ed,
may be read, in golden letters, and in all the intricacy of Arabic
penmanship, the beautiful verse:--"God is the Light of the Heavens and the
Earth. His wisdom is a light on the wall, in which burns a lamp covered
with glass. The glass shines like a star, the lamp is lit with the oil of
a blessed tree. No Eastern, no Western oil, it shines for whoever wills."
After the prayers were over, and we had descended to the floor of the
mosque, I spent the rest of my time under the dome, fascinated by its
marvellous lightness and beauty. The worshippers present looked at us with
curiosity, but without ill-will; and before we left, one of the priests
came slyly with some fragments of the ancient gilded mosaic, which, he was
heathen enough to sell, and we to buy.

From St. Sophia we went to Sultan Achmed, which faces the Hippodrome, and
is one of the stateliest piles of Constantinople. It is avowedly an
imitation of St. Sophia, and the Turks consider it a more wonderful work,
because the dome is seven feet higher. It has six minarets, exceeding in
this respect all the mosques of Asia. The dome rests on four immense
pillars, the bulk of which quite oppresses the light galleries running
around the walls. This, and the uniform white color of the interior,
impairs the effect which its bold style and imposing dimensions would
otherwise produce. The outside view, with the group of domes swelling
grandly above the rows of broad-armed sycamores, is much more
satisfactory. In the tomb of Sultan Achmed, in one corner of the court, we
saw his coffin, turban, sword, and jewelled harness. I had just been
reading old Sandys' account of his visit to Constantinople, in 1610,
during this Sultan's reign, and could only think of him as Sandys
represents him, in the title-page to his book, as a fat man, with bloated
cheeks, in a long gown and big turban, and the words underneath:--
"_Achmed, sive Tyrannus._"

The other noted mosques of Constantinople are the _Yeni Djami,_ or Mosque
of the Sultana Valide, on the shore of the Golden Horn, at the end of the
bridge to Galata; that of Sultan Bajazet; of Mahomet II., the Conqueror,
and of his son, Suleyman the Magnificent, whose superb mosque well
deserves this title. I regret exceedingly that our time did not allow us
to view the interior, for outwardly it not only surpasses St. Sophia, and
all other mosques in the city, but is undoubtedly one of the purest
specimens of Oriental architecture extant.