illustrate it. "The Turkish houses," he tells us, "are generally made of brick dried in the sun, poor and low, that they may not be worth taking from the son when the father dies." And he noted while at Cairo, that, as the older and more substantial buildings fell to decay, the new began to be "after the Turkish fashion, poor, low, and made of mud and timber."

Yet while the private dwellings were thus mean, Turkey was well provided with magnificent bridges, highways, caravansaries, mosques, and public bathing houses, in which for less than two pence every person might enjoy a luxurious bath. These public buildings were erected not by the government, but for the most part by private individuals. One great motive to their erection was furnished by the Mahometan religionfor though the Koran guaranteed all believers against the pains of hell, which were exclusively reserved for infidels,

Mussulmans were not entirely released from the salutary dread of a future retribution. They were exposed to a purgatory to be enacted in the grave, the pain to be inflicted by a bad angel, whose violence, however, was supposed to be counteracted by a good one in proportion to the good deeds performed by the party while alive; and among these good deeds, Mahomet had given a high place to acts of charity and benevolence, by which, not particular individuals alone, but the public at large, were benefited. To this religious motive another of a more worldly character was added. Provincial governors, whose rapacity had made them rich and noted, would often expend a portion of their ill-acquired wealth upon those works of public benefit, not only hoping thus to acquire a character for piety such as might baffle accusers, but by this disgorgement to appear to have made themselves too poor to promise much to the sultan in the way of con fiscation.

The low price of provisions, though much vaunted by our author, was still another proof of the low ebb at which the industry of the country stood. In most of the towns, bread enough to serve two or three men for a meal would be bought for a halfpenny. Fat mutton stewed with rice, and served up with a dressing of sour milk, was the favorite dish of the Turks, and one which the abundance of mutton enabled them to indulge in very freely. Large tracts of territory were occupied by shepherds, with flocks of two or three thousand sheep, feeding from city to city. Wine also was much cheaper than anywhere in Christendom, yet, as a prohibited article, not everywhere to be had. "For though," says our author, "in that point Mahomet's wise order suffers violence, yet with the better part it prevails, and makes some drink wine with scruple, others with danger. The baser sort, when taken drunk, are often bastinadoed on the bare feet; and I have seen some, after a fit of drunkenness, lie a whole night crying and praying to Mahomet for intercession, so that I could not sleep near them." Among other drinks employed as a substitute for wine, the following description is given of a beverage unknown in England when this book was published, and for many years after, but to us sufficiently familiar. "They have another drink, not good at meat, called

cauphe, made of a berry as big as a small bean, dried in a furnace and beat to powder, of a soot color, in taste a little bitterish, that they seethe and drink as hot as may be endured. It is good all hours of the day, but especially morning and evening, when to that purpose they entertain themselves two or three hours in cauphe-houses, which in all Turkey abound more than inns and ale-houses with us. It is thought to be the old black broth used so much by the Lacedemonians, and dryeth ill humors in the stomach, comforteth the brain, never causes drunkenness or any other surfeit, and is a harmless entertainment of good fellowship; for there, upon scaffolds half a yard high, and covered with mats, they sit cross-legged after the Turkish manner, many times two or three hundred together, talking, and likely with some poor music passing up and down." But of their music our traveler does not appear to think much, as he insists that he heard but one tune all the time he was in Turkey.

We have room for only one more extract, curious in itself, and showing in one respect, at least, a great improvement in the manners of the Turks of our day over those of two hundred years ago.

"The only beastly piece of injustice I found among the Turks was, their confidence to catch or buy up for slaves any Christians they find in the country; nor can he escape unless he be a settled known merchant, or go with some protector. I met with many who, in such voyages as mine, had fallen short, and prophesied the like to me. I have divers times been put to defend myself with my knife, from being shoved into houses by those who would have kept me slave; and scarce any day passed but some or other cheapened me with the Janizary, who, if he had sold me, I had no remedy beside what disdain of life might have presented. This I held the worst part of my danger, and against which there is no preparation of assurance, but in a final resolution." It was ransom, however, quite as much as service, that was looked to in these seizures; and to diminish as much as possible the temptation in his case, our traveler gave out when questioned, as he often was, as to his condition and the object of his travels, that, though born rich, he had fallen to poverty, that his friends were all dead, and that, having no ability for gain, he had wa

gered the small remnant of his fortune upon a visit to Constantinople and Grand Cairo, and a safe return. Nor was he content with thus appealing to the pride and sympathies of the Turks, while at the same time he quieted their avarice by exhibiting himself as a person for whom no ransom was to be expected. He took the further precaution,

by giving wine to some and money to others, to secure at all times some friend in the caravan who understood the language and kept him informed of what was going on; and wherever he stopped he was careful to gain the acquaintance of some renegado (Christian, that is, who had turned Turk), and so to secure his friendship that in case of danger his assistance might be relied upon. This securing himself against being seized for a slave, he found the most expensive and disquieting part of his enterprise. Apart from this, the Turkish disposition proved in general "loving and honest." If a Turk made a promise with his hand on his breast, beard, or head, and especially if he broke bread with you, his word might be implicitly relied upon. They exhibited, indeed, a haughty insolence, the natural result of the position which they occupied, and of the greatness of their empire. Between Christendom and Persia they had all the world against them; but they still looked either way with proud defiance, intent not merely on defense, but conquest; and this national characteristic was abundantly displayed in the bearing and conduct of individuals. Yet, by submissiveness and flattery they might easily be managed and kept in good humor; and our traveler seems greatly to pride himself on his adroitness in this particular, by means of which, after a little experience, he never doubted of success, except when in company with drunkards, of whom he appears to have met with many, or volunteer soldiers going to merit Paradise by killing Christians, from whom there was no escape except by fleeing their company.

If Christian strangers in Turkey could guard themselves against violence and insults only by the most studied humility, and from being seized and held as slaves only by perpetual vigilance, no great degree of tenderness was to be expected from the Turks towards their own Christian subjects. It was their policy, in those countries of which they obtained complete possession, to destroy all the native nobility, and having dis

tributed the lands to temporary Turkish proprietors as Timarres or military fiefs, to reduce the mass of the native population to the condition of hewers of wood and drawers of water. But it was not Christians only who were the victims of this harsh policy, for it was carried out with just as much severity against the Arab-Mahometan population of Egypt, as against the Christians of Bosnia, Hungary, and Macedonia.

The Christians themselves, divided and distracted by theological quarrelsthose of the Latin, Greek, and Armenian Churches, being irreconcilable enemiescontributed, by their jealousy and hatred of each other, to maintain the authority of the Turks. The Austrians and Poles,

being Roman Catholics, had nothing to expect, in their wars with Turkey, from the Greek Christians. In this respect, as in many others, the position of Turkey has undergone a great change. The faith of the Greek Church, professed by Russia, gives her an influence with the mass of the Christian population of Turkey, such as no other nation ever had, thus making the maintenance of the Ottoman ascendancy a very dubious thing, unless sustained by the Western Christians out of enmity to Russians.

Our author adds some very curious and interesting details concerning the Jews, in whose hands the trade of Turkey principally was; but for these we have no room.