alls are
blazoned with sentences from the Koran, written in gold on a black
ground in those fantastic Turkish characters which seem better adapted
to express the vagaries of a poetical fancy than to become the vehicles
of sober thought.

From the hall we pass into a large reception-salon, where a double row
of windows of richly stained glass represent a variety of rural scenes.
Ceiling and doors are richly gilded; the workmanship of the latter is
exquisite. Broad divans, resplendent with crimson velvet, run all round
the room. In the centre a fountain springs from a basin of porphyry. In
this room everything is magnificent, but its effect is neutralized by
the curious fashion in which the walls are painted, their surface being
covered with the inventions of a prolific fancy in the shape of castles
and harbours, bridges, rivers, islands--all crowded together with a
sublime disregard for perspective--while in niches above the doors are
collected all kinds of children's toys, such as wooden dolls' houses,
fruit-trees, models of ships, and little figures of men writhing in a
thousand contortions. These interesting objects were accumulated by one
of the last of the Khans, who would shut himself up every day in this
room in order to admire them. "Such childishness," as Madame de Hell
remarks, "so common among the Orientals, would induce us to form an
unfavourable opinion of their intelligence, were it not redeemed by
their innate love of beauty and their genuine poetic sentiment. We may
forgive the Khans the strange devices on their walls in consideration of
the silvery fall of the shining fountain and the adjoining garden with
its wealth of bloom."

The hall of the divan is of regal magnificence; the mouldings of the
ceiling, in particular, are of exquisite delicacy. But every room has in
it many evidences of the wealth and taste of its former occupants, and
all are adorned with fountains, and the glow and gleam of colour. Not
the least interesting is that which belonged to the beautiful Countess
Potocki. It was her ill fate to inspire with a violent passion one of
the last of the Crimean Khans, who carried her off and made her absolute
queen and mistress of his palace, in which she lived for ten years,
struggling between her love for an infidel, and the penitence that
brought her prematurely to the grave. "The thought of her unhappy
fortune," says Madame de Hell, "invested everything we beheld with a
magic charm. The Russ