covered by Columbus before that philosophic Genoese put foot on shipboard. His Tuscan Dentifrice; his Carthaginian Hair-dye; his Fountain of Hebe, are world-celebrated cosmetics, without which (he says) no toilet is complete. They are to be procured at his establishment, "The College of Beauty," with the usual liberal allowance to the trade, who should beware of unprincipled imitators, only too eager to adopt the discoveries of the Professor. That the Kalonaturæ, or Gent's Own Head of Hair, should have been unrewarded by a Medal, is one of those instances which cries shame on the awards of the Committee. Let us hope it was not a conspiracy on the part of rival wig-makers (enemies of Mr. Slamcoe through life) which defeated the object of his ambition. But if there be any individuals blighted like himself, whose hair turned white in a single night, as some men's has through disappointment, the Professor recommends to such his Carthaginian dye, which will prevent the world, at least, from guessing what ravages grief has caused, and manly pride would hide; though it will scarcely be credited, the Professor's own hair is indebted for its rich jelly color solely to the Carthaginian discovery. IMPORTANT FROM THE SEAT OF WAR. LETTERS FROM THE EAST BY OUR OWN BASHI-BAZOUK. 1854. I. "Camp before Redoubt Kale, 28th May, Y DEAR SIR: Though your periodical is jocular in its nature and title, and occasionally trifling in its details, I am told that a good deal of truth lurks in its satire; indeed that much more of the commodity is to be found in your columns than in the broadsides of your gigantic contemporaries, who profess to supply only authentic information. "I am not myself a man of the least humor: I do not make jokes nor value them, nor understand them for the most part: so yours may be very good, though I for my part cannot comprehend what sets your readers a-laughing. The same is the case with tunes. The other day at the review at Scutari I mistook Abdul Medjeed's March for Rule Bri tannia: some of my brother poets I am told (I am considered one of the first in the world) labor under a similar obtuseness of ear. "But this is parenthetic; let us return to the subject in hand. I select you as the organ of my communications from the seat of War; 1st, Because the Press though often misled is free in your country. And I desire the liberty of saying everything which I could not do in the Journal des Debats or the Allgemeine Zeitung: 2d, because I know you exercise a great influence in Europe; and have seen personally the three Emperors, my friend the King of Naples, and His Holiness the Pope, and Cardinal Antonelli frantic at your satire 3d, because, strange to say, you appear to have engaged no correspondent: and 4th, because I am the best correspondent in the world. "I took, but half an hour since, from the shako of a poor Russian friend, whom I have just killed in action, two or three copies of the Times newspaper, in which the editors seemed greatly to vaunt the skill of their correspondent in this quarter. Before I ever thought of putting pen to paper myself, I met this young man at Malta, and Gallipoli afterwards; gave him every information in my power, and supplied him with many of the facts, which I need not say he ludicrously distorted and exaggerated in his journal. He was put out of an English ship of war (he says, at his own desire) on board of a Greek schooner, the Hagid Alethea, off Gallipoli, and would have been murdered by the crew and the master (a pirate, and a very old friend of mine) for the sake of his portmanteaus, which appeared to be pretty well plenished, had I not happened to be drinking in the cabin with my friend the piratical skipper. At my entreaties, nay threats (for I had to produce my revolvers), the young man was saved; and I landed him at Gallipoli stairs, with his bag and baggage, without receiving from him even the present of a single cigar. Nor, as I see by his printed letters, has he made the least subsequent mention of his preserver it will be well for him not to come into the neighborhood of the 14th Bashi-Bazouks, or their Colonel. I shall not give him any information any more. What I have I shall send to you, and through you to the world; and thus my indignation at the ingratitude of a newspaper writer is possibly the cause of enlightening and instructing all Europe. "Hitherto, all Europe has been wofully misled. Any one, for instance, who will take the trouble to tot up the number of dead Russians who are slaughtered in every newspaper bulletin that we get from the seat of war in the East, will find that they drop off at the rate of two or three thousand a day, and that a quarter of a million of them by this time must have gone to visit Hades. My good friend, Mr. Punch, these murderous histories are all bosh! Newspaper correspondents, I fully agree with my noble friends Lord Smotherem and Lord Botherem, in the House of Peers, are not to be relied upon, and ought to be put down. As for the Turks, they are notorious long-bow pullers. My poor friends the Russians, with and against whom I have served a good deal in the Caucasus, are greater liars than the unbelievers. What the nation wants is Truth. Truth pure, Truth unadulterated, Truth gushing from the original tap, such as perhaps no other man in Europe but myself is in a condition to supply. "I choose to sign myself Verax, though that of course is not my family name, which is the noblest in the three kingdoms; but I have such a regard for truth in all things, that even of this little deviation from it I think fit to warn the reader. I never told a lie in my life (except, of course, a few to ladies, whom, I presume, no gentleman thinks of treating with the unadulterated article). I have lost fortunes undergone imprisonment - braved and suffered the most frightful tortures for truth's sake. Every word of my letters may be relied upon; and I should like to know of what hireling scribe and camp-follower, of what ancient or modern writer — in a word, except myself— as much can be said? Take a page of Macaulay - pooh! Ask the Quakers, or the old Tories, what they think of his accounts of the two Williams - William of Orange and William of Drap? Read Dean Milman's History of the Latin Church; learned and wise it is undoubtedly, but if it were true, would Dr. Wiseman be wearing crimson silk gloves (with a crowd of boys laughing at him in the streets), and Father Newman be cutting jokes against the Establishment? Take Sir Archibald Alison's History, and if you can read that—but it is absurd that I should put so monstrous a proposition. "I speak about these gentlemen from memory of course (mine is the finest and most accurate in the world); but a colonel of Bashi-Bazouks sitting, as I am, with my wild scoundrels round about me, warming my toes at a camp-fire, I over which my kabobjee is roasting a lamb; with the mountains of Anapa before me, the hoarse roar of the Black Sea discernible to my ear, the sun gilding the battered old minarets of Redout-Kaleh, from which we have just driven out the Russians, and where I have hanged a rascally Greek spy (after addressing him a most beautiful speech in his native language, with which and twenty-three other European dialects I am perfectly familiar); and where, in the affair of the morning, it was my painful duty to send a ball from my revolver through the eye of my poor old friend, Major Timkowski, at the head of his regiment a man with whom I have drunk many a bottle in happier times; say, were a man in my present position to pretend that he carried books about with him, and like Frederic or Napoleon had a campaign library, he would be humbugging the public. No, honest Selim Aga, cooking the lamb yonder under my nose (by the laws, it smells very savory, and a man who has not eaten for forty-nine hours, ridden two hundred and ten parasangs, had two horses and a mule shot under him, routed three regiments and fourteen squadrons of the enemy, taking nine of his guns, four of them with his own hand, shot a lamented friend through the eye, and hanged a Greek spy, has a right to feel a little hungry) - Selim, the cook, I say, might as well expect to turn out a regular dinner of three courses, soup, fish, entrees, and confectionery, from the carcass of yonder lamb, as to produce a regular, careful, philosophical, ornate history, such as some of my other works have been, and such as I should turn out if I were seated at ease in one of my splendid libraries, either in my town house or in my castles in the country. "Though we have quarrelled, I cannot but always remember that the Emperor of Russia was long my most particular friend. When I used to drive over to take tea with the family at Czwrkow Seloe (for at St. Petersburg we stood of course much more upon etiquette) he was affable, even playful in his conversation, and would often say to me, 'Mick, my boy' (I bear the name of the Archangel. I am descended from kings, and my ancestors, whose lineal heir I am, ruled magnificently over a fair green island of the west, long ere the Saxon came to enslave it), 6 Mick, my boy, we are all equals here. I am not the Emperor, but plain Nicholas Romanoff;' and he would carry familiarity so far as to insist upon my calling the Empress by her name of Feodorowna. This I refused to do; but the young |