The present area is an irregular quadrangle, about 260 yards long, and 150 wide. It is bounded on one side by the mosque of Sultan Achmet, from which it is separated only by an open screen, and from it this beautiful edifice, with its six elegant minarets, appears to the greatest advantage. On the others, by large but mean edifices, one of which is the menagerie of the Turkish empire. Among the gifts expected from the pasha of a distant province, are specimens of its wild animals; and lions, tigers, and other beasts are here enclosed and exhibited, as formerly in the tower of London. Among the animals here in the time of Busbequius, was an extraordinary elephant, which, he affirmed, “could dance and play ball.” They are not confined to cages, but allowed to walk about in large caverns, where the solitary magnificence of the animal would be strikingly exhibited, were it not that the foul odour exhaled from putrid offals, on which they feed, repels a stranger with insuperable disgust. Down the centre are seen the splendid remains of the Greek empire. The first is the granite obelisk, still in high preservation, brought from the Thebaïd to Rome, and from thence to ornament the new city of Constantine. It is supported on brazen globes, resting on a sculptured pedestal bearing an inscription implying that it was erected by Theodosius. On one face is sculptured the machines by which the obelisk was raised to its present site, and is a curious display of the mechanical powers at that time in use. A singular circumstance occurred at its erection, which has since that time furnished an extraordinary auxiliary to mechanical powers. When the ponderous block was raised as high as the combination of cords and pulleys could draw it, it was found to want one inch of elevation to place it on the pedestal. The emperor and all the spectators supposed the labour and expense lost, and the case hopeless; when the ingenious artist who had undertaken to raise it, caused water to be thrown upon the cords by which the obelisk was suspended: an immediate contraction of the fibres took place, the cords shortened, and the immense weight was quietly raised to its place without any other mechanical Contrivance. Another is that called the Colossus: it was once covered with dense brass plates; and a Greek couplet on the pedestal, described what it formerly was, and the reason of its name−- “A brazen wonder of colossal size, Which Rhodes could boast−-lo! here is seen to rise.”