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النشر الإلكتروني

SKETCHES OF MEN, MAN-
NERS, &C..

DANCING DERVISHES.
In a mosque of Tophano (says Dr.
Clarke) was exhibited the Dance of the
Dervishes; and in another, at Scutary,
the exhibition of the Howling Priests;
ceremonies so extraordinary, that it is
necessary to see them, in order to be-
lieve that they are really practised by
human beings, as acts of devotion. We
saw them both; and first were conduct-
ed to behold the Dance at Tophano.

As we entered the mosque, we observed twelve or fourteen Dervishes walking slowly round, before a Superior, in a small space surrounded with rails, beneath the dome of the building. Several spectators were stationed on the outside of the railing; and being, as usual, ordered to take off our shoes, we joined the party. In a gallery over the entrance were stationed two or three performers on the tambourine and Turkish pipes. Presently the Dervishes, crossing their arms over their breasts, and with each of their hands grasping their shoulders, began obeisance to the Superior, who stood with his back against the wall facing the door of the mosque. Then each in succession as he passed the Superior, having finished his bow, began to turn round, first slowly, but afterwards with such velocity, that his long garments flying out in the rotatory motion, the whole party appeared spinning like so many umbrellas upon their handles. As they began, their hands were disengaged from their shoulders, and raised gradually above their heads. At length, as the velocity of the whirl increased, they were all seen, with their arms extended horizontally, and their eyes closed, turning with inconceivable rapidity. The music, accompanied by voices, served to animate them; while a steady old fellow, in a green pelisse, continued to walk among them, with a fixed countenance, and expressing as much care and watchfulness as if his life would expire with the slightest failure of the ceremony. I noticed a method they all observed in the exhibition; it was that of turning one of their feet, with their toes as much inward as possible, every whirl of the body, while the other foot kept its natural position. The elder of these Dervishes appeared to me to perform the task with so little labour or exertion, that, although their bodies were in violent agitation, their countenances resembled those of persons in an easy sleep. The younger part of

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the dancers moved with no less velocity,
than the others; but it seemed in them a
less mechanical operation. This extra-
ordinary exercise continued for the
space of fifteen minutes; a length of
time, it might be supposed, sufficient to
exhaust life itself during such an exer-
tion; and our eyes began to ache with
the sight of so many objects all turning
one way. Suddenly, on a signal given
by the directors of the dance, unob-
served by the spectators, the Dervishes
all stopped at the same instant, like the
wheels of a machine, and, what is more
extraordinary, all in one circle, with
their faces invariably towards the centre,
crossing their arms on their breasts, and
grasping their shoulders as before, bow-
ing together with the utmost regularity,
at the same instant, almost to the ground.
We regarded them with astonishment,
not one of them being in the slightest,`
degree out of breath, heated, or having
his countenance at all changed. After
this they began to walk, as at first; each
following the other within the railing,
and passing the Superior as before.
soon as their obeisance had been made,
they began to turn again. This se-
cond exhibition lasted as long as the first,
and was similarly concluded. They then
began to turn for the third time; and,
as the dance lengthened, the music grew
louder and more animating. Perspira-
tion became evident on the features of
the Dervishes; the extended garments of
some among them began to droop; and
little accidents occurred, such as their
striking against each other: they never-
theless persevered, until large drops of
sweat falling from their bodies upon the
floor, such a degree of friction was
thereby occasioned, that the noise of
their feet rubbing the floor was heard by
the spectators. Upon this, the third
and last signal was made for them to
halt, and the dance ended.

As

This extraordinary performance is considered miraculous by the Turks. By their law, every species of dancing is prohibited; and yet, in such veneration is this ceremony held, that an attempt to abolish it would excite insurrection among the people.

THEATRICAL SKETCHES.

A CALL AT THE CRAVEN'S HEAD, DRURY-
LANE.

"Do you ever drop in at Oxberry's, worthy reader? If you do not, you should. What a complete histrionic emporium it is! First, there are the pictures, all admirable as likenesses, if

hot as paintings. There's mine host, as a gentleman (his first appearance in that character) with his own**** selfsufficient look---fat, easy, and luxurious; then there's Harley, looking as serious as if it was raining on his benefit night; and side by side Mathews the muscle-mover, done (as the Jews do their soles), in oil. Turn on the other side there's Oxberry again, in flaxen ringlets. Another and yet another Oxberry---somewhat too much of this.' But then there's pretty Mrs. Orger, looking--oh!

Where men have souls or bodies she must answer,'

And who stands next? why George Smith, (what. an antithesis!) she, feminine, bashful, fair, and alluring---he, masculine, impudent, squabby, and repelling; look on this picture and on that. Besides there's every face that we remember at both the houses---is not this worth seeing? Then there's the Society, behold it :---that joskin-looking personage is Sherwin, of Drury, a man whom the town has not yet found out, a child of nature, and who, I doubt not, will one day prove a worthy successor of Emery. That sombre gentleman is Brown the comedian, the hero of the Liverpool stage, reduced to be Mr. Wallack's double at Drury---sie transit gloria mundi." And there sits the glory of the stage, looking as if his brandy and water was his only friend. That little gentleman beside him, with a form like King Richard's, is M. the dramatist, the most prolific writer of the day; he produces pieces as a cat does kittens, five at a time, and, in verity, one production is as valuable as the other. There's Williams, the comedian, (comedian! weil,) formerly a baker, a good comic singer and a pleasant fellow; but he would make his bread better in an oven than at a theatre. That's S-, the prompter, formerly an itinerant performer; he had all the requisites for an actor, except voice, judgment, genius, face, and talent; he's a complete cynie, and should he ever resume the sock, Snarl is the part he ought to appear in. That little being, next him, is also a ci-devant comedian, who, after endeavouring for five years to become an histrionic star, took up the pastoral profession of a milkman; so if he becomes a star at all, it will be a star in the milky way. That well-looking eccentric is B******, the bass singer, he was once playing Landre, in the 'Forest of Bondy,' and he threw the three dice

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and exclaimed two. Throw higher, exclaimed his brother buskin. Higher, oh ! very well; dear me---forty.' Forty with three dice! Poor B., he has been called forty ever since. That young gentleman in the black surtout, is R***, the mimic; he's an inveterate punster. Hush they are asking him a question now--

"Q. Pray, Mr. R., what character does Munden play on leaving the stage?' "R. Pistol.'

"Q. Pistol! it's a bad part. Why has he chosen that?'

R. Because it's a good part to go off in!'

See who he salutes now at the door. 'Hail to the Rayn-er; prithee take a wet. Don't make wry faces, man; if any thing ails the porter, take some half and half. That Werter-looking genius is O'M, the lyrist, an imitator of the bard of The Emerald Isle of the Sea;' he publishes his own songs, and to insure their being heard, sings them himself.

"And thus by dint of roaring them in clubs, ' Obtains a miserably noted name; And every noisy bacchanalian dubs

The singing writer with a bastard fame." He in the sky-blue cravat and brown coat is clever in his way, spoiled by the ring, rather too downy to be companionable, he flashes his tip top learning too freely-the initiated take no delight in it, and the greens don't understand it, With all that, he has made literature and milling closer acquaintances than they ever were before, though he has failed in making the muses friends to the ring (the muses are spinsters, and have' nothing to do with rings,) there he sits, a kind of pugilistic telegraph. Beside him (but no connection with the next gentleman,) is an individual with a face

like shrivell'd leaf," I have nicknamed him Dr. Prolix'; his anecdotes are interminate. The following is eccentric, and, I believe, veracious: "When Liston was in Mr. Stephen Kemble's company, his talents were unregarded by the manager, and his salary exceedingly small.' When the dramatic' corps broke up at Newcastle, for the purpose of opening a campaign at another town, Liston enforced his claim to a more efficient remuneration; Stephen, however, was inexorable, telling the unfortunate comedian, "that such actors as he, were to be found in every hedge." In the evening, as the manager was wending his way" to the scene of future operations, he was surprised

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to perceive Mr. L. sticking in the midst of a quickset, by the road-side, earnestly engaged in some apparent search. "What in the name of wonder are you doing there?" cried Kemble, I am looking for some of the actors you told me of," was the laconic reply.

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There's little Keeley, qualified by nature to sing," The lad with the carrotty pole;" he was an amusing little minor, but to speak agriculturally, Ineither like his stile nor his gait at the Garden. He has got Evans with him, of whom Miss Kelly predicted wonders; he came upon the public at an unauspicious moment--Emery had just vacated a chair that it required a giant to fill. It is one thing to take a man's situation, and another to supply his place. Besides, there was nothing of York in the name of Evans; on the contrary, it smelt strongly of Glamorganshire, and that would not accord with our pre-possessions. Look at yon personage, in plenitude of flesh, that is Salter, the comedian; and from the gravity of his humour he is called dry-Salter. He is also a very re spectable artist. (I wonder how he would play Brush in the Clandestine Marriage !) His presence brings to my recollection a being, now no more, named Thomas Fuller, unknown to the London stage, but a man of infinite natural talent, though so little indebted to education 'that he could scarcely read his own part. This man, "Whose learning did not much disturb his pate,"

was excellent in almost every line of the drama, besides possessing very extraordinary ventriloquial powers, and being a portrait painter of no mean ability. He died at Andover, a few nights after his benefit, universally regretted by the towns-people, amongst whom his talents had procured him many friends, possessed of a mind singularly original, a correct judgment and great powers of execution; his talent was little known, and this brief notice contains all that has ever been said of his histrionic ability. He died in poverty, as he lived in obscurity, and his life was as unhappy as it was short. He had no application as an artist; and was often, as he himself expressed it, reduced to a single shirt, a single shilling, and a single knock at an old friend's door." melancholy tale is generally the precursor of another: Fuller was intimate with poor Phillips of Harponian notoriety; I remember hearing the latter make the following remark--- Waiter, this bread

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One

my

is very hard; have you none newer? But no matter: I am old, and have seen many vicissitudes; and it must be very hard bread I can't eat.' "The tone, the manner, and the circumstances, produced an effect upon me then, that I feel I am very feebly conveying to readers now. But what am I about? the blue devils are sitting upon my shoulder, and I must shake them off. Phillips was asked once in a party to give a definition of nonsense, and he replied, in a Johnsonian stile," Sir, it is nonsense to bolt a door with a boiled carrot, or to talk of a rehearsal in Horne of Rogers' company.*" But turn your eye to

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the door, and observe that gentlemau making his entre under the shade of a Petersham hat, dressed in a brown coat and mouse coloured trowsers, with skin and whiskers to match---that is Count Push-me-slow. Understand me when I say Count, he is not a Lord, on the contrary, he is, as Timothy says, "The Lord knows who." He obtained the appellation from the following circumstance:---Once, enacting under the auspices of Richardson, at Bartholomew Fair, he had to deliver this important message---" My Lord, Count Althorp has arrived." Our actor unfortunately forgot the name, and rather than keep the stage waiting, exclaimed, My Lord, Count Push-me-slow has arrived." This was too much, even for Richardson, who said, Muster, let it push me slow or push me fast, push off from my booth to-morrow." Observe how arrogantly he dispenses his nods, he has lately had a windfall; but have his redeemed rags made him thus insolent ?" Yon obtrusive raw-boned feliow is an amateur, and becomes booncompanion with the perormers that frequent the house. He is a clerk in the city, (in Rood-lane, to judge by his impudence ;) see how familiarly he talks to our first tragedian. But I fear this is not the only city connection of which the buskined hero may have cause to be ashamed.

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Reader, gentle or simple, I have thus introduced you to a portion of the company you may expect to meet. You will see pretty Mrs. Oxberry, smiling in the bar, (I should liked to have seen Oxberry really making love!) and you will find her husband himself in his room, easy and good-humoured, promoting mirth

* A strolling company, famous or rather infamous for leaving the dialogue to the sponta neous effusion of the actor.

and increasing enjoyment; for besides his bulk, O. is like Falstaff, in being "not only humourous himself, but the cause of humour in others." There too, if you are curious to do so, you may behold me sitting behind a glass of grog, and really, for a man of many griefs, you will find I pass my time very merrily; I never smoke any thing (except the company,) for I hate all kind of puffing; and if I occasionally crack a joke, it, like Ollapod's magnesia, "causes no great nausea, and does neither harm nor good." W. L. R.

THE ASHANTEES.

(Continued from page 85.) Continuing their superstitions, Mr. Bowditch says, when they drink they always spill a little liquor on the ground, as an offering to the fetish; and on rising from their chairs or stools, their attendants instantly lay them on their sides, to prevent the devil (whom they represent to be white,) from slipping into their master's places.

But the most surprizing superstition of the Ashantees is, their confidence in the fetishes or saphies they purchase so extravagantly from the Moors, believing firmly that they make them invulnerable and invincible in war, paralyse the hand of the enemy, shiver the weapons, divert the course of balls, render both sexes prolific, and avert all evils but sickness, (which they can only astuage) and natural death. So great is their belief in these fetishes, that several Ashantee captains offered seriously to let us fire at them, in the belief that our shots could do them no harm.

They divide time into periods of three weeks. The first week is called Adai, and is termed the good week, in which much work is done, and traders visit the markets more frequently in this week then at any other time, supposing all they do in it must prosper. The second week is Ajamfoe, or the bad week, in which no work or trade is done, the natives believing every thing undertaken in it must fail. The third week is Adiru or the little good week, in which they both work and trade, but not so much as in Adai.---The decease of a person is announced by a discharge of musketry, proportionate to his rank or the wealth of his family. In an instant, you see a crowd of slaves burst from the house, and run towards the bushes, flattering themselves that the hindmost or those surprized in the house, will furnish the

human victims for sacrifice, if they can but secrete themselves until the custom is over. The body is then handsomely drest in silk and gold, and laid out on the bed, the richest cloths beside it.

The King has a troop of small boys, who carry the fetish bows and arrows, and are licensed plunderers; they are so sly and nimble, that it is very diverting to watch them in the market-place, which they infest every morning. Whatever they carry off is fair game, and cannot be required or recovered; but the loser, if he can catch them before they arrive at the palace, may beat them as severely as he pleases, short of mortal injury; however, they bear it as obdurately as young Spartans. Sometimes one party trips up a person with a load of provisions, whilst another scrambles them up. The anxious alarm of the country people sitting with sticks in their hands, and the comic archuess of these boys, threading the crowd in all directions, is indescribable. Some of the earliest European travellers in Abyssinia, met with a similar troop of royal plunderers, and I believe suffered from them; our property was always respected by them, but they used to entertain themselves with mimicking our common expressions and our actions, which they did inimitably; whilst sketching they buzzed about me like musquitoes. The Ashantees are, without exception, the most surprising mimics I have ever heard. I have known a captain called Adoo Quarmina, repeat a sentence after I had finished it, of at least a dozen words, which he knew nothing about, and had not heard before. The King has a sort of buffoon, whose movements were as irresistibly comic as those of Grimaldi. After a subject is executed for crime, the body and head are carried out of town by some of the King's slaves appointed for that purpose, and thrown where the wild beasts may devour them; but if the deceased be of any conse quence, some of his friends conceal themselves near where the body will be carried, and purchase it, and the right of burial of these domestics, generally for eight ackies.

When the King of Ashantee expectorates boys with the elephants tails (pugis), sedulously wipe it up or cover it with sand; when he sneezes, every person present touches or lays the two first fingers across the forehead or breast, as the Moors did when they pronounce a blessing, and the Ashantees invariably propitiate one.

(To be concluded in our next

DISTRESSED SETTLERS AT THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE.

The miserable condition to which the unhappy adventurers to this part of the globe have been reduced, cannot fail to excite the strongest degree of sympathy. The failure of the crops, and the uncertainty of the climate, have reduced them to the very verge of starvation and nakedness. The necessary evils of emigration to uncultivated countries is sufficiently distressing, without the addition of unforeseen calamities; and it is an act of imperious duty, on the part of all who are able, to step forward in mitigation of the sorrows of those who have been driven to seek elsewhere the comforts which they could no longer obtain in England, but in the pursuit of which they have been so disappointed. To satisfy the great interest which the knowledge of their miserable situation has excited among the public, we cannot avoid laying before our Readers the following extracts from letters lately received in this country, developing the wretched state to which they are reduced :--

"GRAHAM'S TOWN, 23d DEC. 1822. "You ask me for an account of our situation; which I will give you; and I believe it is applicable to all the settlers, as regards our crops and prospect of food for the ensuing year. My wheat, two months ago the most promising i ever saw in any country, is now cut down, and in heaps for burning, before we plough the ground again. The rust has utterly destroyed it; not a grain have we saved. My barley, from the drought, and a grub which attacks the blade just under the surface, produced little more than Meswody. Indian corn, very much injured by the caterpillar; cabbages destroyed by the lice; the beans all scorched with the hot winds; the carrots run to seed; the potatoes are good, but I have but a small quantity. Our cows are all dry for want of grass: not the least appearance of verdure as far as the eye can reach. Nothing but one great wilderness of faded grass, something resembling a couchy fallow in England. On Saturday, whilst watching by the sick bed of my dear little girl, I was startled by the cry of wild dogs. *I ran to my window, and saw

The Wilde Hond, or Wild Dog of the Cape, is mentioned by Burchell as an undescribed and even ferocious spe cies of Hyena...

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"It is most distressing to see the hus-... band and wife, with scarcely any thing to cover them, and their children in the same condition, lying on the ground on the outside of their miserable huts, roasting a few heads of Indian corn, probably the only food they have. Many, have nothing but pumkins. One family,. of the name of H., have not tasted butcher's meat, nor, I believe, bread, 'for about three months; and their children were running about without clothes, As for shoes and stockings, they are seldom to be seen on either old or young."

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Hyman and Ford's party are in a truly miserable plight, with scarcely any thing to eat, but a few vegetables. I here saw an aged couple in almost a starving condition. On going into their hut, I found the poor woman boiling a little pumpkin soup, which was mixed with some milk, She said this was the only food they had; and their wretched dwelling was neither wind nor water tight.

At a little distance I met what had once been, as I was told, a fine heartylooking young woman, but now miserably emaciated, ---apparently about twenty-four or twenty-five years of age. She was leading one child, another was fol

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