illustration of
the distinction which should be made between beauties derived from
actual scenes and adventures, and compilations from memory and
imagination, which are supposed to display so much more of creative
invention.

And thus they parted, each by separate doors,
Raba led Juan onward, room by room,
Through glittering galleries and o'er marble floors,
Till a gigantic portal through the gloom
Haughty and huge along the distance towers,
And wafted far arose a rich perfume,
It seem'd as though they came upon a shrine,
For all was vast, still, fragrant, and divine.

The giant door was broad and bright and high,
Of gilded bronze, and carved in curious guise;
Warriors thereon were battling furiously;
Here stalks the victor, there the vanquish'd lies;
There captives led in triumph droop the eye,
And in perspective many a squadron flies.
It seems the work of times before the line
Of Rome transplanted fell with Constantine.

This massy portal stood at the wide close
Of a huge hall, and on its either side
Two little dwarfs, the least you could suppose,
Were sate, like ugly imps, as if allied
In mockery to the enormous gate which rose
O'er them in almost pyramidic pride.

CHAPTER XXIV

Dispute with the Ambassador--Reflections on Byron's Pride of Rank--
Abandons his Oriental Travels--Re-embarks in the "Salsette"--The
Dagger Scene--Zea--Returns to Athens--Tour in the Morea--Dangerous
Illness--Return to Athens--The Adventure on which "The Giaour" is
founded

Although Lord Byron remained two months in Constantinople, and
visited every object of interest and curiosity within and around it,
he yet brought away with him fewer poetical impressions than from any
other part of the Ottoman dominions; at least he has made less use in
his works of what he saw and learned there, than of the materials he
collected in other places.

From whatever cause it arose, the self-abstraction which I had
noticed at Smyrna, was remarked about him while he was in the
capital, and the same jealousy of his rank was so nervously awake,
that it led him to attempt an obtrusion on the ambassadorial
etiquettes--which he probably regretted.

It has grown into a custom, at Constantinople, when the foreign
ministers are admitted to audiences of ceremony with the Sultan, to
allow the subjects and travellers of their respective nations to
accompany them, both to swell the pomp of th