When we arose at sunrise to see the famous entry to Constantinople, we found, in the place of the city and the sun, a bright white fog, which hid both from sight, and which only disappeared as the vessel¹ advanced towards the Golden Horn. There the fog cleared off as it were by flakes³, and as you see gauze curtains lifted away, one by one, before a great fairy scene at the theatre. This will give idea enough of the fog; the difficulty is to describe the scene afterwards, which was in truth the great fairy scene, than which it is impossible to conceive anything more brilliant and magnificent. I can’t go to any more romantic place than Drury Lane to draw my similes⁴ from — Drury Lane, such as we used to see it in our youth, when to our sight the grand last pictures of the melodrama⁶ or pantomime were as magnificent as any objects of nature we have seen with maturer eyes. Well, the view of Constantinople is as fine as any of Stanfield’s best theatrical⁷ pictures, seen at the best period of youth, when fancy had all the bloom on her — when all the heroines who danced before the scene appeared as ravishing beauties, when there shone an unearthly splendour about Baker⁸ and Diddear — and the sound of the bugles⁹ and fiddles¹⁰, and the cheerful clang of the cymbals¹¹, as the scene unrolled, and the gorgeous procession meandered¹² triumphantly¹³ through it — caused a thrill of pleasure, and

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