there was neither shutter nor glass to defend them from the inclemency of the weather

We entered most of the rooms, and found in all the same dampness, filth, and misery. One poor wretch had been chained to the same spot for twenty years. The keeper said he never slept. He talked all the night long. Sometimes at mid-day his voice would cease, and his head nod for an instant, and then with a start as if he feared to be silent, he raved on with the same incoherent rapidity. He had been a dervish. His collar and chain were bound with rags, and a tattered coat was fastened up on the inside of the window, forming a small recess in which he sat, between the room and the grating. He was emaciated to the last degree. His beard was tangled and filthy, his nails curled over. the ends of his fingers, and his appearance, save only an eye of the keenest lustre, that of a wild beast.

In the last room we entered, we found a good-looking young man, well-dressed, healthy, composed, and having every appearance of a person in the soundest state of mind and body. He saluted us courteously, and told my friend that he was a renegade Greek. He had turned mussulman a year or two ago, had lost his reason, and so was brought here. He talked of it quite as a thing of course, and seemed to be entirely satisfied that the best had been done for him. One of the party took hold of his chain. He winced as the collar stirred on his neck, and said the lock was on the outside of the window (which was true), and that the boys came in and tormented him by pulling it sometimes. "There they are," he said, pointing to two or three children who had just entered the court, and were running round from one prisoner to another. We bade him good morning, and he laid his hand to his breast and bowed with a smile. As we passed toward the

gate, the chattering lunatic on the opposite side screamed after us, the old dervish laid his skinny hands on the bars of his window, and talked louder and faster, and the children, approaching close to the poor creatures, laughed with delight at their excitement.

It was a relief to escape the common sights and sounds of the city. We walked on to the Hippodrome. The only remaining beauty of this famous square is the unrivalled mosque of Sultan Achmet, which, though inferior in size to the renowned Santa Sophia, is superior in elegance both within and without. Its six slender and towering minarets are the handsomest in Constantinople. The wondrous obelisk in the centre of the square, remains perfect as in the time of the Christian emperors, but the brazen tripod is gone from the twisted column, and the serpentlike pillar itself is leaning over with its brazen folds to its fall.

Here stood the barracks of the powerful Janisaries, and from the side of Sultan Achmet the cannon were levelled upon them, as they rushed from the conflagration within. And here, when Constantinople, was the "second Rome," were witnessed the triumphal processions of Christian conquest, the march of the crusaders, bound for Palestine, and the civil tumults which Justinian, walking among the people with the gospel in his hand, tried in vain to allay ere they burnt the great edifice built of the ruins of the temple of Solomon. And around this now neglected area, the captive Gelimer followed in chains the chariot of the conquering Belisarius, repeating the words of Solomon, "Vanity of vanities! all is vanity!" while the conquerer himself, throwing aside his crown, prostrated himself at the feet of the beautiful Theodora, raised from a Roman actress to be the Christian empress of the cast. From any elevated point of the city, you may still

see the ruins of the palace of the renowned warrior, and read yourself a lesson on human vicissitudes, remembering the schoolbook story of "an obolon for Belisarius !"

The Hippodrome was, until late years, the constant scene of the games of the jereed. With the destruction of the Janizaries, and the introduction of European tactics, this graceful exercise has gone out of fashion. The east is fast losing its picturesqueness. Dress, habits, character, everything seems to be undergoing a gradual change, and when, as the Turks themselves predict, the moslem is driven into Asia, this splendid capital will become another Paris, and with the improvements in travel, a summer in Constantinople will be as little thought of as a tour in Italy. Politicians in this part of the world predict such a change as about to arrive.

LETTER XXXVI.

Sultan Mahmoud at his Devotions-Comparative Splendor of Papal, Austrian, and Turk. ish Equipages-The Sultan's Barge or Caique-Description of the Sultan-Visit to a Turkish Lancasterian School-The Dancing Dervishes-Visit from the Sultan's Cabinet -The Seraskier and the Capitan Pacha-Humble Origin of Turkish Dignitaries.

I HAD slept on shore, and it was rather late before I remembered that it was Friday (the moslem Sunday), and that Sultan Mahmoud was to go in state to mosque at twelve. I hurried down the precipitous street of Pera, and, as usual, escaping barely with my life from the Christian-hating dogs of Tophana, embarked in a caique, and made all speed up the Bosphorus. There is no word in Turkish for faster, but I was urging on my caikjees by a wave of the hand and the sight of a bishlik (about the .value of a quarter of a dollar), when suddenly a broadside was fired from the three-decker, Mahmoudier, the largest ship in the world, and to the rigging of every man-of-war in the fleet through which I was passing, mounted, simultaneously, hundreds of bloodred flags, filling the air about us like a shower of tulips and roses. Imagine twenty ships-of-war, with yards manned, and scarce a line in their rigging to be seen for the flaunting of colors! The jar of the guns, thundering in every direction close over us, almost lifted our light boat out of the water, and the smoke ren

dered our pilotage between the ships and among their extending cables rather doubtful. The white cloud lifted after a few minutes, and, with the last gun, down went the flags altogether, announcing that the "Brother of the Sun" had left his palace.

He had but crossed to the mosque of the small village on the opposite side of the Bosphorus, and was already at his prayers when I arrived. His body-guard was drawn up before the door, in their villanous European dress, and, as their arms were stacked, I presumed it would be some time before the sultan reappeared, and improved the interval in examining the handja-bashes, or state-caiques, lying at the landing. I have arrived at my present notions of equipage by three degrees. The pope's carriages at Rome, rather astonished me. The emperor of Austria's sleighs diminished the pope in my admiration, and the sultan's caiques, in their turn, "pale the fires" of the emperor of Austria. The handja-bash is built something like the ancient galley, very high at the prow and stern, carries some fifty oars, and has a roof over her poop, supported by four columns, and loaded with the most sumptuous ornaments, the whole gilt brilliantly. The prow is curved over, and wreathed into every possible device that would not affect the necessary lines of the model; her crew are dressed in the beautiful costume of the country, rich and flowing, and with the costly and bright-colored carpets hanging over her side, and the flashing of the sun on her ornaments of gold, she is really the most splendid object of state equipage (if I may be allowed the misnomer) in the world.

I was still examining the principal barge, when the troops stood to their arms, and preparation was made for the passing out of the sultan. Thirty or forty of his highest military officers formed themselves into two lines from the door of the mosque to