double line of arches, built with alternate layers of stone and brick.

Within the walls of Constantinople the Greek emperors had formed, by excavation, a number of immense cisterns or reservoirs, which were always to be kept full, to supply the capital in case of siege. One of them, though no longer performing the office for which it was intended, is still one of the curiosities of Constantinople, to which all travellers are conducted. It is a vast subterranean edifice, whose roof is supported by an immense number of columns, each column being curiously formed of three pillars placed one on the top of the other. The Turks call it the place of the "thousand and one columns ;" not that the columns are really so numerous, but because this is the favourite number of the Oriental nations. Though in part filled up, it is still of great depth.

The whole cavity, according to Dr. Walsh, is capable of containing 1,237,939 cubic feet of water when full. It is now, however, dry; and a number of silk-twisters have taken possession of it, and ply their trade at the bottom in almost utter darkness. There is another, also, which still exists as a cistern; which Dr. Walsh, who first gave us any account of it, describes as being a subterraneous lake, extending under several streets, with an arched roof that covers and conceals it, supported on three hundred and thirty-six magnificent pillars.

Some remains of a large antique structure are seen on the side of the Hippodrome, and it has been conjectured that this was the palace of the emperors; while others suppose it to have been part of the Basilica, the form of which Gyllius believes to have been quadrangular, in opposition to those who had described it as an octagon. The Basilica was a college for the instruction of youth. In the reign of Basilicus there happened a great fire, which, consuming many stately edifices, wholly destroyed the

Basilica, together with its library, containing six hundred thousand volumes. Among these there was a manuscript of the Iliad and Odyssey, written in letters of gold.

Wheler says that the Castle of the Seven Towers does not look strong enough for a fortress, but sufficiently so for a prison; which was the use to which it was put, for the incarceration of great men or great malefactors, like the Tower of London. He was not permitted to enter it; but he observed that one of the gateways was adorned with bassi-relievi, on oblong tablets of white marble.

The appearance of these walls, says Hobhouse (the work of the second Theodosius), is more venerable than that of any other Byzantine antiquity; their triple ranges rise one above the other, in most places nearly entire, and still retaining their ancient battlements and towers, which are shaded with large trees, which spring from the fosse and through the rents occasioned by repeated earthquakes.

The intervals between the triple walls, which are eighteen feet wide, are in many places choked up with earth and masses of the fallen rampart; and the fosse, of twenty-five feet in breadth, is cultivated and converted into gardens and cherry orchards, with here and there a solitary cottage. Such is the height of the walls, that to those following the road under them on the outside, none of the mosques or other buildings of the capital, except the towers of Tekkun-Sana, are visible; and as there are no suburbs, this line of majestic ramparts, defenceless and trembling with age, might impress upon the mind the notion that the Ottomans had not deigned to inhabit the conquered city, but, carrying away its people into distant captivity, had left it an unresisting prey to the desolations of time.

The Seven Towers reminded La Martine of the death of the first sultan, who was immolated by the Janizaries. Oth was allured by them into the

castle, and perished two days after by the hand of the vizier Daoud. In a short time the vizier himself was conducted to the Seven Towers. His turban was torn off his head; he was made to drink at the same fountain where the unfortunate Othman had slaked his thirst; and was strangled in the same chamber in which he had strangled his master. "I have seen the ruins of Athens, of Ephesus, and Delphi," says Lord Byron; "I have traversed great part of Turkey, and many other parts of Europe, and some of Asia; but I never beheld a work of Nature or art which yielded an impression like the prospect on each side from the Seven Towers to the Golden Horn."

CAIRO (OLD).

THIS city is said by some to have been founded by Semiramis when she invaded Egypt; others suppose it to have been erected by the Persians under Cambyses in the place where Latopolis had formerly stood. Strabo, however, asserts that it was built by some barbarians, who had retired thither by permission of their sovereign; and that in his time the Romans kept in garrison there one of the three legions that were maintained in Egypt.

It is now called Fostat, and is situated between Grand Cairo and the Nile. It succeeded Memphis as the capital of Egypt; the history, therefore, of this place merges in the general one of that country.

According to Elmanim, in his history of the Arabs, Amrou, son of Eleas, built Masr Fostat on the spot where he had formed his camp previously to his besieging Alexandrea. The governors sent by the caliphs afterward made it their place of residence. Its situation on the banks of the Nile, and near to a communication with the Red Sea, soon made it very flourishing,

It was about two leagues in circumference, when, five hundred years after its foundation, it was delivered up by Schaonar, king of Egypt, to prevent its falling under the French, during the Crusades, who set fire to it. The conflagration lasted fifty-four days; and the unfortunate inhabitants quitted the ashes and took refuge in New Cairo, which then assumed the name of Masr, and the former one of Fostat was lost.

Its environs are now scattered over with ruins, which indicate its ancient extent; and which, were history silent, would sufficiently attest it to be comparatively modern. They want the majestic character the ancient Egyptians gave to their edifices, and the impression of which time cannot efface. Neither sphinx, column, nor obelisk can be found among those heaps of rubbish.

At this place, however, are still to be seen Joseph's granaries, if this appellation may be given to a large space of ground surrounded by walls twenty feet high, and divided into courts, without any roof or covering. But the only things worth seeing in ancient Cairo are the castle, and the well that supplies it with water.

These are thus described by Rollin: "The castle of Cairo is one of the greatest curiosities in Egypt. It stands on the hill without the city, has a rock for its foundation, and is surrounded with walls of a vast height and solidity. You go up to the castle by a way hewn out of the rock, and which is of so easy ascent that loaded horses and camels get up without difficulty. The greatest rarity in this castle is Joseph's Well; so called, either because the Egyptians are pleased with ascribing their most remarkable particulars to that great man, or because there is really such a tradition in the country. This is a proof, at least, that the work in question is very ancient; and it is certainly worthy the magnificence of the most powerful kings of Egypt. This well

has, as it were, two stories, cut out of a rock to a prodigious depth. One descends to the reservoir of water between the two wells by a staircase seven or eight feet broad, consisting of two hundred and twenty steps, and so contrived that the oxen employed to throw up the water go down with all imaginable ease, the descent being scarcely perceptible. The well is supplied by a spring, which is almost the only one in the whole country. The oxen are continually turning a wheel with a rope, to which buckets are fastened. The water thus drawn from the first and lowermost well is conveyed by a little canal into a reservoir which forms the second well, from whence it is drawn to the top in the same manner, and then conveyed by pipes to all parts of the castle."

Near Cairo are some ancient catacombs. These are situated beneath a mound in the middle of a plain, adjoining the pyramids of Saccara. Dr. Clarke ascended into them by means of a rope-ladder. The first chamber he entered contained fragments of mummies, which had originally been placed on a shelf cut out of the rock, and extending breast-high the whole length of the apartment. There are two tiers or stories of these chambers, one above the other, all presenting the same appearance of viola tion and disorder, and smelling very offensively. At some distance from these, which were apparently appropriated to man, are those in which the sacred birds and animals were deposited; one apartment of which Dr. Clarke found filled with earthen jars entire, laid horizontally in tiers one upon another. They were about fourteen inches long, and conical in form, the cover being fixed on by some kind of cement; when opened, they were found to contain the bodies of birds (the ibis), with white feathers tipped with black, or the heads of monkeys, cats, and other animals, all carefully bandaged up in linen. Old Cairo sustained all the evils of a great famine