The first objects that strike the spectator are the six beautiful minarets, with their elegant and slender forms ascending to an immense height, and seeming as it were to pierce the clouds with their sharp-pointed cones. Round each run three capitals or galleries for the Muezzim, highly ornamented in fretted arabesque. Above these appears the majestic edifice swelling into domes and cupolas, and covered with light tracery and fancy fretwork, forming a strong contrast to the comparatively heavy, dark, and dismal dome of Santa Sophia, which rises at no great distance beside. This juxtaposition strikes a stranger. He sees with surprise that the genius of a dull and ignorant Turk should produce an edifice so superior in beauty and elegance to this chef-d’œuvre of Grecian art. Architects of that nation had been employed in erecting the imperial mosque of Mohammed II. and Selim II., but this of Achmet is exclusively Turkish or Arabic architecture. The summit of the edifice is distinguished by thirty cupolas, from whence ascends the great dome, flanked by four semi-domes. The mosque is entered by massive brazen gates, embossed in high relief, and the interior presents a view of the dome supported by four gigantic columns, fluted and filleted, round which are inscribed, in bands, sentences from the Koran. The walls are richly painted in fresco with more variety than regularity, and gilded tablets on them every where display Arabic inscriptions. The light is admitted by windows of stained glass, thickly studded in small compartments, which look exceedingly rich, casting a soothing and a religious, but yet ample light; for this mosque is distinguished above all others in this respect, that by the construction and arrangement of the casements, the interior is fully illuminated, which forms a strong contrast to the dim and doubtful twilight admitted into most other religious edifices of the East. Between the pillars is a large circle of wire-suspended lamps, which does not add to the general effect; globes of glass, ostrich eggs, and other frivolous and mean ornaments, frequently deform the interior of those noble buildings, and mark the genius of a Turk−-at once puerile and magnificent. There is, in other respects, a noble simplicity, a naked grandeur, well befitting a worship from which all idolatrous representations are excluded. The interior of a mosque resembles the nave and transept of St. Paul’s, with the exception of its statues−-grand and noble by its vastness and vacuity.