36 CONSTANTINOPLE. 
CHAP, precisely the sort of sideboard seen in the 
> poorest inns of England; and, while it may 
be said that no person would pay half the 
amount of its freight to send it back again, 
it shews the nature of the presents that were 
then made to the Porte by foreign Princes. 
From these formal terraces we descended to 
the Gardener's lodge, and left the gardens by 
the gate through which we entered. 
This copious description of the interior of the 
Seraglio would not have been introduced, but 
in the hope that an account of it might afford 
amusement, owing to the secluded nature of the 
objects to which it refers, and the little proba- 
bility there is of so favourable an opportunity 
being again granted, to any traveller, for a 
similar investigation'. 
(l) This visit of the author to the interior of the Sultans palace, as it 
has excited more of sensation than the subject merits, so has the account 
of it been also liable to misrepresentation and to reproof. It has beers 
urged, that the German gardener's safety may be endangered by its pub- 
lication ; although this gentleman had left Constantinople, to reside at 
Vienna, when the Jirsl edition of tliis Work appeared. It has been more- 
over said, that the author was not the first Christian traveller who had 
explored the interior of the Seraglio ; which, perhaps, may be true. All 
that he maintains is this ; that no Christian traveller ever before ven- 
tured to examine the whole of the interior of the Charem, whatever may 
have happened since the time when this visit was made. Many were en- 
couraged, by his example, to oblain admission afterwards into the Seraglio 
Gardens; 
