The houses of the great Turkish ladies are kept clean with as much nicety as those in Holland. This was situated in a high part of the town; and from the window of her summer apartment we had the prospect of the sea, the islands, and the Asian mountains. My letter is insensibly grown so long, I am ashamed of it. This is a very bad symptom. 'Tis well if I don't degenerate into a downright storyteller. It may be our proverb, that knowledge is no burthen, may be true as to one's-self; but knowing too much, is very apt to make us troublesome to other people.

I

LETTER XL.

To the Lady Rich.

Pera, March 16, O. S. 1717.

I AM extremely pleased, my dear lady, that you have at length found a commission for me that I can answer without disappointing your expectations; though I must tell you, that it is not so easy as perhaps you think it; and that if my curiosity had not been more diligent than any other stranger's has ever yet been, I must have answered you with an excuse, as I was forced to do when you desired me to buy you a Greek slave. I have got for you, as you desire, a Turkish love-letter, which I have put into a little box, and ordered the captain of the Smyrniote to deliver it The translation of it is to you with this letter.

literally as follows: The first piece you shall pull out of the purse is a little pearl, which is in Turkish called ingi, and must be understood in this manner :

You are as slender as the clove!

You are an unblown rose !

I have long loved you, and you have not known it!

Gul,

A rose,

Hasir,

A straw,

May I die, and all my years be yours!

Ben aglarum sen gul!

May you be pleased, and your sorrows mine!

Oliim sana yazir.

Suffer me to be your slave.

M

You see this letter is all in verse, and, I can assure you, there is as much fancy shewn in the choice of them, as in the most studied expressions of our letters; there being, I believe, a million of verses designed for this use. There is no colour, no flower, no weed, no fruit, herb, pebble, or feather that has not a verse belonging to it; and you may quarrel, reproach, or send letters of passion, friendship, or civility, or even of news, without ever inking your fingers.

I fancy you are now wondering at my profound learning; but, alas! dear madam, I am almost fallen into the misfortune so common to the ambitious; while they are employed on distant insignificant conquests abroad, a rebellion starts up at home;-I am in great danger of losing my English. I find 'tis not half so easy to me to write in it as it was a twelvemonth ago. I am forced to study for expressions, and must leave off all other languages and try to learn my mother-tongue. Human understanding is as much. limited as human power or human strength. The memory can retain but a certain number of images; and 'tis as impossible for one human creature to be perfect master of ten different languages, as to have in perfect subjection ten different kingdoms, or to fight against ten men at a time. I am afraid I shall at last know none as I should do. I live in a place that very well represents the Tower of Babel: in Pera they speak Turkish, Greek, Hebrew, Armenian, Arabic, Persian, Russian, Sclavonian, Walachian, German, Dutch, French, English, Italian, Hungarian; and, what is worse, there are ten of these languages spoken in my own family. My grooms are Arabs; my footmen, French, English, and Germans; my nurse, an Armenian; my housemaids, Russians; half-a-dozen other servants, Greeks; my steward, an Italian; my janisaries, Turks; so that I live in the perpetual hearing of this medley of sounds, which produces a very extraordinary effect upon the people that are born here; for they learn all these languages at the same time, and without knowing any of them well

enough to write or read in it. There are very few men, women, or even children here that have not the same compass of words in five or six of them. I know myself several infants of three or four years old that speak Italian, French, Greek, Turkish, and Russian; which last they learn of their nurses, who are generally of that country. This seems almost

incredible to you, and is, in my mind, one of the most curious things in this country, and takes off very much from the merit of our ladies, who set up for such extraordinary geniuses upon the credit of some superficial knowledge of French and Italian.

As I prefer English to all the rest, I am extremely mortified at the daily decay of it in my head, where, I'll assure you (with grief of heart), it is reduced to such a small number of words, I cannot recollect any tolerable phrase to conclude my letter with, and am forced to tell your ladyship very bluntly, that I am, yours, &c.

LETTER XLI.

To the Countess of Bristol.

Ar length I have heard from my dear Lady Bristol for the first time. I am persuaded you have had the goodness to write before, but I have had the illfortune to lose your letters. Since my last, I have stayed quietly at Constantinople, a city that I ought in conscience to give your ladyship a right notion of,