SONG. FROM THE GAELIC. The dimpling smile and youthful grace When summer laughs in flow'ry pride, O, what is sweeter than the heath The balmy tide zephyrus sips, TURKISH FUNERALS. HE funeral solemnities of all nations are always interesting and impressive. The burial place of the Turks, in the vicinity of Constantinople, is thus described by the author of Anastasius, who, for sublimity of conception and picturesque language, can scarcely be said to be equalled by any writer of modern times. now began to discover Scutari, the principal outpost of the capital on the Asiatic shore; and in the neighbourhood of that city, harshly edging the horizon, the black streak of cypresses that mark its immense cemeteries,* the last resting place of those, dying in Constantinople, fear that their bones may some day be disturbed, if laid in the unhallowed ground of Europe. A dense and motionless cloud of stagnant vapours ever shrouds these dreary realms. From afar a chilling sensation informs the traveller that he approaches their dark and dismal precincts; and as he enters them, an icy blast, rising from their inmost bosom, rushes forth to meet his breath, suddenly strikes his chest, and seems to oppose his progress. His very horse snuffs up the deadly effluvia with signs of manifest terror, and, exhaling a cold and clammy sweat, advances reluctantly over a hollow ground, which shakes as he treads it, and loudly re-echoes his slow and fearful step. So long and so busily has time been at work to fill this chosen spot, so repeatedly has Coustantinople poured into this ultimate receptacle almost its whole contents, that the capital of the living, spite of its immense population, scarce counts a single breathing inhabitant for every ten silent inmates of this city of the dead. Already do its fields of blooming sepulchres stretch far away on every side, across the brow of the hills and the bend of the valleys; already are the avenues which cross each other at every step in this domain of death so lengthened, that the weary stranger, from whatever point he comes, still finds before him many a dreary mile of road between marshalled tombs and mournful cypresses, ere he reaches his journey's seemingly receding end; and yet, every year does this common patrimony of all the heirs to decay still As death extends its conquests among the Turks, they enlarge their cemeteries, and plant cypress-trees round their tombs, which give them the appear ance of a forest,--The sepulchres near Scutari are immense, from the predilec tion which even the Turks of Europe preserve for being buried in Asia. exhibit a rapidly increasing size, a fresh and wilder line of boundary, and a new belt of young plantations, growing up between new flower beds of graves.* As I hurried on through this awful repository, the pale far stretching monumental ranges rose in sight, and again receded rapidly from my view in such unceasing succession, that at last I fancied some spell possessed my soul, some fascination kept locked my senses; and I therefore still increased my speed, as if only on quitting these melancholy abodes, I could hope to shake off my waking delusion. Nor was it until near the verge of the funeral forest through which I had been pacing for a full hour, a brighter light again gleamed athwart the ghost-like trees, that I stopped to look round, and to take a more leisurely survey of the ground which I had traversed. 66 There, said I to myself; lie, scarce one foot beneath the surface of a swelling soil, ready to burst at every point with its festering contents, more than half the generations whom death has continued to mow down for near four centuries in the vast capital of Islamism. There Jie, side by side, on the same level, in cells the size of their bodies, and only distinguished by a marble turban somewhat longer or deeper, somewhat rounder or squarer, personages, in life, far as heaven and earth asunder, in birth, in station, in gifts of nature, and in long laboured acquirements. There lie, sunk alike in their last sleep, alike food for the worm that lives on death, the conqueror who filled the universe with his name, and the peasant scarce known in his own hamlet; Sultan Mahmoad, and Sultan Mahmoad's perhaps more deserving horse;† elders bending under the weight of years, and infants of a single hour; men with intellects of angels, and men with understandings inferior to those of brutes; the beauty of Georgia, and the black of Sinnaar; viziers, beggars, heroes, and women. There perhaps mingle their insensible dust, the corrupt judge and the innocent he condemned, the murdered man and his murder, the adulteress and her injured husband, the master and his meanest slave. There vile insects consume the hand of the artist, the brain of the philosopher, the eye which sparkled with celestial fire, and the lip from which flowed irresistible eloquence. All the soil pressed by me for the last two • They plant flowers on their tombs, which are kept open at the top for that purpose. The Horse was interred in the cemetery of Scutari, under a dome supported by eight pillars. hours was once animated like myself; all the mould which now clings to my feet, once formed limbs and features similar to my own. Like myself, all this black unseemly dust once thought, and willed, and moved! Aud I, creature of clay, like those here cast around; I, who travel through life as I do on this road, with the remains of past generations strewed along my trembling path; I, who, whether my journey last a few hours more or less, must still, like those here deposited, shortly rejoin the silent tenants of some cluster of tombs, be stretched out by the side of some already sleeping corpses, and while time continues its course, have all my hopes and fears, all my faculties and prospects laid at rest on a couch of clammy earth; shall I leave the rose to blush along my path unheeded, the purple grape to wither unculled over my head; and in the idle pursuit of some dream of distant grandeur that may delude me while I live, spurn, till death mock my speed, all the present delights which invite my embrace. Far from my thoughts be such folly! Whatever tempts let me take; whatever bears the name of enjoyment, henceforth let me, while I can, make my own. DANE TO HER BABE PERSEUS. BLEAK roar'd the blast, and horrors giant form And ope'd a wat❜ry grave; 'Yet here with nought of care oppress'd, 'Else would these hapless tears be felt, 'In tenderness and love. The father of Dana had ordered her and his grandson Perseus to be com mitted to the sea on a dreadful night of thunder and rain. 'Loud roar'd the storm with ruthless force, 'My lot is grief, the soul that's sad, To sleep in joy, thy ravish'd sense And with thee sleep the bitter storm, "O Jove! bestow one pitying ray, Nor vain that pray'r, for well I know VINES. THE cultivation of vines in England was formerly car. ried on to a great extent, and in several parts there were valuable vineyards. Few of these now remain, but instances of vines of extraordinary size and growth, are by no means rare. At Valentine House, near Ilford, there is a remarkable vine of the black Hamburgh sort, which has proved incredibly productive. "This vine," says Mr. Gilpin, in his Reflections on Forest Scenery, was planted 66 |