and met the margin of the ravine. This threefold disposition of the walls and fortifications is characteristic of the plan of the fortified city, and forms a feature well noted in the descriptions of the topographers and still distinguished in popular speech. Indeed, even at the present day, when most of the great gates have disappeared, and houses with several storeys obscure the plan, the hillside is lined by three complete fortresses, each separated from the other and one higher than another, yet all three welded closely into one. The appearance of the city in the days of her splendour must have justified her reputation as "Queen of the Euxine," and lent colour to her claim to be the capital of a restored Roman Empire of the East. Between extensive suburbs, filled with busy streets and markets, rising from the shore on either hand, through a labyrinth of gardens and garden-houses, clustered on the higher slopes, the two converging lines of massive parapets and towers mounted slowly up the shelving ground. The further they receded from the margin of the seaboard, the clearer grew the essential features of the site--the ravines opening darkly at the immediate foot of either wall, the walls closely following the irregular course of the chasms, and now rising, now declining, along the uneven surface of the cliffs. Near the head of the figure stood the royal palace, raised high above the massive works of the citadel, deeply moated by the sister gulfs on either side. Broad windows opened from the royal reception hall of white marble to the varied prospects on every side, while within, the vast apartment was adorned with rich paintings, the portraits of successive holders of the imperial office, their insignia and arms. On the east, beyond the abyss, the slope gathered gradually to the side of Mithros, the table-topped hill, in which direction, just opposite the palace, the church and fortified enclosure of St. Eugenius crowned an almost isolated site which was flanked on the further side by a third and lesser ravine. Towards the interior, on the side of the narrow isthmus, the view ranged wide, above the battlements, over the hills encircling the broad bay; while the rising ground, opening upwards from the tongue of the isthmus, was occupied by the theatre and by the extensive walled enclosure of the polo-ground or hippodrome. A royal gate gave access from the palace to these pleasure-places, the distance of a short walk from the wall; and through this gate the imperial party and their brilliant court would pass to their marble seats above the race-course, whence the whole landscape of city and field and ocean lay outspread at their feet. If the several divisions of the fortified enclosure may be described as so many steps, or shelving terraces, rising one behind another from the shore, then the race-course outside the walls will be the fourth stage of the platform, the last and highest, and the fairest of all.