Of Constantinople you will
find many descriptions in different travels; but Lady Wortley errs
strangely when she says, 'St. Paul's would cut a strange figure by St.
Sophia's.' I have been in both, surveyed them inside and out
attentively. St. Sophia's is undoubtedly the most interesting from its
immense antiquity, and the circumstance of all the Greek emperors,
from Justinian, having been crowned there, and several murdered at the
altar, besides the Turkish sultans who attend it regularly. But it is
inferior in beauty and size to some of the mosques, particularly
'Soleyman,' &c., and not to be mentioned in the same page with St.
Paul's (I speak like a _Cockney_). However, I prefer the Gothic
cathedral of Seville to St. Paul's, St. Sophia's, and any religious
building I have ever seen.
"The walls of the Seraglio are like the walls of Newstead gardens,
only higher, and much in the same order; but the ride by the walls of
the city, on the land side, is beautiful. Imagine four miles of
immense triple battlements, covered with ivy, surmounted with 218
towers, and, on the other side of the road, Turkish burying-grounds
(the loveliest spots on earth), full of enormous cypresses. I have
seen the ruins of Athens, of Ephesus, and Delphi. 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
end of the Golden Horn.
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