TURKISH SKETCHES. BY REV. WALTER COLTON, AUTHOR OF SHIP AND SHORE.' EFFECTS OF OPIUM. THE number of devotees to this drug of delicious delirium has of late very much diminished; not that there is less misfortune or wretchedness to be soothed or forgotten, but that wine, which ever maketh the heart of man glad, has been clandestinely substituted in its place. Whether the intellect, morality or health of the community has profited by the change, I leave to the decision of those who have had wider opportunities of witnessing the effects of both. My own conviction is, that if a man will take to stimulants, the juice of the poppy is as harmless as any other source of excitement; and then it has this strong recommendation, it never makes a man foolish, it never casts a man into a ditch, or under the table; it never deprives him of his wits or his legs. It allows a man to be a gentleman; it makes him visionary, but his visions create no noise, no riots; they deal no blows, blacken no one's eyes, and frighten no one's peace. It is the most quiet and unoffending relief to which the desponding and distressed, who have no higher resource, can appeal. I should want no stronger evidence of this, than the immediate effects on those whom I once saw using it at Constantinople. The change which diffused itself through the countenance, limbs, and gait, was like the resuscitation of the dying to the energies and happiness of a fresh life. You could hardly persuade yourself that the man who now moved before you with a light elastic tread, and an eye kindling with secret rapture, was the same who a short time since approached with a faltering, feeble step, scarcely able to sustain himself upon his cane, and the arm of a less withered friend, while every feature seemed settled in that unrelieved despair which might make a word of hope sound like a mockery. Such was the change, such the total renovation produced, that one ignorant of the depression and despondency into which this dreaming, delicious excitement, if unrenewed, must ultimately sink, might have supposed that the tree of life had been discovered, and the immortal ambrosia of its fruits enjoyed. But as weariness will the sooner overtake the forced wing of the eagle, so depression will only the deeper weigh down the heart that has thus been too elated. The even stream pursues its way in cheerfulness and light, through smiling valleys to the deeper wave of the ocean and the lake, while the mountain torrent that foams from the cliff, though there it may have worn all the hues of heaven, only plunges, perhaps, into some wild and sunless glen, whose solitude is never cheered by the tints of breaking day, or the song of early birds. Few men, however, pass through life without testing some source of promised health and happiness beyond the quiet motion of the heart. My imagination was once so kindled, by the perusal of a little book called the Opium-Eater,' that I resolved to put its pleasing assurances to a practical test. So, sending to an apothecary's shop, I procured two enormous doses of the precious drug. One was taken by my young companion, who had become equally interested in making the experiment, the other by myself. My comrade began immediately to feel extremely particular about the stomach, and soon in a retching agony parted with all his anodynical expectations. My portion stuck fast as original sin; and I shortly lapsed into a disturbed slumber, in which it appeared to me that I retained my consciousness entire, while visions passed before me which no language can convey, and no symbols of happiness or terror represent. At one time I was soaring on the pinions of an angel among the splendors of the highest heaven, beholding at a glance the beauty of their unveiled mysteries, and listening to harps and choral symphonies over which, time, sorrow, and death have no power; and then my presumption was checked, my cleaving wings, like the waxen plumes of Icarus, were melted away, and I fell down, down, till caught in the bosom of a thunder cloud, from which I was again hurled, linked to its fiercest bolt upon the plunging verge of a cataract, that carried me down, frantic with horror, into the lowest depth of its howling gulf. Thence again I emerged, with the placidity and power of Neptune over his troubled realm, and driving my watery team over the excited bosom of the ocean, harmonized its elements into the deep bass it sustained in the bursting anthem of the infant world. And then with the fleetness of a disembodied spirit, I seemed to float around just between the incumbent circle of the blue heaven and the sea, discerning within upon the surging plain the motion of innumerable ships skimming the wave with the lightness of the swallow, while without the circle I beheld far down in the twilight and lurid gloom of an immeasurable gulf, the wrecks of worn-out worlds. Still I floated on upon the frightful verge of the circle, till coming around near the north pole I saw its steadfast star fixed in the darkened change of death; other planets were bending over it; and when they had sung its funeral hymn, they lowered it into a grave so dark, so fathomless and still, that the agonies and convulsions of expiring nature could not disturb its sepulchral sleep. While thinking of the dismayed mariner, rolling his eyes in vain to find his undeviating star, an iceberg with its mountain mass of frozen torrents came rolling on, and catching me in one of its dripping shelves, bore me through seas lashed by the hurricane, convulsed with the war of the whale and sword fish, and where the serpent, struck by lightning, lay troughed between two waves like a huge pine prostrate among the hills. Being benumbed and paralyzed by the stiffening ice, I fell from my tumbling lodgment, and descending through the sea, was carried by the wave of a submarine current quite within a little grotto, reared of coral and lined with pearls, where a mermaid was gently kindling a fire, be-. neath whose reviving ray I soon felt each frozen vein and limb slowly tingling back to life-when, as if to reclaim my bewildered thoughts, and soothe their delirious excitement, this daughter of the deep, raising her harp, struck one of those soft strains whose liquid flow melts into the heart like fragrant dew into the bosom of the folding rose. But scarce had the last note of this sweet minstrel died away into the listening stillness of peace, when a call, loud as the summoning trump of the archangel, sent its rending thunder through the hollow caverns of the astounded ocean, and the rent tombs of the shaking earth, starting even death itself from his sleep. The sheeted dead went up from their watery graves to stand on the sea, while the earth, from precipice to plain, Turkish Sketches. 423 from shore to mountain's brow, was covered with the shrouded myriads that had left their couches of clay. The sun with a changed, despairing aspect disappeared, leaving a huge darkened chasm in the heavens; the moon spun round and round, and slowly receded from view, leaving another fearful blank in the blue vault; the planets fell from their places, and were quenched as they sunk into the lifeless void beneath; and darkness in a thick palpable mass filled all space, save where the forked lightning, arrested in its course, still preserved its terrific form and brightness, and save the lingering light of some loftier star that contended with its doom. The courses and powers of nature were suspended still and motionless; the mariner heard his relaxed sails fall against the idle mast, the breaker cease to lift its warning voice over the fatal reef; while the sea-bird, unable again to reach the wave, rested upon his immovable pinions; the curling wave lay half broken on the shore; the torrent ceased to plunge from its wave-worn steep; the war-horse kneeled down and died; the monarch in his capital, discrowned, stood pale and speechless; the peasant in his field called aloud on his forgotten God; while the imploring shriek of nations went up like the last wail of a ruined world! The agony is o'er; nature her debt Has paid; the earth is covered with a clay Is warm with an existence reft away By Him who gave; it were but yesterday This clay peopled a happy universe With beings buoyant, beautiful and gay; But now alas! - of all things the reverse, Earth is their winding sheet, and darkness palls the hearse! These lines were engraven on my heart at the time by the departing spirit of my dream; and I awoke, after having been lost to all the realities of this world for two days and nights. But O! the faintness, the thirst, and delirious weakness of that waking moment! I look back to it as a man who has been skating over the frozen bosom of a lake turns to the yawning chasm which he has miraculously escaped! I could not stand or sit; and even in a most inclined posture, respiration itself seemed an effort beyond the gasping exhaustion of have turned on my pillow and died, but for the kindly efforts of one my frame. I should whom I can never love too much, or remember too long. Let no one test like me, the dreaming ecstacies and terror of opium; it is only scaling the battlements of heaven, to sink into the burning tombs of hell! FIRE AT CONSTANTINOPLE. VANGENVAR! the terrific cry of fire, rolled from the tower of Anastasius, and gathering volume and force as it went on, drowned all other voices and sounds in the tumultuous streets. sal hurry and dismay, before we could ascertain the direction of the It was some time, in the univerflames. They proved to be among the dwellings of St. Demetrius, a Greek town, crowning one of the hills which lie to the north of the navy yard. We hastened that way, and ascending an elevation which swells from the suburbs of Galata, had full in view the terrible spectacle. The fire had broken out in the northern verge of the town, and a strong wind sweeping at the time, from that quarter, the flames had already been cast over a frightful extent of dwellings. Still the devouring element, at every fresh rush of the wind, leaped farther on, while in each pause the falling roof and tumbling wall mingled their crackling and crushing sounds with the cries of hundreds, making their frantic escape. The whole town was soon in conflagration, and the flames, as they wound up over the summit of the hill, presented at one time, through the twilight of the hour, a towering pyramid of fire, and then again as the eddying currents broke away in violent gusts, the less ponderous materials were carried off in burning and threatening confusion, resembling more the flaring missiles sent from the mouth of the volcano. The inhabitants fled to the open grounds which surrounded the devoted town; some of them, whose flight had been less precipitate, bringing with them a few articles of their furniture; while others had not saved a blanket to protect them from the heavy night that was now setting in. In this forlorn multitude, we saw at every few paces the wretched mother, gathering her little group about her, and calling each by name, to assure herself again that no one had been left behind; and then seating herself on the cold ground, clasp her infant to her breast, trying to protect it from the chilling dew, beneath the narrow covering of her neck, while upon its unconscious cheek dropped her silent tears. Some of the children, too young to understand the anxious nature of her distress, or to know that they had no home to return to, were still playing with the toys they had brought from the nursery, or pointing with glee to the flame as it fringed the evening cloud. While the sister, a few years older, would try to check their playfulness, and constrain them into an apparent sympathy with their poor distressed mother. At the sheltering side of a small mound, a little retired from the crowd, we met with an old man, leaning tremulously on his cane, and listening to the replies of one who stood close to him, in all the touching sweetness of feminine beauty and youth. The old man was blind, and his young daughter, (in a soft, agitated voice,) was telling him the story of their escape, its difficulty, and by what means they had been able to effect it. I must have perished in my chair,' said the father, 'had you not come home just at the moment you did.' I was away,' explained the girl, with some of my companions in the burial ground, where you know we go every Saturday to carry fresh flowers. When · 6 I heard the cry of fire, I instantly ran home, and thought at first that I should be able to get some of the men to take away a few of our goods, but they were all carrying their own, and the fire was so near I had only time to catch up this little casket, which has your purse and my gold ornaments in it, and to take you by the hand to lead you off at once, for you did not seem to know, father, how dangerous our situation was.' No,' said the old man, I knew it not my child; I heard the cry, but did not suppose the fire was so near. I am glad you thought of the casket; but I fear, Therissa, there are but very few sequins in it, for you know the other day it was nearly empty, and the chest has not been unlocked since.' There is enough,' interrupted the daughter, in a tone of the gentlest encouragement, to get us the means of subsistence for a few weeks, and then there is my necklace, my bracelets, and ear-rings; these can be sold, and they will help us on some time, at least till I can find a situation where I may procure something for us both to live upon.' Here she dropped her small hand into the casket |