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LETTERS FROM PROFESSOR CARLYLE 



Kiosk or Pavilion, where the Bostangee Bashi usually passes the 

 day. He was engaged at the Porte, and we were shewn into a small 

 guard-chamber in order to wait his return ; a messenger however 

 soon arrived to conduct us to him. Thus escorted, we were 

 suffered to pass the guard and to enter the court, or rather garden of 

 the Seraglio. This spot presented an appearance altogether new to 

 me; the trees are neither planted in avenues nor scattered with the 

 careless simplicity of nature, nor put in with the laboured irregularity 

 of modern improvers; it is neither a kitchen-garden nor a flower- 

 garden, nor an orchard, nor a court, but something composed of all 

 these together ; it seems as if it had been formed out of a large 

 wood, principally consisting of cypresses, by scooping them into 

 walks, sometimes straight and sometimes bending, which cross each 

 other at different angles, and run off at different directions ; the 

 trees only that border these walks having been left and all the others 

 cut away. A very thick paling gaudily painted, stretches itself 

 from one tree to another ; the ground between the walks is variously 

 cultivated, some of it being appropriated to shrubs, some to fruit 

 trees, some to flowers, and no small part laid out as a mere kitchen- 

 garden. The lodges for the guards are placed without order at the 

 bottom of some of the largest trees, the under boughs of which 

 serve for the roofs of the buildings; we crossed this large space 

 diagonally, and entered a smaller one surrounded with the habitations 

 of the officers of the guard, into one of which we were introduced. 

 It is inconceivable how mean these buildings appear ; but indeed this 

 is the case with most of the structures in Turkey after they have 

 stood any time. The characteristics of Turkish architecture, (for I 

 assure Your Lordship there exists an architecture in this country as 

 completely mi generis, and as strictly confined to its own rules and 

 proportion as the Gothic or the Grecian,) are airiness and splendor, 

 and I think a person must be very fastidious indeed who is not 

 struck with the light and brilliant appearance exhibited by many of 

 the Turkish edifices, while they continue in a state of perfection; 

 but unfortunately the frail materials of which they are composed, 



