TO THE BISHOP OF LINCOLN. 



175 



was received yesterday has completely put an end to every expect- 

 ation. The message was from Youssouf Aga, and stated that he had 

 been informed by the Selictar Aga, that " the Sultan could not think 

 of acceding to our request, as it might subject him to similar ones 

 from other persons." — I feel some disappointment, my Lord, in not 

 having been permitted completely to ascertain the object of my 

 mission, after making so long a stay in the country ; but I confess I 

 have not the smallest idea that any Greek MSS. can exist in any part 

 of the Seraglio : there certainly were none in the principal library, 

 and from every enquiry I can make there does not appear the smallest 

 probability that such MSS. exist any where else. The Capudan 

 Pasha, (to whom I was introduced by Lord Elgin's kindness, pur- 

 posely to make the inquiry,) assured me that he himself had been 

 brought up in the Seraglio, and had passed near thirty years in it ; 

 that he was attached to that particular department in it called the 

 Khasne (Treasury) ; for the officers in the interior of the Seraglio are 

 divided into four classes, viz. (to speak in our language) those be- 

 longing to the Guards, to the Kitchen, to the Bed-chamber, and to the 

 Treasury. The Capudan Pasha declared that he had been in every 

 part of the Khasne ; that he had never seen, or even heard of any 

 MSS. being deposited in it ; that if any such did exist, they could 

 not but be known, as it is an invariable rule, upon the appointment 

 of every new Treasurer, that an inventory of the contents of the 

 Khasne should be made out ; this inventory, his Highness informed 

 me, is minutely accurate, and not the smallest article which the 

 Khasne contains can be omitted in it. If, therefore, any manuscripts 

 had ever been preserved there, they must have been inserted in these 

 inventories, which he was certain they were not. This account of 

 the Capudan Pasha is entirely comformable to the information I 

 received upon the same subject from the venerable and excellent 

 Patriarch of Jerusalem ; he assured me that he had not the smallest 

 idea that any Greek MSS. existed in the Seraglio, or in any other 

 repository belonging to the Sultan ; — that if any had existed (such 

 is the veneration of the modern Greeks for what belonged to their 



