THE

TRIAL

OF

FATIMA CLARKIS.

A FRAGMENT

OF

AN ORIENTAL TALE,

FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS OF

SIR BARNABY SKETCHWELL.

Translated from the ORIGINAL, when at SMYRNA, and accommodated to the present Times, by him self, a few Days before his Death.

THE

TRIAL

OF

FATIMA CLARKIS,

&c.

"Notumque furens quid fæmina possit.”

"Hell has no Fury like a Woman scorn'd."

VIRG.

T

"It is written on the sacred leaves of the Koran, chap. vii. v. 10. that a certain description of ladies shall not be admit

*

* Indeed, the Turkish commentators, who are not much to be commended for their politeness towards the ladies, are of opinion, that the whole of the fair sex is included in this tremendous anathema; some even, much more to be admired for the length of their whiskers, than their good sense, will have it, in spite of all, that women, though mistresses of our hearts, have no souls of their own.

The Complaint of the Favourite.

ted to the glories and everlasting enjoyments of the Prophet's Paradise, after their rising from the chamber of darkness; but that they will only be allowed, occasionally, to peep through the golden railing of the garden of Delices, and pine inwardly at the sight of ecstacies they never can be permitted to share with the faithful and their blooming Houris. If it be so, and who dares doubt it ?-hard is the fate of poor innocent Tailoriska that young Circassian, who, an inmate in the Harem of the AGA*, witnessed all, or at least many, of the pleasures enjoyed there, and, as she declares, had not the slightest participation in them. Neither in this, or in the other life, will she find reality tangible, and her miserable doom is to run after shadows, as the boys do in the plains of Sephar after gaudy butterflies.

The Commander in Chief in the Turkish Empire.