The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1878-03-28

tuu6 IN Jn6 Clby. InOuBn you muSt nave
often heard of these dogs, the tradition
that obliges every one who talks about
Constantinople to mention them is too
well established to be disregarded. No
body owns them or feeds them, though
each dog mostly inbabits the same quar-
ter or street and in fact is chased away
or slain il he ventures into the territory
of his neighbors. They are ill-favored
brutes, mostly of brown or yellowish
hue, and are very much in the way as
one walks about. At night they are
serious difficulty, for the streets are not
lighted, and you not only stumble over
them, but are sometimes, when you fall
into one of the holes in the roadway,
tumbled head foremost into nest of
them, whereupon terrible barking and
swapping ensues. However, they don't
molest you unless you first attack them;
and as canine madness is unknown, or
nearly so among them, nobody need fear
hydrophobia.
st. Sophia is one of the wonders of the
world. It is the only great Christian
church which has been preserved from
very early times; for the basilicas of st.
John Lateran and st. Mary the Greater,
at Rome, have been considerably altered.
And in itself it is a prodigy of architec-
tural skill as well as architectural beauty.
Its enormous area is surmounted by O
dome so fat, pitched at so low an angle,
that it seems to hang in air, and one
cannot understand how it retains its CO.
hesion. The story is that Anthemius,
the architect, built it of excessively light
bricks of Rhodian clay. All round it,
dividing the recesses from the great GEN.
trail area, are rows of majestic columns,
brought hither by Justinian, who was
thirty years in building it Ca. d. 538-56S)
from the most famous heathen shrines of
the East, among others from Diana's
temple at Ephesus, ank that of the Sun
at Baalbec. The roof and walls were
adorned with superb mosaics, but the
Mohammedans, who condemn any re-
presentation of living creature, lest it
should tend to idolatry, have covered
over all these figures, though in some
places you can just discern their outlines
through the coat of plaster or whitewash.
In place of them they have decorated
the building with texts from the Koran,
written in gigantic characters round the
dome Zone letter Alif is said to be thirty
feet long), or on enormous boards sus-
pended from the roof, and in four fiat
spaces below the dome they have suffer-
ed to be painted the four archangels
whom they recognize, each represented
by six great wings, without face or other
limbs.
One of the most highly cultivated and
widely travelled ecclesiastics whom Rus
sia possesses (they are, unhappily, few
enough) told me that after seeing nearly
all the great cathedrals of Latin Europe
he felt when he entered st. Sophia that
it far transcribed them all, that now for
the first time his religious instincts had
been satisfied by human work. Mr..
Ferguson, in his " History of Architec-
ture," says something to similar effect.
This will hardly be the feeling of those
whose tastes have been formed on West
ern, or what we call Gothic models, with
their mystery, their complexity, their
beauty of varied detail. But st. Sophia
certainly gives one an impression of
measureless space, of dignity, of majes-
tic unity, which no other church (unless
perhaps the Cathedral of Seville) can
rival. You are moro awed by it, more
lost in it than in st. Peters itself.
In Constantinople there is neither
municipal government nor public opin-
ion. Nobody knows what the Snltan's
ministers are doing, or what is happen.
ing at the scene of war. Everybody
lives in perpetual vague dread of ev-
erybody else. The Turks believe that
the Christians are conspiring with Rus
sia to drive them out of Europe. The
Christians believe that the Turks are
only waiting for q signal to set upon
and massacre them all. thought these
fears exaggerated; and though my
friend and were warned not to venture
alone into st. Sophia, or through the
Turkish quarters, we did both, and no
man meddled with us. Indeed wan
dered alone in the streets of Stamboul
at night, and met no worse enemies
than the sleeping dogs. But the alarms
are quite real if the dangers are not; and
one must never forget that in these
countries slight incident may provoke
q massacre like that of Salonika.
Constantinople is not only city that
belongs to the world; it is in q way it.
self miniature of the world. 1t is moi
serai, which belongs to nobody bu
within whose walls everybody cncamps
drawn by business or by pleasure, bu'
forming no permanent ties, and no
calling himself citizen. 1t has three
distinct histories-Greek, Roman ant
Turkish. Tt is the product of host o
converging infuences-inhuences som,
of which are still at work, making i
different every year from what it wa
before. Religion, and all those customs
which issue from religion, come to i
from Arabia; civilization from Rom'
and the West; both are mingled in thu
dress of the people and the building
where they live and worship. Races
manners, languages, even coins, iron
every part of the East and of Europ
here cross one another and interweav
themselves like the many-coloret
threads in the gorgeous fabric of al
Eastern loom.
The rarest and most subtle charm of
city, as of landscape or of a human
face, is its idiosyncrasy, or Ito spea
somewhat fancifully) its expression, tn
indefinable effect it produces on yo
which makes you feel it to be differen
from all other cities you have seen be
fore. The popularity of Constantinopl
is that, viii e no city has 80 marked
physical character, none has so strangel
confusing and indeterminate socis
one. 1t is nothing, because it is every
thing at once; because it mirrors, lik
the waters of its Golden Horn, thesmar
ners and faces of all the peoples NA
pass in and out of it. Such city is
glorious possession, and no one can n