I now entered the region of gardens and villas, which, previous to the
revolution of Kara Georg, was occupied principally by Turks. Passing
down a shady lane my attention was arrested by a rotten moss-grown
garden door, at the sight of which memory leaped backwards for four or
five years. Here I had spent a happy forenoon with Colonel H----, and
the physician of the former Pasha, an old Hanoverian, who, as surgeon
to a British regiment had gone through all the fatigues of the
Peninsular war. I pushed open the door, and there, completely secluded
from the bustle of the town, and the view of the stranger, grew the
vegetation as luxuriant as ever, relieving with its dark green frame
the clear white of the numerous domes and minarets of the Turkish
quarter, and the broad-bosomed Danube which filled up the centre of
the picture; but the house and stable, which had resounded with the
good-humoured laugh of the master, and the neighing of the well-fed
little stud (for horse-flesh was the weak side of our Esculapius),
were tenantless, ruinous, and silent. The doctor had died in the
interval at Widdin, in the service of Hussein Pasha. I mechanically
withdrew, abstracted from external nature by the "memory of joys that
were past, pleasant and mournful to the soul."

I then took a Turkish bath; but the inferiority of those in Belgrade
to similar luxuries in Constantinople, Damascus, and Cairo, was
strikingly apparent on entering. The edifice and the furniture were of
the commonest description. The floors of the interior of brick
instead of marble, and the plaster and the cement of the walls in a
most defective state. The atmosphere in the drying room was so cold
from the want of proper windows and doors, that I was afraid lest I
should catch a catarrh. The Oriental bath, when paved with fine
grained marbles, and well appointed in the departments of linen,
sherbet, and _narghile_, is a great luxury; but the bath at Belgrade