It will have occurred to many, acquainted with the scenes portrayed, to exclaim, when gazing upon the bright pictures of a David Roberts, a Leopold Robert, or a Villamil, "What a deal of dirt is hidden under all that gay colouring!" It will not do for the artist to look too closely into the details of southern cleanliness and domestic economy; he must elevate his subject and wash off the dirt, or at least paint over it. Constantinople must be viewed as a panorama, not investigated as if for sale. If he would preserve the enchantment unbroken, the spectator must keep his distance, as from a picture painted for distant effect. If he will not do this, if curiosity impels him onwards, let him make up his eyes and olfactories to a cruel disappointment. A minute ago, fairyland was spread before him; he lands, and stumbles over a dead dog. Touching dogs, by the bye, we have a word to say. Mr Smith has numerous passages relating to that quadruped, esteemed in Christendom, abominable in Constantinople. Having once, he informs us, been severely bitten by a hound, and having, moreover, seen several persons die of hydrophobia, he entertains a very justifiable mistrust of the canine race, or at least of such of its specimens as present themselves with slavering mouths, inflamed eyes, guttural yells, and hides ragged and bloody. Now, this being the habitual appearance and bearing of the eighty-thousand pugnacious and starving curs that infest the streets of the Turkish capital, Mr Smith, had he been a nervous person, would have passed rather an agreeable "month in Constantinople." With a paper lantern in one hand, however, and a jagged stone in the other--the usual weapons of defence--he prosecuted his wanderings most courageously, at almost any hour of the night, through the filth-strewn and dog-haunted streets. His first introduction to these pleasant animals was auricular; and truly, compared to their uproar, a German frog-swamp or a strong party of Christmas waits, jangling a negro melody in defiance of time and tune, must be considered a delightful _réveil-matin_.
"To say that if all the sheep-dogs going to Smithfield on a market-day had been kept on the constant bark, and pitted against the yelping curs upon all the carts in London, they could have given any idea of the canine uproar that now first astonished me, would be to make the feeblest of images. The whole city rung with one vast riot. Down below me at Tophanné--over at Stamboul--far away at Scutari--the whole eighty thousand dogs that are said to overrun Constantinople appeared engaged in the most active extermination of each other, without a moment's cessation. The yelping, howling, barking, growling, and snarling, were all merged into one uniform and continuous even sound, as the noise of frogs becomes when heard at a distance. For hours there was no lull. I went to sleep, and woke again; and still, with my windows open, I heard the same tumult going on; nor was it until daybreak that anything like tranquillity was restored."