holes made, and partially closed again in the centre, so that they were
unable to escape from the rain which deluged the whole affair. The water
fell in torrents over the gay bonnets, caps, crinolines, etc., until
they became a mass of tawdry, and the bare pates of those under them
came ludicrously into view. It required the assistance of a carpenter
and his aids to get the poor fellows free from their bondage, and enable
them to seek safety in flight. As to the man fastened against the wall,
he bore his torture, and the merriment which he occasioned among the
audience, for some time, but finally was compelled to put an end to his
part of the entertainment by a timely retreat.

Sultan Mahmoud was the first reformer of the Ottoman Empire, and his
second son, Sultan Abd-ul-Aziz, the last. The reforms of the late
Sultan, Abd-ul-Mejid, nearly ruined him, and the consequence is, that
the present sovereign has wisely concluded to fall back upon some of the
older fashions of his people. Mahmoud thought to drive away the
remembrance of the Dervish-Janissaries whose violences seldom allowed a
Sultan to die of disease, and never of old age. To effect this, he
disbanded their several corps, and created new ones, in another dress.
Perhaps this was wise at the time, but the object once reached, he
might--or his successor, at most--have restored the broken spirit of his
people, by a return to their national costume. It was only by force and
fear that he induced his new troops to adopt the dress of the deeply
detested Ghiaours, and the measure greatly alienated the respect and
affections of his subjects, especially those of the interior of the
empire. The higher classes of the capital assumed it with less reserve,
on account of the economy which it admitted, and because it was _a la
mode_, but the lower were less disposed to lay that one aside which had
been worn by their ancestors, and served to designate the true
Mussulman. The picturesque costume of the natives of Arabia, of Egypt,
Syria, and Albania, had to be thrown aside for the tight pantaloons and
coat of the Infidel, and Mahmoud went so far even as to require the
_Bombardiers_ of his army to wear a head-dress, black, and tall as a
hat, differing from it by the absence of a rim, and open on the top,
covered only with a bag of dark silk, drawn together with a cord. This,
how-ever, disappeared in the reign of his successor.

The present Sultan has adopted a middle course. With