BEAUTIES OF THE BOSPHORUS.       80

for even had its tenant been the renowned daughter of the Vèzir herself, she could not have found a fitter resting-place. The elegant tomb-house is hexagonal, and the fluted dome is supported on eight light and graceful columns, whose Saracenic capitals form a portion of the sculptured cornice which surrounds the base of the cupola. the windows are of richly stained glass; and the sarcophagus rests on a low platform in the centre of the marble floor, in solitary state.

The other three tombs attached to the Mosque of Chazade, are those of three Vèzirs; and in two instances, their wives and sons lie beside them. A few scattered graves, almost overgrown with the dense vegetation common to the country, have been niched here and there in the recesses formed by the angles of the buildings; and clouds of blue doves inhabit the eaves of the temple, and fill the air with their low monotonous note, giving a solemnity to the spot congenial to its use. they call to each other from the roofs of the tombs sadly and soothingly, like sentinels passing the watchword of peace over the ashes of the dead, and seem, in their earnest melancholy, to echo the answer of the Gnome King to the pilgrim Hamlet - "Pass on thy way, and impede me not: I guard the graves of the mighty."

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PLATE MOSQUE AND TOMBS OF SULIEMAN.

SULEIMANIÈ.

"-- Solyman, the glory of their line."     BYRON

THE Mosque of Solyman "the Magnificent," called by the Turks Suleimaniè, is esteemed the most elegant religious edifice in Constantinople. The splendid windows of painted glass, which are said to be unequalled throughout the world, were a spoil of the Persians, from whom they were wrestled by Solyman to decorate the temple of which he was the fonder; and the effect of their elaborately-blended rays on the marble walls of the mosque is strikingly fine and impressive. The dome is supported by four slight and well-proportioned pillars, and rests upon their delicate capitals so lightly, as to give a character to the interior of this beautiful building quite distinct from that of every other mosque in the city.