YÈRÈ-BATAN SERAI.       105

He awoke once more - awoke to madness and despair! He remembered all - all ! and his brain failed beneath the horrors of the retrospect! He was again a maniac; and in his first fierce paroxysm, he dashed the still burning torch into the hissing waters, and the darkness fell upon him - srushed him - pressed upon his heart, and upon his troat - and who shall say how that wild tragedy was terminated?

Other, but more prudent attempts have since been made, but as yet, no determined limits have been assigned to the Yèrè-Batan Serai; in three other directions the roof has failed, but these have occurred in such distant quarters of the city, that far from resolving to the curious question if its extent, they habe only been enabled to arrive at the fact, that it stretches under a great portion of Constantinople, and even beyond its walls; and that the same apparently endless avenues of arches, multipled, ad infinitum, on the right and left, stretch in dim, mysterious, monotonous, and chilling silence beneath the crowded streets of a busy capital - conopied by darkness, while all is light above - and yawning like a vast sepulcre to receive the load of human life and human treasure, which time must ultimately hurl in one huge ruin into its greedy depths!

The Yèrè-Batan Serai is, without any exception, the noblest remain of Roman intellect and industry in Constantinople.

 

 

 

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