room, a detached building half filled by an immense square divan surmounted by a canopy. In a corner of this formidable affair, which resembles an overgrown four-poster bed, the Grand Signors reclined when receiving the ambassadors of foreign Powers. It was rather a humiliating performance for the ambassadors. Before being admitted to the Presenee they proceeded to the Hall of the Divan, and, under the supervision of the Grand Vizier, were fed and decked with fur-lined robes. Thus prepared, they were led to the throneroom, where, standing at a respectful distance, and firmly held under each arm by a palace attendant, lest they should seek to harm the august potentate, they read their letters of credence, to which the Sultan replied with an inclination of the head. Then, still clad in their furs, they rejoined their suite without, and were conducted back to their embassies in solemn procession, meeting, indeed, with more respectful treatment outside the palace than inside it. It may here be recalled that until comparatively modern times it was the custom of the sultans to imprison in the dungeon of the Seven Towers the diplomatic representatives of powers at war with Turkey; and we read that during the reign of Mohammed IV. (164887) a French ambassador was called a Jew by the Grand Vizier and beaten with a stoel, the dragoman of the Imperial internuncio frequently bastinadoed, and a Russian envoy

The French artist Van Mour, Peintre ordinaire du Roi en Levant, who between the end of the seventeenth and the middle of the eighteenth centuries was attached to the households of five successive French ambassadors to the Porte, has left us a faithful record of these ceremonies, which remained unchanged in form until the reign of Sultan Mahmud II., that ruthless iconoclast of Turkish traditions. We see, in the collection of Van Meur's pictures preserved in Amsterdam, the ambassador, who has dismounted at the Orta Qapu, entering the second court, preceded by the palace officials with their staves of office, while under the gallery to the left the janissaries swarm like bees around the cauldrons of pilav to which they have been treated. We see the ambassador and his staff being banqueted by the Grand Vizier before the audience, each guest enveloped in his robe of fur. Lastly, at the audience itself, we see the ambassador inclining before the Sultan remote and aloof on his enormous throne.

One quaint conceit of the throne-room has still to be mentioned. It is a tap of water and small marble basin let into the wall beside the throne-its purpose, that the sound of the running water should prevent eavesdroppers from overhearing conversations within the audiencechamber.

In the middle of this third court, which we entered by the Gate of Felicity, stands

another detached building, the Sultan's Library. Its single chamber is lined with cases packed with oriental manuscripts ; 8 handsome Saracenic glass - lamp hangs from the dome, and the walls are adorned with Qoranic texts, written in several cases by the sultans themselves. It must be remembered that in former days in Turkey, and in the Moslem East in general, caligraphy formed an essential accomplishment of every welleducated person. Even the Imperial princes were not exempted from the study of the art, and could probably turn out almost as good a yafté as a professional illuminator of texts. Another curiosity of the library is an old English musical clock, probably the gift of an English king to an eighteenth-century sultan. In the face of this clock is an ingenious arrangement of ships travelling up and down billowy waves whenever the clock plays its tunes; and one can imagine how this contrivance must have delighted the toy-loving Orientals of those days.

In a gallery, which forms the eastern boundary of the court, is housed the Imperial collection of china, well arranged in two long rooms. From the fourteenth century onwards, fine specimens of every variety of Chinese porcelain found their way from Pekin to the Turkish court; and the collection, happily preserved through many vicissitudes, thus affords a remarkable synopsis of Chinese ceramic art. During the Dar

danelles campaign the collection was removed to Konia for safe custody, but has now returned without mishap to its home in the Seraglio. The corresponding gallery on the western side is the Sultan's Treasury. It is now closed, and the treasure, if still intact, stored out of sight; but the writer well remembers, on his first visit to Constantinople in 1904, the amazement with which he beheld its splendours almost barbario. Thrones encrusted with rubies and pearls, the State robes of a score of sultans stiff with gems and gold, diamond aigrettes, daggers, and scimitars jewelled with uncut emeralds of fantastic size, sceptres and maces, an enormous basin of porphyry heaped high with with golden ducats,-these, and much more, told of centuries of victorious campaigns in lands of fabled riches.

A small double door of iron, heavily bolted, leads from behind the Treasury into the Haremlik itself. Though much has been written about this mysterious fastness, few strangers have penetrated behind its iron doors, and descriptions have generally been as misleading as they have been fanciful. Until about ten years ago, when the last of the old ladies of the Seraglio were transferred to the Bosphorus Palaces, no profane eye had seen the real Haremlik; and the number of persons who since then have been allowed to wander through its now deserted rooms is small. The conventional accounts of the Haremlik speak of stately

marble halls, of lofty and luxurious rooms filled with all the riches of the East, of kiosks and fountains of plashing water, of all the appurtenances of the Arabian Nights. The reality is very different from this, and very much more interesting. Far from being a suooession of vast and symmetrical apartments, the Haremlik is a veritable rabbit-warren-a jumble of small courts, corridors, narrow staircases, and innumerable tiny rooms. The upper stories, overlooking the Seraglio gardens, are built of wood, and the walls of the rooms, too, are decorated with rococo woodwork panelling. The lower floors are of more solid construction. The stone walls are enormously thick, and the rooms lined with the most delightful of Persian and Kutahia tiles, the designs differing in every room, It is these tiles which are the most typical and pleasing feature of the Haremlik; they give to it an old-world Eastern atmosphere far truer than the pseudoorientalism suggested by pictures of gauze-olad odalisques eating sweetmeats on cushioned divans. Of furniture there is little left, and what remains is for the most part Louis XV. A few good specimens of the old Soutari velvets and Brussa brocades have been preserved, and cover sofas evidently made in France. The smallness of the rooms is a constant source of surprise. Even the sultan's famous Turkish bath, where Selim the Sot slipped and broke his skull when over-full of Cyprus wine, is no larger than the baths to be found in

Here, too, is a semi-detached two-storied building, outwardly of great beauty but of sinister memories. It has a widely overhanging roof, no windows on the ground floor, and only a few, which are heavily barred, on the upper floor. The outside of this building is faced with mellow Kutahia tiles from the ground to the overhanging roof, and externally it is perhaps the loveliest, as it is probably the leastknown part of the Haremlik. For this delight to the eye bears a forbidding name, the Qafes,

which means "the oage," and even now the interior is inaccessible. Here, in this gilded cage, the heirsapparent to the throne of Turkey were immured with the palace girls and pages set apart for their service, in all other respects rigidly secluded from contact with the world until released by the sultan's death. They then emerged, blinking, as it were, at the daylight and utterly ignorant of affairs; and from the seolusion of a narrow prison