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moustachio; and I have myself seen a severe or a Sheffield grinder, and that therefore, she attack of mumps result from the removal of the had no need of such protection as the beard whiskers. Mr. Chadwick also states that the affords. We cannot admit this defence:sappers and miners of the French army, who the dust-argument we have already disposed are remarkable for the size and beauty of their of, and we may add, that the women of uncibeards, enjoy a special immunity against bron-vilized races endure all the vicissitudes of chial affections; and in further illustration of the same principle, he has known persons susweather and seasons equally with men; so ceptible of taking colds and sore throats rescued that either the theory of the lung-protective from that inconvenience by permitting the function of the beard, as a final cause of its growth of hair beneath their chins. The cele- existence, must, we fear, be given up, or we brated Egyptian traveller, Mr. St. John, inform- must accuse Nature of neglectful cruelty to ed me, that Walter Savage Landor was a great "the better half" of the human race. The sufferer from sore throat many years of his life; latter alternative we are not disposed to adopt, and that he lost the morbid disposition by fol- the more especially as we decidedly prefer lowing the advice of the surgeon of the Grand woman's lip and chin in their naked beauty; Duke of Tuscany to let his beard grow and as yet we have met with no feminine encertain corrective, as he was assured by that medical authority. There are strong reasons Vy of the masculine protection. for the opinion advanced by Mr. Chadwick, and In the absence of any theory, in all respects others, that the army and navy should wear satisfactory, we would suggest whether Namoustachios and beards. The arguments against ture's chief motive for investing man with the the moustachio and beard, at least in this coun- beard may not consist in her love of exhausttry, are founded on the possible neglect of clean- less variety. Who will venture to affirm that liness. This argument could not apply to the she is animated only by a utilitarian spirit in army and navy, where attention is paid to such creating her infinite diversity of forms in the points; but it might and would among our ill-fed animal and vegetable kingdom? She revels and worse lodged working classes. In warmer in countless modifications of plans for the climates another difficulty arises, as happened to a friend of my own who took pride in a majestic achievement of similar ends. Regarding only beard, and almost wept over the necessity for its the forms of Nature, boundless caprice would destruction, when, one morning, after enjoying seem her chief characteristic. Studied, howthe hospitality of an Arab tent, he beheld his ever, more intimately, she appears as an alglorious beard teeming with animated forms."* mighty artist, developing and individualizing her vast resources into every conceivable graWe fully believe the beard to be the best dation of grandeur and beauty. Out of this of respirators: we know that since English-spirit arises, we believe, the distinctive aspects men have dispensed with it, a silver gauze of man and woman. His potential beauty is substitute has been often found necessary, not less than hers, but of a different, more even at the cost of disfigurement and incon- complex,* and severer order. When man's venience to the wearer. But if the tender lungs and sore throats of men require the The opinion that the ideal beauty of man is of beard and moustache to warm and modify the the highest order, can scarcely be expressed withair as it passes through them before each in-out calling forth, even from ourselves, an instinc halation, what are we to say of nature's care- tive protest, and is infidel to the universal faith in lessness regarding her fairer and tenderer off-heretical contrast to the chivalrous lines— the supreme beauty of woman; nevertheless, in spring-woman? Surely her respiratory organism needs even more shielding than man's. It is true, that women are usually neither stone-masons nor workers in iron or steel, but they are no less wont to "kick up a dust." fore it that of Aristotle: "In regard to forms and stands the grave authority of Winckelmann, and beDo not our housemaids make it fly from the development, there are not so many gradations of carpets, in clouds, all over the rooms, every difference in the figures of beautiful females, beday, in every house wherein they hold office? cause that development is varied only according to And do they not inhale the said dust with bu- their age.... For the same reason that I find less to notice in the beauty of the female sex, the study siness-like regularity? And yet, unhappily of the artist in this department is much more limitor happily, as taste may affirm, woman is left ed and easy; even nature appears to act with more utterly without protection! It is urged in de-facility in the formation of the female than of the fence of Nature's arbitrariness, that woman's life is a domestic one, that her duties are at home; that, unlike man, she is not exposed to the inclemency of the seasons, that she is not called upon to become either a stone-mason

"Her 'prentice han' she tried on man,
And then she made the lasses O,"

male sex, since there are fewer male than felosopher wrong in his statistics?-Ed.] male children born." [Was not the ancient phi"Hence Aristotle says, that the operations of nature tend to perfection, even in the formation of human beings; but if a male cannot be produced, owing to the resistance of matter, then a female is the result!"-Hist. of Ancient Art among the Greeks. "A popular Treatise on the Skin and Hair." Translated from the German of John WinckelBy Erasmus Wilson, F. R. S.

mann, by C. H. Lodge. London; John Chapman

physical system is perfectly developed, his ca- I will never be degraded; and we would advise pacious chest and stalwart frame, overlaid with all beard-loving aspirants to be well assured of muscles in high relief, seem to us to require their worthiness-physically and mentallythe beard for the completion of features fitted to wear it, before they venture to show themto harmonize with their vigorous outline. selves in a decoration so significant of honor. But it will be observed that the very reason He who adopts it is bound to respect its venewhich would induce us to sanction the wear-rable traditions, and to conduct himself with ing of the beard would also, in a vast number an extra degree of carefulness and propriety. of cases, forbid its assumption. As certain For with beards as with other institutions-at dresses do not become diminutive women, and bottom-it is the MAN that makes them remust, in order to display their wonted effect, spectable. To those who do venture to wear be worn by those of noble stature, so the it, we would add: Let us have less hypocrisy ! beard -identified as it is with sternness, dig-Let us not hear that the healthy Jones wears nity, and strength-is only the becoming a beard "because he suffers so from tic," etc. complement of true manliness. If we are not But let him who assumes it, plant himself on mistaken, therefore, the cultivation of the what he conceives the sense and right of the beard is a perilous experiment for all degene- matter; his moral courage will then sustain rate sons of Adam, and may produce in the him until his friends, who may now amuse wearers the most ludicrous incongruity. We themselves at his expense, shall esteem him trust that the noble associations with the beard for his brave fidelity to his convictions

From Fraser's Magazine.

PROPHECY OF THE RUSSIANS AT CON-
STANTINOPLE.

A CORRESPONDENT of the Morning Chronicle a short time ago called attention to the celebrated prophecy that the Russians should take Constantinople, which has been so formidably recorded by Gibbon, and lately paraded with equal pomp by the author of The Turks. The writer intimated his opinion that this alleged prophecy was a hoax; and this is interesting if true, not only as relieving us from the apprehension that Providence is on the side of the Czar, but as showing that Gibbon was for once in his life guilty of credulity.

Here are Gibbon's words (Decline and Fall, chap. 55)

to descend from the Polar circle, left a deep imThe memory of these Arctic fleets that seemed pression of terror on the imperial city. By the vulgar of every rank it was asserted and believed, that an equestrian statue in the square of Taurus was secretly inscribed with a prophecy, how the Russians in the last days should become masters of Constantinople. In our own time, a Russian armament, instead of sailing from the Borysthenes, has circumnavigated the continent of Europe; and the Turkish capital has been threatened by a squadron of strong and lofty ships of war, each of which, with its naval science and thundering artillery, could have scattered or sunk a hundred canoes such as those of their ancestors. Perhaps. the present generation may yet behold the accomplishment of the prediction, of a rare prediction, of which the style is unambiguous and the date unquestionable.

That is to say, it is more explicit and more genuine than the prophecies of the Bible. We confess that, on consulting the authorities, we are of a different opinion.

Gibbon refers, in his note on the above passage, to Nicetas Choniates (p. 413, 414), Codiaus (De Originibus, C. P. p. 24), and the anony

mous writer, De Antiquitat. C. P. (Banduri Imp. Orient. tom. i. p. 17, 18), who lived about the year 1100.

Nicetas Choniates has nothing about this prophecy, though he bears on the question, as we shall see. Codinus takes the passage quoted by Gibbon, with its context, bodily from the anonymous writer in Banduri, who thus becomes the only authority. This writer, as appears from his dedication, was a monk who lived in the reign of Alexius Comnenus; that is, as Gibbon says, about 1100; and about half a century after the last of those formidable attacks of the Russians which had caused the panic alluded to by the historian. Four times (865-1043) their flotillas, sailing from the Dnieper, had menaced Constantinople; and once they had occupied the harbor. They had been nearer, in fact, to the capture of than they have been at any subsequent period the city, as the author of The Turks remarks, of their history.

The words of the monk (as well as we can translate them) are:

middle of the area (the forum Tauri) is an equesAbove the four handsome square pillars in the trian statue which some call Joshua the son of Nun, and others Bellerophon, and which was brought from Antioch. The square marble pedestal of this statue has on it inscriptions relating to the last days of the city when it shall be taken by the Russians (έχει εγγεγραμμένας ἱστορίας τῶν ἐσχά των τῇ πόλει, τῶν Ρωσῶν μελλόντων παρθεῖν τὴν aur Tó) and at the feet of the statue is a diminutive human figure of brass, in chains, and on its knees. The near foot of the colossal horse has also a prophetic inscription on it. In like manner the great hollow pillar and the Xerolophus have inscriptions on them relating to the last days of the city.

The passage which we, following the Corpus Hist. Byzantin, have translated, "and at the feet of the statue," etc., is rendered by Banduri, "the

impediment to which (the taking of the city) is a diminutive human figure," etc.; as though the figure were a charm or palladium. And this view derives some support from the passage in Nicetas Choniates, relating to the statue, to which we shall presently refer.

The statue was taken for that of Joshua the son of Nun, because the figure had its arm stretched out as though to stop the course of the sun and moon.

was read, or supposed to be read, in that inscription. Gibbon's words, "an equestrian statuewas secretly inscribed with a prophecy," seem totally unauthorized. If the inscription was coeval with the statue-as there is nothing to show that it was not-the statue having been brought from Antioch, the whole story is absurd.

And now hear the author of The Turks:

and

And last of all, as if it were not enough to be There is nothing to indicate that the name of unable to procure the countenance of any Christian the Russians appeared, or was supposed to ap- power, except on specific conditions prejudicial to pear, in the mysterious inscription. The inscrip- their (the Turks) existence; still further, as the altion was supposed to relate to the fated destroy-ternative of their humbling themselves before the ers of the city, and the monk, writing when the haughty nations of the West, whom they abhor, memory of the Russian attack was fresh, identi- they have to encounter the direct cupidity, hatred, fies these destroyers with the Russians. overpowering pressure of the multitudinous The North, with its fanaticism almost equal, and its words will bear no more than this. numbers superior, to their own; a peril more awful Moreover, it is clear that the prophecy was in imagination, from the circumstance that its deintended for the capture of Constantinople from scent has been for so many centuries foretold and the Greeks, and of the fall of the Byzantine Em- commenced, and of late years so widely acquiesced vire. And, therefore, if the Russians were men- in as inevitable. Seven centuries and a half have tioned, the whole of the prediction came to the passed, since, at the very beginning of the Cruground when Constantinople was taken and the sades, a Greek writer, still extant, turns from the Byzantine Empire overthrown by the Turks. then menacing inroads of the Turks in the East, Nicetas Choniates, Gibbon's other alleged au- in prospect, to record a prophecy, old in his time, and the long centuries of their triumph which lay thority, is speaking of the sack of Constantino- relating to the North, to the effect that, in the last ple by the Latins, of which he was an eye-wit- days, the Russians should be masters of Constantiness. He says, if we understand his dreadfully nople. When it was uttered no one knows, but he obscure language rightly, that the Latins took tells us it was written on an equestrian statue, in pains to destroy the charmed defences of the his day one of the special monuments of the Impecity, and especially all those which they under-rial City, which had one time been brought thither stood to be directed against their own race; and from Antioch. That statue, whether of Christian that, among other things, they forced up the or Pagan origin, it is not known, has a name in near forehoof of the brazen horse, in this eques-ed by the Latins, in the taking of Constantinople; history, for it was one of the works of art destroytrian statue, and found under it a human figure, more like a Bulgarian in appearance, than like a representation of a Latin, as had been long and universally reputed." This image they melted down, "lest they should lose the city which they had won.

66

It seems, then, that they expected to find a representation of a Latin, chained and kneeling, if we compare the monk's description, but it proved more like a Bulgarian; the Bulgarians, again, being old enemies of the empire, who perhaps, in their day, had been regarded as its destined destroyers. At all events here is nothing about the Russians, but, on the contrary, a belief, said by Nicetas to be old and universal in his time, that the mysterious little figure represented a Latin, and, as the context shows, that it was intended to avert a Latin invasion, its chains and kneeling position perhaps symbolizing the defeat of the invader.

There are many points in the passages quoted by Gibbon-such as the exact nature and position of the mysterious little figure itself, which we must be content to leave to the judgment of those who are better skilled than we are ourselves in Byzantine phraseology and antiquities. Thus much, however, appears clear to us, that the name of the Russians was mentioned as the destined captors of Constantinople from the Greeks, and when the terror of their invasion was fresh; that as that terror ceased, their name was forgotten; that there was no prophecy distinct from the inscription on the statue; and that there is no proof that the name of the Russians

and the prediction engraven on it bears, at least, a remarkable evidence of the congruity in itself, if I may use the word, of that descent of the North upon Constantinople, which, though not as yet accomplished, generation after generation grows more probable.

This is mere romancing. The Greek writer does not "turn from the menacing inroads of the Turks:" he is giving a catalogue of works of art in Constantinople. There is nothing about "a prophecy old in his time." All the rest is mere fanfaronade, which may be estimated by the light of the facts which we have given.

From Fraser's Magazine.

FLITTING AT KOSTENDJE. MANY a long day has sped by since the eyes of the world were last cast on Kostendje, though it must have been a busy place enough in the olden time. Trajan's Wall runs from the Danube to the sea half a mile south of it; the wall whereby the warlike emperor sought to curb the wild warriors of the North. The great white eagles perch fearlessly now on the two mounds and in the grassy intervening hollow which comprise all that the lapse of eighteen centuries has spared. What with legionaries and the fierce Masians bowed to the yoke of the iron empire, there could have been no lack of bustle in Constantiana; the Roman, too, when he looked across the bay

and saw the green slopes whereon stood Tomi, | for burial-ground, by a path bordered by the might remember, what very few in Bulgaria re- graves of the faithful, each pointing to the Promember now, that before him was the spot where phet's tomb at Mecca, we came upon a scene of his poet Ovidius Naso wore his heart out with vain complaints. In mournful numbers, through the nine books of the Pontine Epistles, does he bemoan the hard fate which had torn him from the delights of Rome,-the lounges in the Campus Martius, the " noctes canaque Divum" with men such as Horace and Mæcenas,-and cast his lot amongst savage hordes from whose debasing contact he fears that not even after death will his shade be able to separate itself. The scornful strength of the great roul of Juvenal might have borne him up in such an exile, the gentle spirit of the Bard of Mantua might have accom-menced to make the acquaintance of a rosy-faced modated itself to an inevitable necessity, but we may search in vain for the high thoughts which enabled even a heathen man not to sink beneath calamity in the pages of the gifted disciple of the garden.

bustle and confusion which amply accounted for the former silence. Around a long string of Bulgarian waggons crammed with bedding, provisions, and all the simple household stuff of an Eastern family, were sixty or seventy persons of all ages, from the infant in arms to the worn-out crone; of those who could work, some loaded, some endeavored with goads to force on the unwilling oxen, some looked calmly on with the phlegm of their race. It was evidently an Exodus, the choosing of the lesser rather than the greater evil. We had scarcely, however, comGreek woman, who was informing us of the cause of all this, than we heard the rush and tramp of horsemen, and there stood around us a dozen of such wild, picturesque-looking horsemen as we see occasionally at Astley's. ImaSince the day when the burning light of Ovid gine a swarthy bravo mounted on a small but was quenched, and the one a century later when powerful horse, the turban of many colors wound the echo of Pliny's panegyric over Trajan died gracefully round the head, the red sash full of away, history has passed almost silently over daggers, knives and pistols, and a flint gun slung this region, save when the glimmering torch of over the shoulder, a scimetar by his side, and an a Byzantine historian throws its flickering light amber-mouthed chibouk thrust into the brown on some story of border warfare. But the occu- cloth legging, and you will have a tolerably pation of the Dobrudska by the Russian army fuithful picture of His Highness's Irregulars. bids fair amply to indemnify it for the world's After wheeling half round the place where we long neglect, and the importance of Kostendje stood, they seemed satisfied with our appearas its chief seaport must be apparent to both the ance, for they dismounted, and proudly displaybelligerent parties; to the one as a strong posi-ed their gold inlaid arms, telling us at the same tion where they may at any time disembark time that the "Muscove" was only six hours (a troops close to the seat of warfare; to the other, Turk always computes distance by time) from as a port into which (unless closely blockaded) supplies might be thrown from Odessa, and which, at the time I am writing of, contained in its storehouses the harvests of the rich corn-fields of Bulgaria. Situated as it is on the extreme south of the low tract of country enclosed on three sides by the Danube and the Euxine, the news of the Russian army having crossed the river, and the moral certainty of the speedy appearance of the Cossack horsemen, was alarming enough even to rouse the Turk to the determination of evacuating the place rather than making a trial of Muscovite mercy, and it was to this we owed it that our three steamers, which had been detached from the fleet at Kavarna, lighted on a scene of activity by no means usual in Kostendje. The landing-place is encumbered with the remains of an ancient pier, and from it we pro- As we went on, and out of the town, the same ceeded leisurely up a gentle eminence to the scenes were continually repeated; the men of town, which stands on a peninsula somewhat re- Kostendje had lit their hearths for the last time. sembling that of Sinope, and might be made a When we stood outside the town, on one of the place of great strength; but in spite of the figure barrows so numerous on this coast, there stretchit has lately played in our newspapers, it is (with ed before us, for nearly a mile and a half, the the exception of some granaries close to the melancholy procession, which, allowing for the landing place) the same wretched assemblage of difference of race and customs, was not unlike tumbledown, weatherbeaten wooden nests perch- the flight described in words which are now ed on a lower story of mud walls as usually con-household words:stitutes a Turkish town. The chief thing that attracted our attention was the absence of all living beings; even the Pariah dogs were absent; only a sainted stork or two looked down misanthropically from the house-tops. When, however, we had reached the level space, and passed through the square formed by the uncared

thence. The pilgrims meanwhile regarded them with anything but pleased countenances, and told us, after they had galloped off as suddenly as they appeared, that they were Bosnians or Arnaouts, (the latter appears to be a generic designation for a robber), and were far more dreaded by the villagers than the Russians themselves. "Murderers and Ravishers, the curse of Allah be on them," said our fair friend, as she spat on the ground. Such men are ever called into action by war, and these Eastern moss-troopers, whose hand was against every man's, reminded me of the humbling truth that the same crimes never leave the earth, they only stalk from one land to another, ready, when the times shall call them forth, to appear again in all their terrible strength.

Aged folks on crutches,

And women great with child;
And mothers sobbing over babes
That clung to them and smiled.
And sick men borne in litters,
High on the necks of slaves;

And troops of sunburnt husbandmen,

With reaping-hooks and staves.

landed them at Kavarra comparatively happy. Two, however, of our passengers we shall not so easily dispose of; these are two little boys, one There they were, a sight worth even a Czar's about three years old, the other but a few looking on; the rude wooden sides of the low months; the one was severely wounded in the waggons crowded with household goods, with arm, and the infant had been slightly wounded the women and children placed on the top, though in its mother's arms, but she, with her husband here and there ran some urchin with his baby- and brother, had been murdered by the irregusister tied on his back, or some stout Bulgarian lars, and the children were found lying half dead lass boldly led on the reluctant oxen yoked to in a small boat. The elder one was long very the caravan, to the back of which were tied the ill, but with the exception of not having yet retwo oxen off duty, who would appear, however, covered the use of his arm, is now perfectly well, by their complaints, to be but little better off and (dressed impromptu as a little Turk) is quite than their brethren in front. Yet, amid all this at home. It is amusing to see how readily the desolation, there was visible the spirit of that fatal- roughest sailor turns himself into a nurse for the ism, which, debasing as it is in prosperity, raises baby, gorgeously arrayed in a nondescript frock, the Turkish character, in all time of their tribu- a source of pride to the artist, but to be found in lation, if not to the height of the Christian, to no book of fashions, and a peculiarly hideous the level of the Stoic. In all that company there cap, with "Firebrand" in large letters on the was no sound of weeping or lamentation; sad- front thereof. They have surpassed in popularness, indeed, in the demeanor of the women, but ity all the established pets; the cats, the dog, the they lifted up no voice of wailing at leaving thus, tortoises, even Jack the ram, who is reported to perhaps for ever, the homes of their childhood-be a connoisseur in tobacco, and who was decomore touching thus in their silence than any dis-rated with a brass collar subscribed for by his play of grief could have made them. "Whither admiring friends, all have to mourn over the are you journeying, O Effendi?" said I to a large fickleness of popular favor. turbaned Moslem. "Eeffah Allah," "God will The greater part of the Dobrudska, far from show." was the laconic answer. We only saw one being the barren marsh it has been described as, instance of a display of feeling, and that was a very is excellent corn and pasture land, chiefly cultipainful one running beside the waggons was a vated by Christians, who are allowed in this part woman bent double by age; she was evidently of the country to occupy any unused land on insane, for she filled the air with her wild shrieks payment of the customary tithe of the produce. and gesticulations, as she hurried on, bearing in But this year the land may enjoy her rest; this one hand an egg, and in the other a few sticks, year there will be little reaping in Bulgaria; the which she evidently fancied indispensable for very seed corn was often taken from the Rayahs the journey, for no efforts of a man who endea- for the support of the Turkish troops without their vored to take them from her, and place her on receiving a piastre in return. Much of it was laid one of the waggons, could induce her to part up in the granaries of Kostendje, and while we with them; not even a tolerably rough shaking lay there, the Cossacks made many attempts to from one of the drivers; for still, as far as our bear it away to the relief of their hungry comrades eyes could follow her, she ran on, sustained by until at length it was destroyed in order to prethe strength of insanity. Her pilgrimage could vent its ultimately falling into the hands of the not have been a long one; she must have laid enemy. The range of our 68-pounders, with down to take her rest till the Resurrection morn- which we occasionally disturbed their marauding ing. On went the motley company, winding parties, evidently astounded them, their previous southward, through the mounds where sleep the experience not having made them acquainted mighty men, the giants of yore; the creaking of with guns from whose effects a distance of two their waggons grows faint in our ears, and still, miles was no protection. Ours probably were as they emerge into the great Bulgarian plain, the first English cannon-balls which had awakthe wild horsemen hover round them, awaken- ened the echoes of this land in anger, and the ing in our minds fears for their future journey. sorrowful thought would not be silenced, that many a bold heart would cease to beat before the boom of the salute for victory shall show that the robber has been driven back, and that a living peace and not a dead one has been restored to the nations.

Φ

On our return we had to wait for three of our companions, who, in the course of their wanderings, had fallen in with some Badshibadschouks, who at first seemed disposed to attack and rob them; however, on having the ships pointed out to them, they desisted, and afterwards rode to the beach with protestations of fraternity; still we were inclined to believe that the "lidless iron OLD ROWLEY.-The late Sir Charles Buneyes," which were watching us were better pro-bury, who was long the father of the Jury, and tectors even than our nationality. Nor did the considered as an oracle in all matters relating to event prove our estimate to be an uncharitable it, told me, many years ago, that Charles II. one, for on our return four days later from the was nicknamed "Old Rowley" after a favorite mouths of the Danube, we found that they had stallion in the royal stud so called; and he adpillaged the village and destroyed nearly all the ded, that the same horse's appellation had been faw remaining inhabitants in the interval. We ever since preserved in the "Rowley Mile," a took on board several men and women severely portion of the race-course still much used, and wounded; their wounds were carefully dressed, well-known to all frequenters of Newmarket.and a little money collected for them, so that we Notes and Queries.

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