BUT, having entertained you with things I don’t like, ’tis but just I should tell you something that pleases me.  The climate is delightful in the extremest degree.  I am now sitting, this present fourth of January, with the windows open, enjoying the warm shine of the sun, while you are freezing over a sad sea-coal fire; and my chamber is set out with carnations, roses, and jonquils, fresh from my garden.  I am also charmed with many points of the Turkish law, to our shame be it spoken, better designed, and better executed than ours; particularly, the punishment of convicted liars (triumphant criminals in our country, God knows).  They are burnt in the forehead with a hot iron, when they are proved the authors of any notorious falsehoods.  How many white foreheads should we see disfigured!  How many fine gentlemen would be forced to wear their wigs as low as their eye-brows, were this law in practice with us!  I should go on to tell you many other parts of justice, but I must send for my midwife.

LET.  XXXIX.

TO THE COUNTESS OF ——.

Pera of Constantinople, March 10.  O. S.

I HAVE not written to you, dear sister, these many months—­a great piece of self-denial.  But I know not where to direct, or what part of the world you are in.  I have received no letter from you since that short note of April last, in which you tell me, that you are on the point of leaving England, and promise me a direction for the place you stay in; but I have, in vain, expected it till now; and now I only learn from the gazette, that you are returned, which induces me to venture this letter to your house at London.  I had rather ten of my letters should be lost, than you imagine I don’t write; and I think it is hard fortune, if one in ten don’t reach you.  However, I am resolved to keep the copies, as testimonies of my inclination, to give you, to the utmost of my power, all the diverting part of my travels, while you are exempt from all the fatigues and inconveniences.

IN the first place, then, I wish you joy of your niece; for I was brought to bed of a daughter [Footnote:  The present Countess of Bute] five weeks ago.  I don’t mention this as one of my diverting adventures; though I must own, that it is not half so mortifying here as in England; there being as much difference, as there is between a little cold in the head, which sometimes happens here, and the consumption cough, so common in London.  No body keeps their house a month for lying in; and I am not so fond of any of our customs, as to retain them when they are not necessary.  I returned my visits at three weeks end; and, about four days ago, crossed the sea, which divides this place from Constantinople, to make a new one, where I had the good fortune to pick up many curiosities.  I went to see the sultana:  Hafiten, favourite of the late emperor Mustapha, who, you know, (or perhaps you don’t know) was deposed by his brother, the reigning sultan, and died a few