in its style of architecture; but the former surpasses it in regularity; it is indeed one of the most perfect remains of Saracenic architecture. Here also I met with four sisters of those colossal pillars of red granite which still glance in the mosque at Ephesus, as reminiscences of the wondrous temple of Diana. These columns stand in pairs between the pillars of the dome, and support two galleries. Even the Aya Sofia has no columns of such extraordinary circumference. One of them bore formerly the statue of a Venus, called the test of purity. In other respects the Soleymania strives to compete with the Aya Sofia also in the splendour of sentences from the Koran, inscribed in the largest and most skilful characters.

In the mosque of Bajazet I admired the many beautiful slender columns, some of granite, some of jasper, and others of verde antico, all equally deducible from the treasury of antiquity. This mosque

possesses the privilege of supplying the faithful with praying compasses, which always indicate the right position for prayer, namely, the direction of Mecca. A profitable institution!

The Achmedeya has had especially for its object to produce the effect of monstrosity with its dome of nine cupolas, its six minarets, its four columns combined to one of incomparable girth, and its two gigantic chandeliers. Yet it possesses a rare work of art in its marble pulpit for the Friday preacher, and the gifts consecrated to it by the princes and grandees of the empire dazzle with their costliness. It is at the Achmedijia where all the state ceremonies are performed; and it is also hence that the great caravan starts annually for Mecca with its pilgrims, and therefore within it the holy Kaaba garment is suspended, which this caravan brings yearly as a gift from Mecca.

All these mosques contain also the tombs of their founders, partly within and partly without the space devoted to worship. Amongst them there are as venerable as there are pompous objects of inspection. We also visited the sepulchral chapel of Mahomet the Second, whose superb velvet carpets and artistical tablets surpass all the rest. The pious people whom we met with on all sides, had nothing particularly appropriate to our eyes, and least of all those who lay sleeping around the marble pavement. The Turks may possibly believe more positively than even we do, that God bestows abundant harvest fields upon his favourites when asleep.

The two seraglios, the old and the new, can scarcely be despatched in a few words; for the new one more resembles a town than a house-it is a league in circumference. Among the apartments we saw here was one, the walls of which consisted entirely of large mirrors. Seats also I observed as ornamental and as costly as in any of the palaces of the princes of the West. In a glass-case arms

glittered, set with the richest diamonds; opposite it stood a boudoir library of the Sultan's, with books in superb and beautiful bindings. But what chiefly enhances the charms of this imperial dwelling is its view of the sea-that from the marble palace at the point of the seraglio which commands the Bosphorus, the Propontis, and the Golden Horn at once must, at the proper time, be more delightful than all the other spectacles that the Sultan possesses.

But from the gaudy apartments and odoriferous gardens of the seraglio I hasten once more back to ancient Byzantium, whither our excursion to the mosques, beyond the circuit of the temple of St. Sophia, repeatedly brought us. Indeed nothing remains to the present city of Constantine but a few fragments of pillars of all the artistical riches which both the East and the West, now with willing and now with reluctant hand, presented to the former city, in such profusion as if the muses should have no other dwelling-place than on the Bosphorus.

We now stand upon the celebrated Hippodrome, or At Meidan, within view of the mosque of Achmet, the foundation and site of which once formed part of the Hippodrome itself. Its foundation dates from a period anterior to Constantine; but it was under him, on the day of the foundation of the city, that the first of the great races took place, whence it has its name. It has since remained the scene of these admirable and, as regards their consequences to the entire state, most important national recreations. It was also the spot where the most distinguished statues of Athens and of Rome were collected together, as to a triumphal festival of art, from all the islands of the Archipelago and the cities of Asia Minor.

That which far transcended all that has been destroyed was the Hercules Trihesperus, which has even been transferred to heaven as a constellation. That this fell a sacrifice to barbarism under Baldwin and Dandolo, being melted down to make copper money, corresponds indifferently with the reproaches we are accustomed to make against the barbarians of the East. What still remains of all is threefold. First, namely, an Egyptian obelisk of granite, which came hither by way of Athens, and which, besides its hieroglyphics, contains upon its base upon all four sides a eulogy of the Emperor Theodosius. Secondly, a quadrangular colossal column, once covered over with gilt bronze plates, and, at least according to the words of the inscription, comparable with the colossus of Rhodes. It now stands but as a naked skeleton complaining of fire and plunder, and threatens to be speedily in ruins. The third is a short bronze column in the form of a threefold entwinement of snakes, which once had three heads, and is said to have originally supported the Delphic tripod of Apollo. Of the three heads, Mahomet the Second

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struck one off at a single blow; the two others were subsequently abstracted during the night.

Besides all this the Hippodrome has two neighbours which deserve to be seen. One is the ancient cistern of the senator Philoxenos, hyperbolically called "the thousand and one pillars." It consists of three subterranean stories, with nearly seven hundred pillars. All are preserved, although the greater portion of them lie buried in mud. The upper story now serves as a silk-spinning manufactory. The other neighbour of the Hippodrome I formerly mentioned upon my arrival at Constantinople; it is the so-called Burnt Column. It was formerly the superb porphyry column of Constantine, entwined with golden wreaths, upon whose summit that emperor had placed a statue, by Phidias, of Apollo with a glory around his head, transforming Apollo into himself, and adding the inscription, “To Constantine, who shines like the sun." When the statue and the three upper pieces, of the eight of which the shaft of the lofty column was formed, were precipitated to the ground by lightning, their place was supplied by a large golden cross. But of all this there now only stands a melancholy column, held together by iron rings, which, from the numerous conflagrations whereby it has suffered, bears the name of the "Burnt Column." It yet conceals within its foundation the rarest treasure, perhaps still uninjured, namely, the palladium formed of the ashes of Pelops, which Constantine transplanted from ancient Rome to the new imperial residence.

To crown our present ride through Constantinople we ascended the tower of the Seraskier, or the tower of the fire guard, in the old seraglio which in fact hovers like an eagle over the city, sea, and environs; and justifies the poet's comparison of it to the nest of a bird of paradise, by spreading at its feet a veritable paradise. But I will not curb the free play of the fancy by describing what I here saw; I will merely mention its extreme point of repose in the south-east, which consists of the snowy summits of the Bithynian Olympus.

THE LIBRARIES. THE PATRIARCHS. THE ISLANDS OF THE PRINCES.

It is an ancient and widely-spread opinion that, both in and about Constantinople, even to the present day, costly Greek manuscripts are concealed. The seraglio of the Sultan, especially, is surmised to contain treasures of the kind. In fact, some curious circumstances are connected with this imperial library. When the learned mission of Pope Nicholas, about the time of the capture of Constantinople, had vainly sought the Hebrew original of the Gospel of St. Matthew, and consequently missed the prize of five thousand scudi, it returned to Rome with the intelligence that it was deposited among the treasures of the seraglio. Almost contemporaneous was the assertion of the celebrated Lascaris, that he had seen in the imperial library at Constantinople the historical work of Diodorus Siculus, in a perfect state. Repeatedly have new inquiries and researches, or rather the preliminary steps to researches, been made. In the 17th century, upon the assurance of an Italian traveller that the lost books of Titus Livius were still extant in the seraglio, an attempt was made to recover them, and thus obtain the large sums that had been offered for them at Florence and at Venice. At the commencement of the last century an Italian ecclesiastic sojourned long at Constantinople, on account of the manuscripts of the seraglio. At last he succeeded, as he says, through the medium of a young assistant, in obtaining the opportunity of inspecting them, and he made a catalogue of them. This catalogue was shown me at Milan as a rarity; but according to it not a single Greek manuscript was to be found amidst a multitude of Oriental ones: thus the secret of the concealed chest of Greek records remained as much a mystery as before. Other accounts, which even determine the number of certain manuscripts, especially of Biblical ones, include that of a French abbé who, about the year 1728, was sent to the East by his government for the purpose of discovering Greek manuscripts, and who asserts that the manuscripts of the seraglio were one and all burnt under Amurath the Second. If I am rightly informed, not long since a German painter, who was in the good graces of the Sultan, spoke to him with regard to the supposed concealment of literary records in the seraglio. The Sultan is said to have replied that he did not think that any such existed, but that he himself would inquire into it. Of course nothing further took place.

At the present day in Germany, together with the belief in concealed treasures in general, the belief also in the existence of the

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treasures in question has declined; but the incredible is often true in the East. Who would not discredit the possibility of walled-up libraries? yet the walled-up library at Cairo, of which I have before given an account (p. 30), is a fact. The Greek Biblical fragment also, which I was so lucky as to discover and bring home, and which in my opinion is not surpassed in antiquity by any of the Greek vellum codices*, has surprised very many who considered the hopes I entertained of such discoveries, as merely silly enthusiasm. All things considered, there is still, methinks, a probability that the seraglio of the Sultan conceals ancient and valuable Greek manuscripts, although complete obscurity prevails as to their contents. I had some conversation upon this subject (as I shall subsequently relate) with the Greek patriarch Constantius; he strengthened me in my opinion, and thereby confirmed also what he himself had said upon the subject, twenty years ago, in his Greek work upon ancient and modern Constantinople. In proof that unknown Christian treasures lie still concealed in Constantinople, since the period of its conquest, he alleges that, in the year 1680, a golden case was unexpectedly discovered containing the hand of John the Baptist, and inscribed with "The hand which baptised Christ," and was presented by Solyman the Second, to the knights of St. John at Malta, from whom, in the year 1799, it came into the possession of the Russian Emperor Paul the First. But with respect to the manuscripts in question, no diplomatic step will certainly be able, in the first instance, to drag them into light; but that instrument which is more dazzling than sharp, would more readily obtain access to them. The chief enemy which guards the entrance (nor have I any fear of being wrong) is Turkish fanaticism, which might easily surmise that these ancient manuscripts, especially the theological ones, conceal Christian talismans that would precipitate Islamism into some imminent danger; and in matters of faith, as well as in all things that relate to it, the Porte is as inflexible as the Vatican.

I was desirous to pay my respects to the present Greek patriarch of Constantinople. A twofold cause of a delicate character, and of the highest importance to my investigations, caused me to wish to be introduced to him by that envoy whose influence upon him from alliance of creed is not doubtful. The intervention kindly offered to me had something about it that disturbed me in my calculations,

* I have given a more particular account of this in the Wiener Jahrb. 1845, b. ii, and b. iv. Anzeigeblatt für Wissenschaft und Kunst. Of this manuscript, which I call after his Majesty the King of Saxony, Codex Frederico-Augusteus, and which has become the property of the University Library of Leipzig, a splendid and faithfully correct impression is published

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