nts, the accumulations, though great,
are not so enormous as they would otherwise become.

The second class comprises the funds devoted to the maintenance of
public baths, libraries, fountains, alms-houses, and of useful and
charitable institutions in general. They are frequently charged with
annuities to the representatives of the founder; and in all
foundations for gratuitous education, or distribution of alms or food,
founders' kin have the preference. They are all registered in the
treasury; but the foundation is invalidated if the property assigned
for its support be encumbered by mortgages or other obligations:--nor
can any one labouring under an incurable disease convert freehold
property into wakoof except as a testator, in which case the
inalienable rights of the heirs to two-thirds of the property are
secured:--a third part only, according to law, being otherwise
disposable by will. The third class of wakoofs (called _ady_ or
customary, the others being termed _shary_ or legal, as sanctioned by
religious law) are considered as secular foundations, consisting of
lands purchased by the religious wakoofs from their accumulations, on
reversion at the death of the assigner, or failure of his direct
heirs, for an inconsiderable portion of their value, leaving to the
vendors in the interim the full enjoyment of the property, which is
frequently continued to their nephews and brothers on the same terms.
"At first this plan was not considered lucrative for the wakoofs: but
when the system was widely extended, the multitude of assignments,
which fell in every year from death and default of issue, soon crowned
the speculation with success, in a country where the tenure of life is
eminently uncertain, not only from the caprices of sultans, but from
the constant ravages of plague.... The advantages to sellers were
equally great. They secured themselves from confiscation, and their
heirs from spoliation at their demise. They were enabled to raise
money to the value of a sixth or eighth of their capital, on payment
of a trifling interest, and yet retained the full enjoyment of the
whole for themselves and immediate issue. By founding these wakoofs,
sellers are also enabled to check the extravagance of their children,
who can neither mortgage nor alienate the property--a practice nearly
as common in Turkey as in other countries."

Not less than three-fourths of the buildings and cultivated lands
throughout the empire, accor