rior the chief eunuch of Constantinople; and, since that time, it continues to be governed by a Turk, who farms the revenue from that officer, and by eight primates, distinguished for their empty pride and sinister principles. The remains of its ancient splendour are still objects of admiration; and it will, probably, long be venerated as a sacred shrine, to which the votaries of science and knowledge make occasional pilgrimage. CUSTOMS, MANNERS, AND PRESENT APPEARANCE OF CONSTANTINOPLE. [From the same.] HE extent and grandeur of this famous metropolis have been greatly exaggerated. Instead of being, according to some travellers, twenty English miles in circumfer ence, I doubt if it be near twelve, Were the port, with the channel of the Bosphorus, reduced to the breadth of the Thames, perhaps, with all Galata, Pera, and Scutari, Constantinople would not be equal to two-thirds of London; and it is not, like London, surrounded with a radiance of villages. trian "In order not to give way, without some countenance of fact, to an opinion so contrary to the received, I left my lodgings near the Auspalace, walked to the artillery barracks opposite to the seraglio point, and embarked, for the purpose of making the circuit of the city. I was rowed down to the Sultan's shambles, below the Castle of the Seven Towers; landed there; and, walking leisurely, along the outside of the walls, to the harbour, I embarked a second time, and was again put ashore at the Arsenal, from which I walked home. Deducting stoppages, it appeared, that the circuit of Constantinople, the seraglio, and gardens, with all that part of the barbour which is occu pied by the trading-vessels, the town of Galata, and a considerable part of Pera, was made in little more than three hours and a half. The boats were not rowed with any remarkable speed; the wind was contrary, in going to the Seven Towers; and the badness of the road and pavements obliged me to walk very slowly. Population. The population of Constantinople has been as much over-rated as the dimensions. Those who visit only the bazars must fall into a great error; for the appearance in them fully answers the ideas that are commouly entertained of the population. In the upper parts of the town, and in the streets not leading immediately to the markets of merchandize and provisions, there is no bustle, but, in many places, an air of desolation. "In southern climates, as the handicraftsmen work in open shops, a greater proportion of the inhabitants are visible, than with us. In Constantinople, the workshops are generally open to the streets. Considering the stir in Palermo, the height of the buildings, and the huddling manner in which the major part of the inhabitants live there, and comparing them with the appear appearance, generally, of Constantinople, the structure of the houses, and the domestic economy of the Turks, I am almost inclined to think, that the capital of Sicily contains ten times the number, to the square mile, that Constantinople does. If there be a million in London and its suburbs, there certainly is not half that number in the whole of the Ottoman metropolis, including Scutari, as well as Galata and Pera, with all the other little de pendencies connected with them, but known to the inhabitants by other names. "Appearance of the City-The superb distant prospect of Constantinople only serves to render more acute the disappointment which arises from its interior wretchedness. The streets are filthy, narrow, and darkened by the overhanging houses. Few of the buildings are constructed of stone or brick. The whole habitable town, indeed, may be described, as composed either of lath and plaster or of timber. The appearance of the houses is mean; and many of them are much decayed. The state of the capital accords with the condition and decline of the empire. "Constantinople, seen from the harbour, greatly resembles London, seen from the Thames. If it has no single feature comparable to St. Paul's cathedral, the great moschs are splendid edifices; and the effect of the whole view is greatly superior to any that can be taken of London. Seraglios.-The grand seraglio of the sultan presents a confused assemblage of objects, houses, domes, trees, and pavilions. Many of the domes are surmounted with gilded ornaments, and the view is very elegant; but there is no central grandeur for the eye to rest on. The spectacle, however, tends to fill the find with the fictitious images of oriental pomp. "During my stay in Constantinople, no foreign ambassador had occasion to be presented to the sultan; I had not, therefore, an opportunity of seeing the state apartments; and the ladies having come in from the summer-palace, permission to see the other chambers of the inner court could not be procured. But a gentleman, who once obtained access into the interior of the seraglio, has described the haram to me as consisting of very ordinary apartments. The floor of the principal room was covered with four English Brussels carpets, of different patterns; and, in another, he saw a number of English engravings. But nothing either rich or strange' seemed to have struck his fancy: I have, therefore, concluded, that it was about as consonant to the town, as the town is to the empire. "The pavilion in which the sultan receives the public visits of the captain pashaw, is not difficult of access. It is a neat little square edifice, surrounded with a colonnade of unpolished marble, and crowned with a dome. It stands on the outside of the ancient embattled wall of the gardens, looking towards Pera. The ceiling, between the pillars and the inner building, is divided into quadratures, painted dark blue. The divisions are gilded, and the walls are encrusted with porcelain and marble. Here the saltan reposes on a throne of silver, lulled by the murmur of the sea, the hun of the cities, and the sound of a fountain that plays at his feet.-Notwithstanding all the glitter, and the costly splendour of the throne, few travellers would prefer this pavilion to the temples in the gardens of Stowe. Never theless, it is a work of taste, for it is consistent in all its parts, and the subordination of parts is well preserved but there is no object presented to the imagination. The guards admitted us, on asking them, as we happened to pass in a boat. unpolished marble, and, so far from being elegant, they scarcely deserve to be called neat. "The grounds round this palace have great capabilities;' but they are in a slovenly rade state. In the little adornment that art has attempted on them, a flagrant bad taste is evident. The waters of one of the branches of the Lycus are conducted into a straight canal, where they form two cascades, by rushing over a number of marble basons, in the shape of large shells. At each side of the upper of these two waterfalls, stands a little temple, like a parrot's cage, in one of which we saw a Turk, saying his prayers. Below the second cataract, opposite to the windows of the Pavilion, four large copper eels, twisted together, seem to have started up in the middle of the stream for the express purpose of spouting water. A Frenchman, I have been told, was the designer of the cascades and the eels. "I visited also, with a friend, a summer-palace on the banks of the Lycus, where there is a similar, but less splendid pavilion, and a haram, to which, as we were informed, the late Sultan Selim sometimes carried his ladies. As the haram is no longer used, the servants, who had charge of the building, readily admitted us into the apartments. They are, no doubt, much inferior to those of the grand seraglio, but they may be considered as furnishing a criterion by which to judge of them. The mansion itself is lath and plaster, fantastically painted; and the rooms are arranged along the sides of galleries. The interior has more the appearance of an extensive English inn, than of a palace. The apartment, or, as it perhaps should be called, the drawing-room of the principal sultana, is only twenty-one feet long, fifteen broad, and about ten in height. The ornaments were in no other respect remarkable, except in being clumsily carved, and gaudily gilded. I was diverted by the de- Buildings. The chief moschs are sign of a landscape in one of the the great ornaments of this capital; other chambers. It represented a but, though stately structures, it is gulph opening to the ocean. The impossible to look at them long surface of the sea was covered with without being disposed to think boats, and the land adorned with of old-fashioned cupboards, where moschs and villages. In the fore- punch-bowls, turned upside-down, ground was a stately bridge, through are surrounded with inverted teawhich the waters of the ocean were cups, pepper-boxes, and candleseen flowing, and tumbling down sticks. in foaming cascades. The baths of the ladies are small closets, about ten feet square, rudely paved with There are several summer palaces on the banks of the Bosphorus. Taken altogether, the residences of the sultan form a truly imperial establishment: but the art of the landscape-gardener is unknown at Constantinople; and the finest scenery in the world is neither vaJued nor admired. "Mr. Canning having procured a firman, to allow the British travellers to visit the moschs, we as sembled sembled early in the morning, and, followed by a crowd of other curious strangers, who availed them selves of the opportunity, proceeded to the celebrat d St..Sophia. I had been there, privately, before; for, by paying five piastres to the doorkeepers, strangers may be admitted into the galleries. Though it is pretended that the view from them is greatly inferior to what is seen from the area below, it is still sufficient to satify all the common desires of curiosity. "The present exterior of this building has, no architectural symmetry. It consists of clumsy but tresses, raised to preserve it from the effects of the earthquakes that have so often threatened it with total ruin; and they conceal the whole of its original form. "The interior, however, is very grand. The dome being shallower than that of St. Paul's, has the ap. pearance of heing larger. The supporters of the dome are so arranged, as to make the general effect resemble, in some degree, a vast pavilion; but, as a work of scientific art, the St. Sophia mest be considered as a very clumsy structure. The ornaments of the capitals of the columns scem designed rather to imitate teathers than the acanthus, and the native beauty of the marbles is not enriched by any shew of taste or skill. In point of workmanship, it is immensely inferior to Westmin ster Abbey. Ten thousand men are said to have been employed in the construction of the St. Sophia, and nearly six years were consumed in completing it. The most remark able of its ornaments are eight columns of red porphyry, which Aurelian placed, originally, in the Temple of the Sun, and eight others of green porphyry, a gift from the magistrates of Ephesus. It is two hundred and sixty-nine feet long, and two hundred and forty-three broad. "From the St. Sophia we went to the mosch of Sultan Achmet, which occupies one side of the ancient hippodrome. In external ap pearance it greatly excels the other; and the effect of the dim religious light of the stained (not painted) windows, is very fine. We also visited three of the other great moschs; but the uniformity which we found in them soon satiated our curiosity. There is little in these buildings that an artist would think it worth his while to study; and their uniformity was, to me, exceedingly tiresome, At Sultan Soliman's we halted. It is famous for having been the theatre of a terri ble uproar, occasioned by the insolence and folly of a Russian ambassador, and the drove that attended him. Presuming on their privilege and protection, without regarding the Turks, who happened, at the tine, to be praying, they went a bout measuring and making a noise, 'which so provoked the disturbed worshippers, that they rose in a fury, chased them from the mosch, kicking and thrashing the disturbers with an indignation which religious zeal and political animosity combined to heighten. The sultan, on being informed of the affair, sent to the ambassador, and persuaded him to pocket the affront with about fifteen hundred pounds sterling. "Schools. As in Christendom during the dark ages, any learning that exists among the Turks, is possessed by the priesthood. The schools attached to the moschs founded by the sultans, may be regarded as institutions similar to the colleges which were formerly con nected 1 nected with the Roman Catholic cathedrals. Several are supported by revenues arising from certain villages or territorial endowments; but they chiefly depend on allow ances from the public income of the state. "In the time of the late Selim, the academies were liberally maintained, and the progress of instruction was rapid; but since the revolution by which he was deposed, the necessities of the government have abridged the maintenance of the public instructors. In the time of Selim, a Switz mathematician, who had been recommended by a British minister, was paid at the rate of hive and twenty pounds per month. His salary was afterwards augmented to thirty-five; but the native teachers were never so munificently rewarded. The occasional encouragement of foreign professors of knowledge, scems requisite to the improvement of nations. "Hospitals.-There are two hospitals in Pera for the piague; and, in Constantinople, several for ordinary invalids. Except one for the insane, I believe that all the others are supported by the Christians. I visited the Turkish bedlam. The building, on the outside, is plain and simple; but the court, around which the cells are constructed, is built of marble, and the arcades resemble those of the Royal Exchange of London. Never having seen the iuterior of a mad-house, I was great ly shocked. Several of the patients, almost entirely naked, were fastened by chains fixed to iron collars round their necks, and sat at the grating of their windows, like savage animals in cages. The rooms were cleanly enough; and I cou'd not avoid noticig, that all the patients had learnt to ask for money, except one, who appeared to be depraved be yond the power of description to delineate. In one of the cells, a young man, who was in a state of stupid melancholy, held out his hand instinctively. His face was pale, and his features assumed a slight cast of curiosity when we entered; but there was no speculation in his eyes: One of his friends, who had come to see him, was using a number of artifices to attract his attention; but he continued, regarde lessly, to glare. In another cell, we met several ladies, with their slaves and children, diverting themselves at the expense of a merry madman! A young Turk, who was with them, collected paras for the entertain ment. A more facetious lunatic, as we passed the door of his room, invited us to enter. His countenauce was cheerful, and he professed to be contented. "The physician of this hospital was an old, and, as far as beard served, a venerable personage. He told us, that there were four great classes of insanity, distinguished by their causes : "First, Madness, which came from fevers. Secondly, Melancholy, which came from the fires in the city, or other great misfortunes. "Third, Phantasy, which came from wrong conceptions of the imagination. "Fourth, Fits of Delirium, which were produced by the magical devices of enemies. "The first kind of insanity, he assured us, was rarely cured; but the second and third, ofter and ea-, sily. The fourth, however, was incurable, unless the en banter could be discovered, and obliged to break up his spell. "The Plague.When the great population of this town is considered, the narrowness of the streets, the |