"Great part of the houses of Constantinople are built with wooden frames, mostly filled up with unburnt brick; and a great number of houses are made only of such frames covered with boards. They have notwithstanding very good rooms in them; and the streets are tolerable, with a raised footway on each side. The street of Adrianople is broad, and adorned with many public buildings; to the south of it there is a vale which is to the north of the seventh hill. The bazestans or shops of rich goods are such as have been described in other places; and many of the shops for other trades are adorned with pillars, and the streets in which they are, covered over in order to shelter from the sun and rain. There are also several large kanes, where many merchants live, and most of these have apartments in them, where they spend the day, and retire at night to their families in their houses. The bagnios also are to be reckoned another part of the magnificence of Constantinople, some of them being very finely adorned within. The fountains, likewise, are extremely magnificent, being buildings about twenty feet square, with pipes of water on every side; and within at each corner there is an apartment, with an iron gate before it, where cups of water are always ready for the people to drink, a person attending to fill them; these buildings are of marble, the fronts are carved with bas-reliefs of trees and flowers and the eaves projecting six or seven feet; the soffit of them is finely adorned with carved works of flowers, in alto relievo, gilt with gold in a very good taste, so that these buildings make a very fine appearance." Dr Pococke was certainly a somewhat dull person, and as certainly a thorough Englishman. One feels that he never quite got over his surprise that S. Sophia was not like Westminster Abbey or the Golden Gate like Temple Bar. Happily we have a contrast to him in the literature of his time. Certainly the most charming, perhaps the most characteristic, account of the city of the Sultan that the eighteenth century has left us, is that of the Lady Mary Wortley Montague. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF MOSQUE OF AHMED I.]