The rinrs' correspondent at Constantinople forwards a communication which, though
drawn up in cautious and courteous form, is obviously intended to inform the world that the Sultan's mind is seriously affected. The assassination of the Shah threw him into a fit of melancholy from which he has recovered to exhibit a joviality and devotion to trifles quite foreign to his permanent character. The rumour is the more striking because a tendency to mental disease, from which the House of Othman was once singularly free, has exhibited itself in it for the last two generations. It is fostered by the unhealthy habits of the family, the Sultans, who ought to be out-of-door men, now living shut up in their garden-palaces, never travelling, and rarely taking anything like strong or continuous exercise. The popular notion that great Orientals are all sedentary is a pure illusion. Princes and nobles pass as much time as Englishmen on the hunting. field, in the exercising-ground, or in long and sometimes adventurous rides. The late Shah spent a third of his time hunting in some of the roughest country within his dominion, and could keep on horseback the whole day.
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