of which was loaded with innumerable quilted lurking-places, originally, no doubt, intended for weapons of warfare, but now occupied with the harmless shafts of hair-pencils; while he held in his hand the smooth cherry wood stalk of a Turkish tobacco-pipe, apparently converted very happily into a pallet-guard. A swarthy complexion, and a profusion of black hair, tufted in a wild, though not ungraceful manner, together with a pair of large sparkling eyes, looking out from under strong shaggy brows, full of vivacious and ardent expressiveness, were scarcely less speaking witnesses of the life of roaming and romantic adventure, which, I was told, this fine artist had led. In spite of his bad health, which was indeed but too evident, his manners seemed to be full of a light and playful sportiveness, which is by no means common among the people of our nation, still less among the people of Scotland; and this again was, every now and then, exchanged for a depth of enthusiastic earnestness, still more evidently derived from a sojourn among men whose blood flows through their veins with a heat and a rapidity to which the North is a stranger.

The painter, being extremely busy, could not afford us much of his time upon this visit, but

shewed us, after a few minutes, into an adjoining apartment, the walls of which were covered with his works, and left us there to examine them by ourselves. For many years I have received no such feast as was now afforded me; it was a feast of pure delight,—above all, it was a feast of perfect novelty, for the scenes in which Mr Allan has lived have rendered the subjects of his paintings totally different, for the most part, from those of any other artist, dead or alive; and the manner in which he treats his subjects is scarcely less original and peculiar. The most striking of his pieces are all representations of human beings, living and moving under the influence of manners whereof we know little, but which the little we do know of them has tended to render eminently interesting to our imaginations. His pencil transports us at once into the heart of the East-the

Land of the myrtle, the rose, and the vine,

Where the flowers ever blossom, the skies ever shine,
And all save the Spirit of Man is divine.

On one side we see beautiful creatures-radiant in a style of beauty with which poetry alone has ever attempted to make us familiar; on another, dark and savage men, their faces stamp

ed with the full and fervid impress of passions which the manners and the faith of Christendom teach men, if not to subdue within them, at least to conceal in their exterior. The skies, too, are burning everywhere in the brightness of their hot, unclouded blue,-and the trees that lift their heads among them, wear wild fantastic forms, no less true to nature than they are strange to us. The buildings also have all a new character of barbarian pomp about them-cities of flatroofed houses, mingled ever and anon with intervening gardens-fountains sparkling up with their freshening spray among every shade of foliage-mosques breaking the sky here and there with their huge white domes and gilded cupolas turrets and minarets shooting from among the gorgeous mass of edifices-pale and slender forms, that

"Far and near,

Pierce like reposing flames the tremulous atmosphere."

The whole room might be considered as forming of itself one picture-for, wherever I looked, I found that my eyes were penetrating into a scene, of which the novelty was so universal, as to give it at first sight something of the effect of uniformity.