"Each company is also provided with a Keiam, or woman whose province it is to fee that every thing be properly prepared, and to attend the ladies in the hot-room. It is requifite for her to be acquainted with the rules of the Bagnio, and well qualified to conteft all difputable matters with fluency of language. The Turks and Jews often retain Bidoween women as Keiams.

"Befides the ordinary times of bathing, the women go to the Bagnio after childbed, after recovery from fickness, before and after the marriage feaft, and at a stated period after the death of relations. On these ceremonial occafions it is usual for persons of condition, to hire a Bagnio on purpose, and form felect affemblies, where fuch only are admitted as have been invited. The ladies with their fuit, come dreft in their richest apparel; the Divan, and the refreshments have been previously prepared; a band of finging women is retained, and, the company being known to one another, gaiety, decent freedom, and youthful frolic, are lefs under formal restraint than in the mixed affemblies at the common bath.

"As these private affemblies last four or five hours, the women go feveral times into the inner rooms, but pafs a great part of the time in the Burany, where they either fit in the Bagnio habit, or covered with furs, for they do not drefs till determined to enter no more into the hot-room. The mufic and refreshments are placed in the outer chamber.

"The ladies, as before remarked, are provided with a habit made exprefsly for the Bagnio; but their flaves and fervants are equipped much in the fame manner with the men, and the younger girls, especially the flaves, claim a privilege of romping in the Hummam. Dafhing water at one another is no uncommon frolic; the fouta, or the wrapper, may eafily drop by accident, or be drawn away in fport, and fhould the girl at the time happen to be employed in carrying a cup of coffee, or therbet, the may poffibly advance to deliver it, without ftooping to recover the fouta. To this, or fome fuch accident, it must be owing, if the women in the Bagnio are ever feen walking about in a pure itate of nature, at least at Aleppo." P. 136.

To the above circumftances, as related in the text, the following obfervations are fubjoined among the notes.

"What is afferted of the Bagnio at Aleppo, is equally applicable (fo far as I have been able to learn) to thote in other parts of Turkey, particularly Conftantinople and Smyrna.

"A Turkish lady of diftinétion from Conftantinople, in the Cady's Harem at Aleppo, who was long my patient, and to whom I took an opportunity of mentioning certain paffages relative to the Bagnio, from letters written from Turkey, which had been publifhed a few years before, affured me, "that as foon as the ladies undreffed in the outer room, they immediately put on the Bagnio habit, and never quitted it till they dreffed again. She faid, that fome of the girls might poffibly by accident have dropped the fouta, but that the had never feen or even heard of a proceffion in which the women

walked

walked naked through the rooms of the Bagnio." She remarked further," that the letter must have been written in fport, for if the lady was fuch as I had defcribed her, it was impoffible the should not have diftinguished the accidental frolic of fome giddy-headed girls, from an established cuftom approved of by decency and good breeding."

"It is not without reluctance I produce an authority fo contradictory to what is found on this fubject, in the lively Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, and which (as I have remarked fince my return to Europe) has conduced not only to bring the veracity of that agreeable writer into question in this point, but to caft fulpicion on fome other of her defcriptions, which I am inclined to think are in the main true. Letters 33 and 39 furnish inftances of the kind now alluded to. There, perhaps, may be found a few trifling inaccuracies, but allowance being made for a fine imagination, in the glow of youth, revelling amid fcenes poffeft of all the advantages of novelty, I fee no reafon to fufpect wilful misrepresentation. The remarks contained in most of her other letters from Turkey (fo far as I am able to judge) are not only entertaining, but in general juft. Of fome local peculiarities, I do not prefume to judge; they may not be the lefs true, that they happen in fome refpects to differ from the cuftoms of Syria.

"Having in juftice faid thus much of a book concerning which I have often been interrogated in England, I must own myfelf wholly at a loss to account for her defcription of the Bagnio, fo inconfiftent with the teftimony of all the females I ever converfed with in the Eaft. The baths at Sophia being of a mineral nature, the gold and filver embroidery of the Bagnio habit, might be liable to injury from the fteam, and render plain linen more proper for the purpose. But that two hundred females (of courfe inhabitants of different Harems) fhould all appear stark naked, converfing, walking, working, drinking coffee or fherbet, or lying negligently on their cuhions, (Letter 26) was fuch a deviation from Mohammedan delicacy, that my furprife on reading the defcription, was full as great as that of her Ladyship on finding the ladies not fubject to catch cold, by coming out at once from the hot into the cold room, in a state of na

ture.

"But, however one might be difpofed to make allowance for peculiar customs at a mineral bath, the reception of a Turkish bride in a bagnio at Conftantinople (described in Letter 42) can neither be reconciled to the prefent practice in Turkey, nor to the defcriptions given by writers in the laft century, all which uniformly exclude a fuppofition of the customs in that refpect, having undergone any material change. It is true, that the ladies were not, as at Sophia, all naked; the married ladies, placed on the marble fophas, were clothed, “but the bride, attended by a tram of thirty virgins, all without other ornaments or covering than their own long hair, braided with pearl, or ribband, marched in proceffion round the three large rooms of the Bagnio."-Had the bride prefented herself thus in a state of nature, there was not (if credit may be given to the Turkish lady

already

already mentioned) a matron in the rooms who would have permitted the bride to falute her.

"To what has been faid may be added the authority of M. D'Ohffon." Au refte, tout s'y paffe dans la plus grand décence, chaque femme garde foigneufement le tablier dont elle est enveloppée, &c. Tableau General, de L'Empire Othoman," Tom. 1. p. 166, Paris, 1787. Fol.) There is a very good print of the interior of a public bath, in the fame volume, page 162.

After perufal of the above, the reader must determine for himself, whether to credit the high-wrought defcription contained in these popular Letters, or the ferious affeveration of Dr. R. that fuch manners are neither confiftent with the prefent manners of Turkey, nor agreeable to the descriptions given by writers in the last century.

(To be continued.)

ART. II. The Doctrine of Equivalents; or an Explanation of the Nature, the Value, and the Power of Money; together with their Application in organizing Public Finance. By George Craufurd, Efq. Part I. pp. 114. 2s. 6d. Rotterdam, Hake. Debrett, London, 1794.

NOTWITHSTANDING the confidence expreffed by Mr. Craufurd in his new principles, it does not feem probable that he will effect a revolution in the popular opinions on this fubject, or establish a new fyftem of finance. Dr. Adam Smith, treating on the prices of commodities, had obferved (Book I. c. 5.), "that the real price of every thing to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it," that is, in the cafe of another being in poffeflion of it, the labour he must render to acquire it: or the equivalent of that labour, in commodities, or in money. This quantity of labour Mr. C. miftakes for another, "the labour employed in producing it :" and then condemns that celebrated writer for the principle he attributes to him.

He affirms the rate of intereft to be the real and only price of money."-By this he must be understood to mean, that the value of money is always proportioned to the rate of interest-an opinion found in many writers, but which may be refuted by a reductio ad abfurdum. For if at any affigned period, intereft be at 5 per cent. and afterwards fall to 4, it follows first from this principle, that the value of money at the fecond period is,, or 2 of that at the first.

But

But it alfo follows, that the value of every pound in the fecond income 41. is only of that of the fame nominal fum in the first; and the number of pounds it contains, 41. is that of the first rate likewife; therefore, the value of this fe cond income is only 1 of the firft. It had been before shown to be the confequence of the fame principle, that its va lue is thereof this principle, therefore, involving contradictions, muft be falfe.

16

Another deduction which Mr. C. makes from the doctrine of equivalents is, that the value of money, compared with commodities and labour, will always increase as its quantity increases; or that they will become cheaper: and that this fall of prices is counteracted, and a rife eftablished by the mere operation of an accumulation of taxes. If he had attended to the progrefs of prices and taxation, he would never have advanced fo fingular an error. Maitland, in his Hiftory of London, informs us, that wheat fold at 12s. the quarter, and that the price of a middling ox was 11. 18s. in the year 1549 *; and we know from other authorities, that the price of wheat here given rather exceeds the average of that time t. No accumulation of taxes took place from that year to 1612, in which Prince Henry, elder brother of Charles I. died: he allowed nearly a groat a pound for all the beef and mutton used in his family; and the average price of wheat for twenty-fix years, ending in 1620 was 41s. 6d. the quarter §. From that year to 1745, a very great accumulation of taxes had taken place; yet the average price of wheat for ten years, ending in 1750, was 335. 9d. the quarter §, and that of butcher's meat was reduced to 3d. the pound. The money price of commodities, therefore, having arifen when taxes were relatively stationary, and fallen when they were increasing with rapidity, it is not folely or principally dependent on the accumulation of taxes; though they enter into fuck prices as one constituent part. This account likewife entirely destroys another of his leading pofitions, "that the value of commodities is regulated by the ratio of intereft." Queen Mary I. obtained a loan at Antwerp, the City of London becoming fecurity for her, at the rate of 14 per cent. Her brother, Edward VI. had

Price's Reverfionary Payments, Vol. II. p. 265. +Wealth of Nations, Smith, Vol. I. B. I. ch. 11. Hume's Hiftory of James I. App.

+++x=

Smith, Ubi Supra.

Sinclair, Hift. Rev. P. 1. p. 121.

borrowed

borrowed money there on the fame terms before *; at the very time when the lowest prices of commodities, mentioned above, took place. The rate of interest must have been higher in England, or, on the fecurity of the City of London, money would have been gotten here. In 1624, interest was in this kingdom reduced by law to 8 per cent.; now the legal rate must have been then fixed lower than the current rate. Eight per cent. therefore, may be taken as the current rate of interest about the year 1612. Here we see intereft falling with great rapidity, and the price of commodities advancing with great rapidity likewife, though not increased by any accumulation of taxes.

Many other cenfurable principles might be pointed out in Mr. Craufurd's book: among others, he maintains, that the ultimate fuppreffion of all taxes on account of the national debt, cannot compenfate for the evils generated by the finking fund, and he thinks that fund ought to be annihilated.There is a confiderable degree of confufion in his conceptions, and the appearance of it is increased fometimes, by the mifapplication of established terms: his ufe of the term competition is an inftance of this a competition is never said to take place, except when there is a rivality between two or more purchasers, out-bidding one another for a commodity; or of two or more sellers to obtain money for theirs: yet he has used this term frequently when a fimple bargain between two individuals was only meant by him. Upon the whole, his errors much outweigh the few paffages in his book which may be read with approbation.

ART. III. The Count de Villeroi ; or the Fate of Patriotifm, a Tragedy, 8vo. 2s. 6d. Cadell, London; Lunn, Cambridge, 1794.

TH

HIS anonymous Poet anticipates, he fays, and is prepared for the difapprobation of the friends of democra cy, but could with those whofe political fentiments accord with his own, not to depreciate his labours, by the severity of criticism. Poetry, however, is fuperior to all party, and if we extol, which certainly we muft, the performance before us, instead of depreciating it, we would wish to have it understood that we are induced to do fo fimply by its merits. That this

* Baker's Chronicle, p. 311, very old ed.; car. tit.

truth