The Sun.
London, England, 1860-12-21 00:00:00

sorbed in rearing this great monument of the religion of
the early Greek enspire. God alone knows how far it vas
the pride and how far it was the religion of Justinian the
prompted its building just oweide the walls of the old By
zantium f Xenophon.
" I could quote t Procepine, Aostthies, Silentieriti
Evaerae, odinus, neange Hits, 13 rs lot, Bush, guru,
when,l
and Fassati, most of when, may mei tentsliy mention,
know o y through the footnotes of that monster of et udi-
tion, Mr. Edward Gibbon, to show that all the riches and
ancient splendour of East and West went to adorn this
dingy sanctuary, now swaddled in matting, and daubed
with ochry wash.
Its cedar came from Lebanon; its porphyry columns
came from the great Temple of the Sun at Barslbec : they
were a widow's dowry bequeathed to the emperor : eight
others came from Diana's temple at Ephesus. To prevent
fire, wood, except in the dome and one or two doors, was
scantily used. All parts of the world sent their marbles to
frame the great church of St. Sophia. Thessaly and
Molossus sent theirs, and the pavement was Proconnesian
There was the Bosphoric white and black, the green
marble of Laconia ; the Carystian pale, with iron veins ;
the Phrygian rosy and purple ; the Carian and Lydian
white and red ; but it is difficult to trace most of these now;
the pillars of Ephesus are dulled and Clark; the costly
Apollonian porphyry of as opaque purple, in enormous
Ideas, banded with bronze, is the only real wonder ot the
existing church.
" But there was a time when the dome was all gold and
mosaic ; when even the ba ustrades of the ehair, the capi-
tals of the pillars, and the ornaments of the doors and
women's galleries were of gilt bronze; when the walls
shone with mosaics, as if enamelled with jewels ; when the
sanctuary was piled with forty thousand pounds weight of
silver, and when every vase and vestment of the church
was heaped with gold and gems; when the altar in the
east shone like the noonday sun ; when the clergy and
singers in white robes filled all the space of the choir;
when the poorer Greeks filled the nave, the penitents the
portico, and the women of Constantinople the galleries;
when all eyes turned to the great gilt balustrade that ran
from north to south, from the Baalbec pillars to the
columns of Diana, because on one side rose the throne of
the emperor, and on the other the throne of the patriarch.
But the baths, and circuses, and theatres, and porticos of
that age are gone, and only a large, tawdry, defaced, defiled
building now remains. The Shechinah is long since
passed from it.
" It is difficult now even to believe that it is the scene
consecrated by so many legends. Can this be the building
whose completion Justinian celebrated with fourteen days'
rejoicing, with sacrifices, and with the distribution of gold
coins ? Can this be the central temple of Christianity that
was built up of the fragments of the broken limbs of the
Pagan Dagon, of columns from the Troas and Assyria,
from Athens and the Cyclades, from the temples of Isis
and Osiris, Cybele, Apollo, Pallas, and Diana ? Was it
when these walls were building that Justinian came at
siesta time, dressed in coarse linen, with a stick in his
hand and a turban round his head, to urge on the work-
men ? Was it to a boy here, guarding the masons' tools,
that an angel appeared in the disguise of a eunuch ? Was
it this building that an archangel specially took in keep-
ing ? Can it be those green-winged figures of seraphim (as
at St. Mark's) at the four corners of the dome now painted
over and showing dimly through the semi-opaque paint-
ing—that the Turks believe to be spirits--that during
times of war and distress used to utter oracles, and who,
before the birth of Mahomet, announced that the child to
be born in Arabia would excel Chosroes and Shedad ? Is
this really the building where they still show a walled-up
staircase, through which a priest, bearing the host, disap-
peared when Mehemet burst with his sabres into St.
Sophia r
•
" I could not ascend the great dome that rises over the
wide cupola guarding the four minarets; but I was told
that the crescent there is 50 yards across and that Sultan
Murad spent 50,000 ducats in gilding it. It shines so, that
it can be seen a hundred miles off at sea, and from Mount
Olympus I saw it glimmer like a golden glow-worm.
" Bat the object which especially touched my heart in
St. Sophia was a colossal figure over the apse at the east
end, showing dimly through a blank surface of gilding. I
follow the dim outline for a moment with my eyes, and
gradually become sensible of tne perfect figure. It is
Christ, the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity,
that Divine wisdom to whom Justinian reared this great
temple centuries ago.

"It seemed to Me a perfect emblem of the half-restored
Christianity of the place ; and I felt at that moment sure,
as if God had spoken to me from heaven, that come day,
and not far distant, the cross will replace the crescent upon
the dome of St Sophia; and that figure of the glorified
Christ, breaking through the foul Arabian mist, will shine
forth in restored glory, to gather brightness more and more
until the perfect day."

As the best sample of the general style and cha-
racter of the work we subjoin the following
extracts :
" Now these fountains arose either from royal magnifi-
cence (how easy it is to be generous with other people's
money), or from the bequests of charitable people, dying
Turks not unfrequently leaving enormous legacies, not
only to build, but also to maintain these fountains. Some-
times they are square, isolated buildings, standing by the
river side, or usefully in the centre of some market-place ;
never however, for mere ornament or display, like our
poor little squirts and sloppy tea-tables in Trafalgar •square.
Generally, as in this instance, they project in a sort of bow,
or apse, from thewall ; sometimes, in thehumbler instances,
mere brass taps project from a sort of ornamental altar-
piece flush with the wall. They are never quite alike, but
these features all the larger ones have in common : an over-
lapping roof of extreme breadth, so as to cast the greatest
possible amount of shadow ; much inscription, and cursive
and undulating floral ornament, either painted or carved in
marble ; a terrace with steps round its base, and tall grat-
ings, round the lower openings of which are chained small
brass vessels to drink out of. No wonder, then, that as
people come here to bathe in shadow, and to drink the
liquid coolness fresh from the well that guards it, as the
melon does its inner juice, the fountain becomes, almost

from necessity, a special lounge for everybody but the
women. Here come the roast chesnuts and the green
peaches, the figs and the pickled cucumbers, the sherbet
and the lemonade, the horse-boys and the beggars, the
fakir and the guitar player, the street boy and the wild
dog; here the porter rests his luggage mountains, and the
araba man looks for custom.
! +1 i i i

" The gratings that shut in the fountain rooms are
always specially beautiful, and generally of a pattern de .
vised on purpose for the building. They are fine as jeTriel-
ler's work, and full of the most cunning harmony rf, flow.
ing lines, trefoiled or heart-shaped, and blossotujig into a
thousand shapes of ingenuity and fairy-like art. The
shafts between the gratings are marble, and waist high
comes the lower wall, on the top of Which rest the brass
chatties.

" Most of these fountains have a guardian who lives
within, at least by day, and who sees that nothing is in-
jured or defaced. There this venerable dryad hears the
water hour by hour rinse and trickle, as he reads his Koran
and dreams about paradise, and the future rewards of the
charitable, such as he who endowed this fountain.
• •

" Two things always are seen about a Turkish fountain:
the first, pigeons; the second, street boys. Always pigeons
on the lead roof, cooing, spreading their veering purple
necks to the light, fondling, pecking, or fluttering; always
street boys, watchful and mischievous as apes, who sit in
the niches, with their dirty backs against the gilding and
carving, idle and, because idle, happy. Over them lies the
broad sadow, and they lie under it as in a shady wood,
defying the heat that makes the paving-stones just beyond
the shadow all but red-hot. They think nothing of th
dead men's charity, or of the carving fine as needleworke
but they munch their ehesants and are happy, thieving'
mischievous apes that they are. Often, too, a boatman's'
oars or a hammers elastic pole rest up against the carved
brackets, while the owners snatch a nap under the grate-
ful shadow, having first drunk of the fountain. Hundreds
of times in the day these brass cups, all in a row under the
stanchioned grating, are filled and emptied.
"There is something humane aid poetical in this per-
petual enforcement of charity that von receive in a Turkish
street. There are the scavenger dogs, waiters on Provi-
dence, that abound in every street, who, though a good
deal drubbed and bruised, are still partly maintained by the
kindness of old Turks, who feed certain of them daily;
then there are the countless clouds of pigeons, har-
boured on the mosque domes, and guarded with as much
care as if they were young angels; and, lastly, to crown
the whole, these innumerable fountains, of all sizes, from
that at the seraglio gate, with its square bulk and circular
towers at the angles, to the mere arch, tap, and tank:
everywhere water gushing forth from dead men's hands
into living men's mouths, expressing a benevolence that
has striven to be immortal.
• • e •
" And in thinking of fountains, the gentleman who on a
fine day feels it so hot in Regent- street that he must really,
perforce, go into Verey's for a strawberry ice, must remem-
ber that it is not to relieve such trivial thirst that Eastern
fountaias were erected. It was not for slight, damp warmth,
languor, and dry mouth that the Turks have spent mil-
lions in public fountains. It was for the heat that dries up
all saliva; that inflames the mouth and blackens the lips ;
that dims the eye and makes you giddy, faint, and sick ;
that becomes, if not relieved incessantly, an intolerable
pain and torture, coming, too, when the body is exhausted,
and languor is so great that rest becomes the greatest nega-
tive pleasure that can be conceived.
" In that intolerable city, indeed, all up-hill, where the
streets are paved with loose boulders, walking at noonday
is a work of the greatest fatigue and of the most painful
exertion. Every moment the stranger betakes himself to
peaches, grapes, or figs, of which he keeps a pocketful, and,
when these are gone, to sherbet, lemonade, or some sort of
fruit broth. Imagine, then, what delight, what life-blood,
the penniless and vagabond draws from a draught at the
street fountain."
It was hard times for the bakers twenty years ago,
when you could hardly be a week in Constantinople with-
out seeing one of the tribe groaning with a nail through
his ear, fastening him to his own shop door. That was
the time when women were drowned in sacks in broad day-
light, and when the sight of a rebel pasha's head, brought
in in triumph, has taken away the appetite of inanY2f
Englishman breakfasting with a Turkish Ministders.errou;
there he (the baker) is now, floury, ghostly,
as ever, groping in that black cave of an oven
the unction
of his hop, or twisting rings of bread with
all
lanthopist.
of a feeder of mankind and a well-paid phlhe Sick Man's'
"The fez shops are very numerous in t "at the back
ly. They are of a
city, for turbans decreased, though
deep crimson, and have at the top
ahich always, to prevent
The blocks, too, for
the heavy blue tassel is tied, h a sort of ornament of
and
red stalk, to which
entanglement, is kept in stock it.
paper cut into a lace patte2in
distinct shop. You see them
front of a Turk, who watches
fezes to be kept on, are eni.d
round as cheeses ranged
thinking they were por pies, were it not
could hardly help
them as if he was expectingi•nthem to grow.k Sometimes you
d block
'shewith the flexible sole of his
for seeing the barelegged boy in the background, who,
pushing the un.ruu
Stationers and booksellershardly show at all in Stam-
boul but in the bazaar, and
there in a very • •
limited way, in
foot, keeps it even ion the lathe.
a way,
too,
that makes the Englishman wish they were
away altogether. The tailor, too, does not figure largely,
though you see Turks busy in their shops sewing at quilted
gowns and coverlids stuffed with down ; and you seldom
pass down a street without seeing a man with a bow, such
as the Saracen of Snow Hill could scarcely have drawn,
bowing cotton, with the twang and flutter peculiar to that
occupation, the slave behind being half buried in flock, or
emerging from a swansdown sea of loose white feathers.
"
Thejewellers (frequently Jews) reside chiefly in the
bazaars, both for safety and convenience. There they
sorting great heaps of seed pearl, as if it was so much rice,
squinting through lumps of emerald, or weighing filigree
earrings, with veiled ladies looking on, and black Cleua,soaa
in yellow boots ever in waiting ; but still theree I
few outsiders who sell coarse European
vwearthasins for un-
seemlyrose-
French cases, and large bossy silver watches, with
water, or some such frivolous use, shag
and crusted with patterning, much ped like huge melons,
watched over by the
Turkish police, who, in blue tunics, red fazes, and white