And thus forgotten, I await,
By silence lost, Amyclae's fate.

* * * * *

CHAPTERS OF TURKISH HISTORY.
RISE OF THE KIUPRILI FAMILY--SIEGE OF CANDIA.

NO. IX.

The restraint which the ferocious energy of Sultan Mourad-Ghazi, during
the latter years of his reign, had succeeded in imposing on the
turbulence of the Janissaries,[1] vanished at his death; and for many
years subsequently, the domestic annals of the Ottoman capital are
filled with the details of the intrigues of women and eunuchs within the
palace, and the sanguinary feuds and excesses of the soldiery without.
The Sultan Ibrahim, the only surviving brother and successor of Mourad,
was in his twenty-fifth year at the time of his accession; but he had
been closely immured in the seraglio from the moment of his birth; and
the dulness of his temperament (to which he probably owed his escape
from the bowstring, by which the lives of his three brothers had been
terminated by order of Mourad) had never been improved by cultivation.
Destitute alike of capacity and inclination for the toils of government,
he remained constantly immersed in the pleasures of the harem; while his
mother, the Sultana-Walidah Kiosem, (surnamed _Mah-peiker_, or the
_Moon-face_,) who had been the favourite of the harem under Ahmed I.,
and was a woman of extraordinary beauty and masculine understanding,
kept the administration of the state almost wholly in her own hands. The
talents of this princess, aided by the ministers of her selection, for
some time prevented the incompetency of the sultan from publicly
manifesting itself; but Ibrahim at last shook off the control of his
mother, and speedily excited the indignant murmurs of the troops and the
people by the publicity with which he abandoned himself to the most
degrading sensuality. The sanctity of the harem and of the bath had
hitherto been held inviolate by even the most despotic of the Ottoman
sovereigns; but this sacred barrier was broken through by the unbridled
passions of Ibrahim, who at length ventured to seize in the public baths
the daughter of the mufti, and, after detaining her for some days in the
palace, sent her back with ignominy to her father. This unheard-of
outrage at once kindled the smouldering discontent into a flame; the
Moslem population rose in instant and universal revolt; and a scene
ensued almost without parallel in history--the deposition of an absolute
sovere