value.

CHAPTER XLVI.

THE APOSTATE IBRAHIM.

Constantinople, like haughty Rome, is built on seven hills--the houses
being so disposed that they do not intercept the view commanded by each
on the amphitheatrical acclivities. But the streets are narrow, crooked,
and uneven; and the grand effects of the numerous stately mosques and
noble edifices are subdued, and in many cases altogether lost, either by
the very insignificant width of the thoroughfares in which they stand,
or by the contiguity of mean and miserable wooden tenements.

The mosque of St. Sophia, once a Christian church, with its magnificent
portico, supported by marble columns, its nine vast folding doors,
adorned with bas-reliefs, and its stupendous dome, a hundred and twenty
feet in diameter; the mosque of the Sultan Solyman, forming an exact
square with four noble towers at the angles, and with its huge cupola,
in the midst; the mosque of the Sultan Ahmed, with its numerous domes,
its tall minarets, and its colonnades supported by marble pillars; and
the mosque of the Sultana Valida, or queen mother of Mohammed the
Fourth, exceeding all other Mussulman churches in the delicacy of its
architecture and the beauty of its columns of marble and jasper,
supplied by the ruins of Troy--these are the most remarkable temples in
the capital of the Ottoman empire.

The Grand Bezestein, or exchange, is likewise a magnificent
structure--consisting of a spacious hall of circular form, built of
free-stone, and surrounded by shops displaying the richest commodities
of Oriental commerce. In the Ladies' Bazaar there is a marble column of
extraordinary height, and on the sides of which, from the foot to the
crown, are represented in admirable bas-reliefs the most remarkable
events which characterized the reign of the Emperor Arcadius, ere the
capital of Roman dominions of the East fell into the hands of the
descendants of Osman.

But of all the striking edifices at Constantinople, that of the Sultan's
Palace, or seraglio, is the most spacious and the most magnificent.
Christian writers and readers are too apt to confound the seraglio with
the harem, and to suppose that the former means the apartments belonging
to the sultan's ladies; whereas the word seraglio, or rather _sernil_,
represents the entire palace of which the harem, or females' dwelling,
is but a comparatively small portion.

The seraglio is a vast inclosure, occupying nearly the entire site of
t