which had that tendency that he had heard respecting himself since his supposed decease, he became more attached to him than to the other passengers.

nean,

In the course of the voyage, he had frequent occasion to discover, that it was not his conduct alone that was an object of censure; for he learned from his friend the Jew, as also from the captain and an Armenian priest, the characters of his whole divan, nay of his whole court, with those likewise of the governors of the provinces which they skirted, and the islands which they passed; and the further they receded from Coustantinople, the more severe he found them in their censures When they had advanced into the Mediterrathis public spirited trio took the pains to reform his government, displace his officers, disband the spahis and janissaries, throw open the gates of the seraglio, marry his wives, and provide for his concubines: in short, they were sedulous in their endeavours to new model the whole system, and fierce in their disputes which of those constitutions that every day produced, would the most effectually eradicate the vile despotism under which, at present, Mussulmen groaned. It was at length agreed to try them one after the other; and nothing would have prevented the experiment but their arrival at Civita Vecchia.

Mahomet landed like a celestial being from an elevated station upon a new world, which now lay all before him. His ideas for a few minutes expanded, but his present wants obliged him to contract them. He first wanted a lodging; which want, however, his friend Signior Dorano supplied by inviting him to his house.

His

There was enough of singularity in the appearance, and mystery in the character of Mahomet, to have excited the attention and curiosity of even a Dutchman. The effect they had upon Signior Dorano, who possessed all that keen sensibility and inquisitive jealousy which are indigenous to the Italian composition, will easily be conceived. anxiety and ardour to become acquainted with the history of his guest, his country, circumstances, and the motives that induced him to travel, were apparent and unremitting. His questions were sometimes direct, sometimes oblique, and sometimes implex: he, in fact, was so sedulous in his endeavour to discover his real situation, which he had sagacity enough to discern was not

that in which he now appeared, that his extraordinary officiousness became in a short time so exceedingly irksome to the sultan, that it caused him to hasten the preparation of his equipage and other necessaries more European than those he possessed. He therefore, after a cursory examination of the surrounding country, proceeded to Rome; a city which he had long had a desire to

see.

Mahomet was exceedingly struck both with the modern buildings and those august vestiges of former magnificence which adorned a city once the emporium of the world. He had learned from books her ancient history; and when, from a distance, he observed her august appearance, his thoughts involuntarily turned upon Constantinople, once the metropolis of the eastern as Rome was of the western empire. He considered the different characters which each at this period displayed; the vi rious revolations in government, religion, commerce, morals, and manners, through which each, in a long succession of ages, had passed; and their striking examples led him to the contemplation of the instability of human institutions, the futility of human grandeur.

The singularity of the government, the union of monarch and high priest in the same person, he imagined would create a mutability and imbecility in either character, and, by depriving the public functions of that energy so necessary for their execution, proclaim to the world that they were neither calculated to attract respect abroad, nor enforce obedience at home.

The discordaut opinions and narrow prejudices that reigned, even amongst the heads of the church, in all matters respecting religion, he foresaw would, in time, weaken the fabric of christianity, and, in the event of an irruption, shake it to its foundation; but he foresaw this without exultation. Though strongly attarbed to the tenets of the Alcoran, he was too liberal in his sentiments to condemn doctrines which he so imperfectly understood as those of the scriptures. He had ever regarded renagadoes with a jealous and suspicious eye, and, with his vizier Achmet, was much inclined to believe that the motives of their conversion were rather sinister than sincere.

Satisfied with the view which he had taken of the pontifical state, Mahomet

continued his travels through Florence, Padua, and, in due course of time, arrived at Venice.

The very singular situation of this city, environed with water, rising, as it seemed, out of the waves of the Adriatic, attracted his attention, which was still the more excited by the manners of its inhabitants, the middle and lower orders of whom, contrary to the general custom, appeared to be devoted to dissipation and pleasure, while the nobility were supposed to be as sedulously employed in arranging and enforcing the measures of government, in the energetic refinements of domestic police, or, perhaps, in visionary speculations upon foreign politics.

Although, in this land of luxurious enjoyment, the precepts of his prophet were not entirely obliterated from the mind of the sultan, yet their influence was suspended. The promised joys of the seven paradises seemed already to be within his reach. He seemed already to have passed the bourn, and to have arrived on the banks of the crystal river: the pleasures in which he was now immersed wanted nothing of those delightful sensations which in their enthusiastic moments inflame the ardent imaginations of true believers, but duration in the objects of them, and immortality in their votaries. Wrapt in this voluptuous dream, viewing the splendid court of the sea-born Venus with all her train of river nymphs and nereides, considering the whole city as her temple, it is little to be wondered that, when he had time to bestow a thought upon Constantinople or the imperial dignity, it only occasioned a sigh of regret that he should at last be obliged to return to the one or re-assume the other.

While he was in this state of mind, the carnival, which had commenced the week after his arrival, proceeded. New amusements every day courted his attention; new beauties, almost every hour, captivated his heart. In this joyful season; in the bosom of a city, the only pursuit of whose inhabitat is was pleasure, a city over which the tepid breezes of the Adriatic, wafted by the occidental gale, seemed to shed an amorous influence, derived from the cradle of the goddess to whom it was dedicated; it is, as has been observed, little to be wondered that the latent fire which warmed and animated the bosom of Mahomet was fanned into a flame; or that, emancipated from the splen

did dullness of the seraglio and the solemn stupidity of the divan, he should, in a place where all was love and sport, take the reins from his passions, and suffer them to rove at large; that he should mingle with the gay, the thoughtless crowd, and pursue pleasure, through all her various mazes and labyrinths, to the very goal of satiety.

in the course of this his intoxicating progress, he was, one evening, return. ing from an interview with a beauty almost as luxurious, and quite as fascinating, as Lais or Thais; when, having landed from his gondola near his own apartment, he had occasion to pass several houses, from one of which issued shricks equally loud and terrific. A momentary impulse arising from curiosity, or, rather, from that humanity inherent to his bosom, determined him to enter, in the hope of rescuing or of relieving some fellow-creature in distress. He set his foot against the door, which flew open, and discovered a large hall. A lantern which was suspended in the middle just afforded him Eight enough to discern that the building was ancient, and the walls bare. The shrieks continued, and indeed, at this instant, increased. Mahomet clapped his hand upon his sword, and was upon the point of ascending the staircase, when a female figure, with her dress disordered, and her hair disshevelled, rushed from as de apartment, exclaiming, with the greatest agitation, “For heaven's sake, sig. nior, do not endeavour to see Louisa again this evening! the Marquis de Orrelan, who has just arrived, has discovered your amour."

"My amour ?”

"Yes, signior," she continued ; "he has found in Louisa's chamber the masquerade habit which you wore this even“ing in the place of St. Mark. You will guess the consequence.” "The Marquis Orellan !" returned Mahomet, with amazement.

“ Yes, signior,” replied the maid: "I do not wonder at your concer”, especially as you are within the hearing of her sufferings. He followed you and my mistress in a gondola; the devil must have given him intelligence, and have assisted him in his operations, I think. He saw you land, and enter the Cassino. The place was too public for his malignity and cruelty, or he would have rushed in and stabbed you in each other's. arms. He watched her return home: in a rage almost amounting to insanity,

he flew up stairs after her, struck, stamped upon her; and, as you may hear by her shrieks and groans, she is now suffering from the phreactic ebullitions of his jealous fury.”

It appeared, indeed, that the fair one was suffering, for, at this instant, a burst of passionate exclamation on the one part, and of terrific sorrow on the other, reached the ears of Blahomet. His prudence forsook him; his benevolent, his humane emotions, his gallantry caught the alarm, and prompted him to rescue or revenge the injured fair. He drew his sword, rushed forwards, and had just arrived at the door of the apartment whence the shrieks issued, when a still greater noise on the staircase induced him to turn. This uproar he found announced the arrival of the officers of justice and the patrole, accompanied by two gondoliers.

Seeing a man upon the stairs with his sword drawn, and, as they concluded, attempting to escape from a house, the domestic arrangement of which, they knew, merited their attention, was, in itself a circumstance of so suspicious a nature, that they immediately thought proper to take the illustrious saitan into custody. When they had wrested his sword from, and manacled him, they proceeded in their inquest, in the course of which they discovered, in the chamber which our hero was about to enter just before their arrival, a woman lying upon the floor whose dress exhibited conspicuous marks of disorder, and whose person stronger marks of violence; while a man who seemed to be advanced in years, stood over her in a menacing attitude, with a dagger in his hand. Alarmed at the unceremonious entrance of the officers and their myrmidons, the Marquis Orellau, for it was he who was thus found, turned to them saying, "Behold, signiors, this traitress, this viper whom I have nourished in my bosom; behold and admire the justice of my vengeance! She, this vile, this abandoned wretch, this Messalina, this Joan of Naples, the second, has been

nous enough to bestow upon him! But this armed hand will soon be able to reach them both, and, by an example equally prompt and terrific, teach the world what must be expected by those who betray the confidence, and inflame the jealousy of the Marquis de Orellan."

This dignified and respectable name seemed to electrify the audience: every hat bat that of Maho net was of in an instant. "Your lordship," said one of the gondoliers, "will not have far to look for the traitor; we found him lurking on the staircase, with his sword drawn, determined undoubtedly to as sassinate you."

The lady on the ground lifting up her eyes, exclaimed with great emotion, "that is not Pedro!"

"It is Pedro, the vill in, the destroyer of my happiness," exclaimed the marquis, with equal violence; take him instantly to prison! I saw him this evening, and, although then disguised, am sure by his figure it mast he he!"

The business began now to appear serions on the part of Mahomet; the sound of the word prison had roused him from the torpor in which he had been absorbed, to an active sense of his present situation: he lamented to himself the probable consequeace of this inadvertent effusion of his humanity; but as he found it easier to lament his improdence than to extricate himself froma this dilemma, he was obliged to make a virtue of necessity, and patiently submit to the power of the marquis, and the force of the officers of justice; therefore, after suffering some interroga tories, his answers to which rather tended to increase than abate the suspicion of his persecutor, he was, at a late hour, conveyed to the prison, and locked into a chamber which might, perhaps, with far greater propriety, have been termed a dungeon.

(To be continued.)

have been long her dupe, while a juvenile villain, the minion of her voluptuous passions, a profligate whom I hope soon to reduce even to a worse condition than this in which you now behold her, has been doubly revelling in the fortune which I have been weak enough to squander upon her, and the favours which she has been wicked and libidi

EXPRESSION, "To DINE WITH THE DUKE."

1

A more ancient origin than the above, I believe, may very fairly be assigned to the phrase in question, which is frequently, and with greater propriety expressed dining with Duke Humphrey," as may be seen in the writings of some of our essayists, and which will be found to have originated in a circumstance connected with that illustrious character long previous to the time stated by your intelligent correspondent.

The following passage from Stowe's Survey of London" will, I think, fully establish this point, and which, as it may not be uninteresting to some of your readers, I have given at length.

One of the continuators of Stowe, speaking of the burial place of Sir John Beauchamp in the old cathedral church of St. Paul, observes, "This deceased nobleman (by ignorant people) hath heen erroneously mistermed, and said to be Duke Humfrey, the good Duke of Glocester, who lyeth honourably buried at Saint Alban's, in Hartfordshire, twenty miles from London. In idle and frivolous opinion of whom, some men (of late times) have made a soleinn meeting at his tombe upon Saint Andrew's day in the morning (before Christ

ply profess themselves to serve Duke Humfrey in Pauls, if PUNISHMENT OF LOSING THEIR DINNERS DAILY THERE be not sufficient for them, they should be sent to Saint Alban's, to answer there for their disobedience and long absence from their so highly well deserving lord and master, because in their merry disposition they please so to call him.

After the destruction of St. Paul's by the great fire in 1666, it would appear that the phrase had become transferred to the Park, and associated chiefly with the military characters frethe observations of your ingenious corquenting that place, as mentioned in respondent; but that it was merely a revival of the old saying attached to the visitors of the imaginary Duke Humphrey, in St. Paul's, I think there can be little doubt.

The following extract from the nineteenth number of the Connoisseur will further corroborate what has been here stated as to the customary application of the phrase" Many an ensign, with scarce any income but his commission, prides himself on keeping the best company, and often throws down more than a week's pay for his reckoning, though at other times it obliges him, with several of his brethren upon half pay, to dine with Duke HUMPHREY in St. James's-park."

or dinner, as assuring themselves to be servants and to hold diversity of offices under the good Duke Humfrey.

"Likewise on May day tankard bearers, watermen, and some others of like quality beside, would use to come to the same tombe early in the morning, and (according to the other) have delivered serviceable presentation at the same monument, by strewing herbes and sprinkling faire water on it, as in the duty of servants, and according to their degrees and charges in office. But as Master Stowe hath discreetly advised, such as are so merrily disposed, or sim

Published by Asperne, at the Bible, Crown, & Constitution, Cornhill, Jan'11809.