Litchfield enquirer., 1876-11-30

\ side. l do not know any scene that ap-
 breaches this in beauty except the Bay of Naples, and the charm of that is so diff
 feren. from this that DO comparison is forces.. s,on the mind. The Bay of New
 York has many of the elements of th1s
 charming prospect, on the map But Con
 stantinople and it's environs can be seen
 from many points in one view, while one
 would need to ascend in balloon to con-
 prehend in like manner the capital of the
 Western world It is the situation of Con
 ,tantinople, lifted up into a conspicuous
 ness that permits no one of it's single lsplendors to be last in the general view,
 that makes 1t in appearance the unrivaled
 impress of cities.
 In the foreground lay Scutari and in
 d broad sweep the heavy mass of Cyprus
 fores3 that covers the great cemetery of
 the Turks, which they are said to prefer
 to Eyood, under the prophetic impression
 that they will one day be driven out of
 Europe. The precaution seems idle. If
 m the loss of Constantinople the Osmanh
 sultans still maintain the supremacy of
 Islam, the Moslem capital could not be on
 these shores, and the caliphate in it's mi grations might again be established on
 the Nile, on the Euphrates, or in the
 plains of Guta on the Abana. The iron
 clads that lie in the Bosphorus, the long
 guns of a dozen fortresses that command
 every foot of the city and shore, forbid
 that these contiguous coasts should fly
 hostile flags.
 We drove down to and through this fa-
 nous cemetery in one direction and anoth- CT. In it's beauty was disappointed. It
 is dense and gloomy cypress forest; as a
 place of sepulcher, without the architect
 ural pretentions of Pere-la- Chaise, and
 only less attractive than that. Its dark
 recesses are crowded with grave-stones, ] slender at the bottom and swelling at the
 top, painted in lively colors, green, red
 and gray,-a necessary relief to the son.
 Der woods, having inscriptions in gilt | and red letters, and leaning at all angles,
 as if they had fallen out in a quarrel over night. The graves of the men are dis | tinguished by stones crowned with tur- bans, or with tarbooshes painted red, an imitation, in short, of whatever head. l dress the owner wore when alive, so that perhaps his acquaintances can recognize his tomb without reading h1s name. Some of the more ancient have the form of a 1 mold of Charlotte Russo. saw more
 than one set jauntily on one side, which l gave the monument a rakish air, singu- larly debO1a,aaire for a tombstone.
 In contrast to this vast assembly of the
 faithful is the pretty English cemetry, dedicated to the fallen in the Crimean war,-a well-kept flower garden, which lies close to the Bosphorus on point op- posite the old Seraglio. We sat down on the sea wall in this quiet spot, where the sun falls lovingly and tEe undisturbed birds sing, and looked long at the shifting busy panorama of world that does not I 1okv Mk icr 1Iysr0 | about the garden, noting the head d-stones of soldiers, this one killed at Alma, tbat 1 at Inkermann, another at Balaklava, and | the tall graceless, granite monument to eight thousand nameless dead-nameless 1 here, but not in many home, and many a heart, any more than the undistinguish- ed thousands who sleep at Gettysburg or on hundred other patriot fields.
 Near by is the great hospital which Florence Nightingale controlled, and in her memory we asked permission to enter it's wards and visit its garden. After some delay this was granted, but the Turkish official said the hospital was for l men that there was no woman there, and |'as for Miss Nightingale, he had never ! heard of her. But we persevered and f- nally found an officer who led us to the room she occupied,-a large apartment now filled with the beds of the sick, and like every other part of the establishment, neat and orderly. But our curiosity to see where the philanthropist had labored was an enigma to the Turkish officials to the last They insisted at first that we must be relations of Miss Nightingale, supposition which I saw that Ab-del-Atti, who always seeks advantage of distinc tion, was inclined to favor. But we said notn fhok Englishmen should indulge in the senti- ment that moved us. But we were not Englishmen, we were Americans,-the gave it up entirely. The superintendent of the hospital, a courtly and and elder ly bey who had fought in the Crimean war, and whom our dragoman, dipping his hand to the ground, saluted with the most profound Egyptian obeisance, insist ed upon serving us coffee in the garden by the fountain of gold fish, and we spent an hour of quiet there.
 On Sunday at about the hour that the good people in America were beginning to think what they should wear to church, we walked down to the service in the Eng. fish Memorial church, on the brow of the hill in Pera, pointed Gothic building of a rich and pleasing interior. Only once or twice in many months had we been in a Christian Church, and it was. at least, in- teresting to contrast it's simple forms with the elaborate Greek ritual and the endless repetitions of the Moslem prayers. A choir of boys intoned or chanted por- tion of the service, with marked ability, and wholly relieved the audience from the necessity of making responses. The cler- gymen executed the reading so success fully that we could only now and then o{nl op1 fo1n were concerned, might as we'll have been lost on us. We could distinguished oc- casionally the Lords Prayer, and the name of Queen Victoria, and we caught some of the commandments as they whisked past us. We knew also when we were in the Litany, from the regular ca dence of the boys responses. But as She entertainment seemed to be for the ben eft of the clergymen and boys, I did not feel like intruding beyond the office of spectator, and soon found myself reflect ing whether machine could not be in- vented that should produce the same eff l feet of sound, which was all that the con- gregation enjoyed. ....
 Rome has been until recentlysless tol- erant of the Protestant faith than Con- stant1nople: and 1t was an inspiration of reciprocity to build here church in memory of the Christian soldiers who fell in the crusade to establish the Moslem rule in European Turkey.
 Constantinople shares, with many oth- CT cities, the reputation of being the most dissolute in the world. The traveller is | not required to decitle the rival claims of | this sort of pre-eminence, which are ea- gerly put forward; he may better, in each | city .acquiesce in the complaisant assump- | ton of the inhabitants. But when he is | required to see in the moral state of the 1 Eastern capital signs of its speedy decay, l and the near extinction of the Ottoman l rule, he takes leaf out of history and re- l fleets. It is true, no doubt. that the 1 Turks are enfeebed by luxury and sen- suality, and have, to great extent. lost | those yirile oualibies which gave to their |