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CHARACTER OF THE TURKS.

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sensuality, and refined jealousy. They admit no stranger, nor even their dearest friend, to see the face of their wives on the other hand, the very apartments of the women are sacred from intrusion; and a Turkish wife hold property even when the husband has not that

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According to the Turkish law, the property of every one employed in a public command or office devolves to the Sultan, and on the death of the holder his children are left in beggary, to begin the world afresh. Likewise the property of any one who dies as a criminal is confiscated for the benefit of the private treasury of the Sultan. Hence the gloating eye with which the sovereign views the accumulation of wealth by his favourite officers; hence the untimely end of the great men of the empire; hence the unjust charges and fabricated crimes to which the law of confiscation in the hands of arbitrary power has always given rise.

The viziers and chief ministers of state, warned by this system, put their money in the hands of bankers, who, after the fall of the favourite, are often tortured in a horrible manner, to induce them to deliver up wealth-if it were the fallen minister's so much the better; but, at all events, wealth. Turks who have property in the provinces often conceal their riches beneath the appearance of wretchedness, sacrifice ease to safety, and, in order to preserve the possession, lose the enjoyment of fortune.

With regard to intellectual pursuits, it may truly be said that the great discoveries of modern Europe have been entirely lost upon them; nay, they even forbear to make use of the treasures of science which were in circulation before they rose to greatness. Of geography, history, &c., they have few and incorrect notions; of morals and eloquence, besides the Koran, none at all. The logic and philosophy they pretend to teach are remnants of the dark ages, theories and words that fill the ear but convey no idea to the mind, and are, in fact, nothing more than ignorance in the garb of knowledge.

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1. Describe the costume of a Turk.

2. How does he act if he is revengeful, covetous, or amorous?

3. In what does a Turk appear to take most delight?

4. What are called the wheels upon which the great machine of civilized society are moved forward?

5. According to Turkish law, what becomes of the property of a public officer at his death?

6. What may be said in regard to their intellectual pursuits?

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Of walking comes, for him who lonely loves
To seek the distant hills, and there converse
With Nature; there to harmonize his heart,
And in pathetic song to breathe around
The harmony to others."

LISTEN, then, whilst reason is uninterrupted, to the silent counsels of Nature. It is the EVENING OF SUMMER, when all her fair gifts are depicted in their last stage of beauty and luxuriance. The temperature is calm and beautiful under a glowing and varied sky; the avocations and pleasures of the day are replete with enjoyment; the flowers, diffusing unknown sweets, render the air fragrant with their odours; the mellow fruits blush in their matchless vesture towards the eastern aspect, the corn-fields are tinged with gold, the hop-gardens are abundant with bloom, the feathered minstrels resume their songs, and the gnats

"Their murmuring small trumpets sounding wide,"

when the mind, taking the reins, arrives at that sweet forgetfulness of woe, which links it to beauty and sublimity, and the body seems for awhile to partake of that spiritual nature it will assume hereafter. The bold luminary of day has now withdrawn his radiance, yet the sinking crimson of yonder western sky bespeaks him still lingering, to tell the returning glory of to-morrow's circuit.

"Let me gaze

At the great vision ere it pass; for now
The day-god hovers o'er the western hill,
And sheds his last fond ray. Farewell! farewell!
Who givest beauty to the cloud, and light—
Joy, music, to the earth! And must yon tints

And shapes divine which thou hast form'd, decay—
The mountain, and the temple, and the tower,
That float in yonder fields of air; — the isles

Of all-surpassing loveliness, and seas

Of glorious emerald, that seem to flow

Around the gold-fringed reefs and rocks, must all
Vanish with thee, at the remorseless touch

Of the swift-coming twilight!

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They will fade,

Those hues and forms enchanting. See behind
The billowy horizon once more sinks

LORD ANSON.

The traveller of six thousand years.

Depart the glories of the west.

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With him

The tints

Elysian change - the fiercely-brilliant streaks

Of crimson disappear; but o'er the hills

A flush of orange hovers, softening up

Into harmonious union with the blue

That comes a sweeping down; for twilight hastes
To dash all other colours from the sky,

But this her favourite azure."

Now all is hushed and still; not a zephyr plays upon the fading day; no twinkling brook bewails its solitary haunt, and not a breath interrupts our sweet tranquillity, or stirs the lively foliage.

But see! in silent majesty the moon breaks through the clouds which shroud the eastern hill; and the evening star, like a diamond set in nature's coronet, glistens in solitary beauty. The dews are softly rising; the distant hills put on their robes of grey; and a gentle gale now impregns the genial air with odours refreshing as they are fragrant. Passion at this silent hour and awful scene shrinks away unperceived,

"And love and joy alone
Are waking;-love and joy such as await
An angel's meditation."

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1. Repeat the introductory lines of blank verse.
2. Who has now withdrawn his radiance ?
3. To what is the evening star compared?

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On this day, in 1762, died Admiral Lord Anson, who signalized himself by his voyage round the world, and whose merits as a naval commander caused him to be raised to the peerage. We are told that his fondness for naval history and bold adventures was strikingly displayed in his youth, and that he was encouraged in both by his father. He was sent with a squadron of five ships to annoy the Spaniards in the Southern Ocean, and sailed from Portsmouth on that mission, September 18, 1740. He was forty days in crossing Cape Horn, the weather being most tempestuous; but, undismayed, he continued his course, and reached Juan Fernandez with only two ships and two smaller attendant vessels, and 335 men. From thence he set sail to attack Paita; and after he had

destroyed his ships as unserviceable, except the Centurion of 64 guns, he crossed the Pacific Ocean.

Having made some little stay in China, he returned towards the east, and took the famous Acapulco galleon, off the Philippine Islands. At Canton he supported the dignity of the British flag; and returning by the Cape of Good Hope, he passed during a fog through a French fleet, and ultimately arrived at Spithead, June 15, 1744, after a voyage of three years and nine months. His treasure was conveyed to London in thirty-two waggons, with music playing, and amidst the shouts of the rejoicing populace; and the booty was divided among those brave men who had shared his glory and his toils.

Some years after, Anson's good fortune led him among a French fleet of six men-of-war and four East India ships, which he took. It was on this occasion that the French admiral said to him, on presenting his sword and pointing to two of his ships, "Monsieur, vous avez vaincu l'Invincible, et la Gloire vous suit:". Sir, you have conquered the Invincible, and Glory follows you. His services were rewarded by George II. with a peerage, and he was placed at the head of the Admiralty, nominated vice-admiral of England on the death of Sir John Norris, and became the naval oracle of his country.

He afterwards protected with a squadron the descent made in 1758 at Cherbourg and St. Maloes, but his exertions were too great for the languid state of his health; and the last office he performed was the conveying of Charlotte, the consort of George III., to England.

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1. By what did Lord Anson signalize himself?

2. How long was Anson in crossing Cape Horn?

3. In what were his riches conveyed to London ?

4. What did the French admiral say to Anson, on presenting his sword?

5. What was the last office he performed?

LESSON CLVIII. ·

JUNE THE SEVENTH.

Bishop Warburton and Dr. Johnson.

On the 7th of June, 1779, died Dr. Warburton, the learned bishop of Gloucester. We therefore seize the opportunity of presenting for this day's lesson, some remarks on his claims to literary distinction, in contrast with those of the great lexicographer and moralist, Dr.

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BISHOP WARBURTON AND DR. JOHNSON.

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Samuel Johnson, which we abridge from an able article in Blackwood's Magazine:

The two greatest men of the last century in our national literature, the greatest in comprehensiveness of mind and variety of talent, were undoubtedly Bishop Warburton and Dr. Johnson. For a long period of time they exercised a kind of joint domination over the republic of letters-a dominion which, in the former, chiefly arose from the hardy and unshrinking defiance of public opinion he exhibited, backed by extraordinary intellectual force and vigour; and, in the latter, had its origin in the universal awe and veneration his genius and character had excited. In the one, it was a tribute which fear of an immediate consequent castigation compelled all to pay; in the other, it was an homage more voluntary, because less enforced, to powers of the highest magnitude, and virtue of the most unblemished purity.

In logical strength and acuteness-in the faculty of seeing immediately the weak side of an argument, and exposing its fallacy with clearness and force-in those powers which Dr. Johnson has called the grappling-irons of the understanding-each was superlatively pre-eminent; and it would be difficult to decide which is the superior. In the beauty of style, and the ornaments of language, Johnson was almost immeasurably superior. His writings have given an increase of correctness and purity, a transfusion of dignity and strength, to our language, which is unexampled in the annals of literature, and which corrected, in their influence on our dialect, the diffused tameness of Addison, and the colloquialism of Swift.

In that practical knowledge of and insight into human nature, which forms the chief qualification for the moralist and the writer on men and manners, Johnson was greatly superior to Warburton. The former had acquired his knowledge in the tutoring school of adversity: and the long and dreary probation he had to serve before he attained to competence and success, had given him a sound and piercing view into life and human nature; while the haughtiness of the latter formed a kind of circle about him, which prevented his mingling with the crowd, and deriving, by unreserved converse and acquaintance, a general and comprehensive knowledge of man.

The distinguishing faculty in Warburton was a fiery and ungovernable vigour of intellect, a restless and irrepressible vehemence of mind, an unquenchable and never

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