MOSQUE OF SULTANA VALIDE. 43
The interior of these interesting dwellings is generally fitted up with much taste, and always with a careful regard to cheerfulness. The walls are painted in frescoes, with landscapes, fruits, or flowers: and the ceilings are always beautifully ornamented. In short, they are as fanciful, and almost a frail as fairy-palaces.
PLATE: MOSQUE OF SULTANA VALIDE
MOSQUE OF SULTANA VALIDE,
FROM THE PORT.
"Look in this picture, and an this;
A miniature resemblance."
SHAKESPEARE.
THE handsome court of the Mosque of Yeni Djami has been already described, but the whole effect of the edifice from the water is too striking to be neglected by the artist.
The white and dazzling marble of which it is built, its slender and highly ornamented minarets, its stately portal, and solemn stillness, are brought out in such fine relief against the dark and dingy buildings which cumber the port, and which are loud with industry and contention - that while the mere traveller involuntarily wishes to transport the gleaming temple to a more consistent locality, the painter forgets the turmoil, the filth, and the uproar amid which he gazes on it, in his anxiety to transfer to the pages of his sketch-book so beautiful an object.
The Mosque of the Sultana Valide stands almost on the edge of the port, from which its court is only separated by the Balook, of Fish Bazâr; and this point being the ferry between Galata and Stamboul, is constantly thronged with boats. And here it is that almost every Frank first lands in the "City of the Faithful." The scene is a singular one to the western traveller; and the noise and bustle of the busy crowd are totally at variance with all his preconceived ideas of the grave and turbaned easterns. The sharp shrill voice of the irritable and loquacious Greek, the expostulatory vehemence of the angry Armenian, the solemn intonations of the stately Turk, the hurried greetings of the merchants passing to and from the bazârs, and the vociferous appeals of the rival boatmen to the impatient passengers, swell on the air together; while the confusion on the water emulates that on land.