WRITTEN AFTER SWIMMING FROM SESTOS TO ABYDOS.

If in the month of dark December
Leander who was nightly wont

(What maid will not the tale remember)
To cross thy stream, broad Hellespont,

If when the wintry tempest roar'd
He sped to Hero nothing loath,
And thus of old thy current pour'd,
Fair Venus! how I pity both.

For me, degenerate modern wretch,
Though in the genial month of May,
My dripping limbs I faintly stretch,
And think I've done a feat to-day.

But since he crossed the rapid tide,
According to the doubtful story,

To woo, and-Lord knows what beside
And swam for love as I for glory,

"T were hard to say who fared the best;
Sad mortals thus the gods still plague you;
He lost his labour, I my jest,-

For he was drown'd, and I've the ague.

"The whole distance," says his Lordship, " from the place whence we started to our landing on the other side, including the length we were carried by the current, was computed by those on board the frigate at upwards of four English miles, though the actual breadth is barely one. The rapidity of the current is such that no boat can row directly across, and it may in some measure be estimated from the circumstance of the whole distance being accomplished by one of the parties in an hour and five, and by the other (Byron) in an hour and ten minutes. The water was extremely cold from the melting of the mountain snows. About three weeks before, in April, we had made an attempt; but having ridden all the way from the Troad the same morning, and the water being of an icy chilness, we found it necessary to postpone the completion till the frigate anchored below the castles, when we swam the

straits as just stated, entering a considerable way above the European, and landing below the Asiatic fort. Chevallier says, that a young Jew swam the same distance for his mistress; and Oliver mentions it having been done by a Neapolitan; but our consul (at the Dardanelles), Tarragona, remembered neither of these circumstances, and tried to dissuade us from the attempt. A number of the Salsette's crew were known to have accomplished a greater distance; and the only thing that surprised me was, that as doubts had been entertained of the truth of Leander's story, no traveller had ever endeavoured to ascertain its practicability."

While the Salsette lay off the Dardanelles, Lord Byron saw the body of a man who had been executed by being cast into the sea, floating on the stream, moving to and fro with the tumbling of the water, which gave to his arms the effect of scaring away several sea-fowl that were hovering to devour. This incident he has strikingly depicted in "The Bride of Abydos."

The sea-birds shriek above the prey
O'er which their hungry beaks delay,
As shaken on his restless pillow,

His head heaves with the heaving billow;
That hand whose motion is not life,
Yet feebly seems to menace strife,
Flung by the tossing tide on high,
Then levell❜d with the wave-

What recks it tho' that corse shall lie
Within a living grave.

The bird that tears that prostrate form

Hath only robb'd the meaner worm.

The only heart, the only eye,

That bled or wept to see him die,

Had seen those scatter'd limbs composed,

And mourn'd above his turban stone;

That heart hath burst-that eye was closed-
Yea-closed before his own.

Between the Dardanelles and Constantinople no other adventure was undertaken or befell the poet. On the 13th of May, the frigate came to anchor at

sunset, near the headland to the west of the Seraglio Point; and when the night closed in, the silence and the darkness were so complete " that we might have believed ourselves," says Mr. Hobhouse, "moored in the lonely cove of some desert island, and not at the foot of a city which, from its vast extent and countless population, is fondly imagined by its present masters to be worthy to be called THE REFUGE OF THE WORLD."

CHAPTER XXIII.

Constantinople-Description-The Dogs and the Dead-Landed at Tophana-The Masterless Dogs-The Slave Market-The SeraglioThe Defects in the Description.

THE spot where the frigate carne to anchor affords but an imperfect view of the Ottoman capital. A few tall white minarets, and the domes of the great mosques only are in sight, interspersed with trees and mean masses of domestic buildings. In the distance, inland on the left, the redoubted castle of the Seven Towers is seen rising above the gloomy walls; and, unlike every other European city, a profound silence prevails over all. This remarkable characteristic of Constantinople is owing to the very few wheel-carriages employed in the city. In other respects the view around is lively, and in fine weather quickened with innumerable objects in motion. In the calmest days the rippling in the flow of the Bosphorus is like the running of a river. In the fifth canto of Don Juan, Lord Byron has seized the principal features, and delineated them with sparkling effect.

The European with the Asian shore,
Sprinkled with palaces, the ocean stream

Here and there studded with a seventy-four,
Sophia's cupola with golden gleam;

The cypress groves; Olympus high and hoar;
The twelve isles, and the more than I could dream,
Far less describe, present the very view

Which charm'd the charming Mary Montague.

In the morning, when his Lordship left the ship, the wind blew strongly from the north-east, and the rushing current of the Bosphorus dashed with great violence against the rocky projections of the shore, as the captain's boat was rowed against the

stream.

The wind swept down the Euxine, and the wave
Broke foaming o'er the blue Symplegades.
"Tis a grand sight, from off the giant's grave,
To watch the progress of those rolling seas
Between the Bosphorus, as they lash and lave
Europe and Asia, you being quite at ease.

"The 'sensations produced by the state of the weather, and leaving a comfortable cabin, were," says Mr. Hobhouse, "in unison with the impressions which we felt, when, passing under the palace of the sultans, and gazing at the gloomy cypress, which rise above the walls, we saw two dogs gnawing a dead body." The description in The Siege of Corinth of the dogs devouring the dead, owes its origin to this incident of the dogs and the body under the walls of the seraglio.

And he saw the lean dogs beneath the wall,
Hold o'er the dead their carnival.

Gorging and growling o'er carcass and limb,
They were too busy to bark at him.

From a Tartar's scull they had stripp'd the flesh,

As ye peel the fig when its fruit is fresh,

And their white tusks crunched on the whiter scull,

As it slipp'd through their jaws when their edge grew dull.

As they lazily mumbled the bones of the dead,

When they scarce could rise from the spot where they fed.
So well had they broken a lingering fast,

With those who had fallen for that night's repast.

And Alp knew by the turbans that roll'd on the sand,
The foremost of these were the best of his band.
Crimson and green were the shawls of their wear,

And each scalp had a single long tuft of hair,
All the rest was shaven and bare.

The scalps were in the wild dogs' maw,
The hair was tangled round his jaw.
But close by the shore on the edge of the gulf,
There sat a vulture flapping a wolf,

Who had stolen from the bills but kept away,
Scared by the dogs from the human prey;
But he seized on his share of a steed that lay,
Pick'd by the birds on the sands of the bay.

This hideous picture is a striking instance of the uses to which imaginative power may turn the slightest hint, and of horror augmented till it reach that extreme point at which the ridiculous commences. The whole compass of English poetry affords no parallel to this passage. It even exceeds the celebrated catalogue of dreadful things on the sacramental table in Tam O'Shanter. It is true, that the revolting circumstances described by Byron are less sublime in their associations than those of Burns, being mere visible images, unconnected with ideas of guilt, and unlike

The knife a father's throat had mangled,
Which his ain son of life bereft:
The gray hairs yet stuck to the heft.

Nor is there in the vivid group of the vulture flapping the wolf, any accessory to rouse stronger emotions, than those which are associated with the sight of energy and courage, while the covert insinuation, that the bird is actuated by some instigation of retribution in pursuing the wolf for having run away with the bone, approaches the very point and line where the horrible merges in the ludicrous. The whole passage is fearfully distinct, and though in its circumstances, as the poet himself says, " sickening," is yet an amazing display of poetical power and high invention.

The frigate sent the travellers on shore at Tophana, from which the road ascends to Pera. Near this landing-place is a large fountain, and around it a

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