in the East, are afire behind Stamboul, tinting the horizon
with infinite lights of rose and carbuncle, that make one think of the
first day of the creation; Stamboul darkens, Galata becomes golden, and
Scutari, struck by the last rays of the setting sun, with every pane of
glass giving back the glow, looks like a city on fire.

And this is the moment to contemplate Constantinople. There is one rapid
succession of the softest tints, pallid gold, rose and lilac, which
quiver and float over the sides of the hills and the water, every moment
giving and taking away the prize of beauty from each part of the city,
and revealing a thousand modest graces of the landscape that have not
dared to show themselves in the full light. Great melancholy suburbs are
lost in the shadow of the valleys; little purple cities smile upon the
heights; villages faint as if about to die; others die at once like
extinguished flames; others, that seemed already dead, revive, and glow,
and quiver yet a moment longer under the last ray of the sun. Then there
is nothing left but two resplendent points upon the Asiatic shore,--the
summit of Mount Bulgurlu, and the extremity of the cape that guards the
entrance to the Propontis; they are at first two golden crowns, then two
purple caps, then two rubies; then all Constantinople is in shadow, and
ten thousand voices from ten thousand minarets announce the close of
the day.

RESEMBLANCES

From 'Constantinople'

In the first days, fresh as I was from the perusal of Oriental
literature, I saw everywhere the famous personages of history and
legend, and the figures that recalled them resembled sometimes so
faithfully those that were fixed in my imagination, that I was
constrained to stop and look at them. How many times have I seized my
friend by the arm, and pointing to a person passing by, have exclaimed:
"It is he, _cospetto!_ do you not recognize him?" In the square of the
Sultana Valide, I frequently saw the gigantic Turk who threw down
millstones from the walls of Nicaea on the heads of the soldiers of
Baglione; I saw in front of a mosque Umm Djemil, that old fury that
sowed brambles and nettles before Mahomet's house; I met in the book
bazaar, with a volume under his arm, Djemaleddin, the learned man of
Broussa, who knew the whole of the Arab dictionary by heart; I passed
quite close to the side of Ayesha, the favorite wife of the Prophet, and
she fixed upon my face her eyes, brilliant and humid,