It is not owing to any architectural beauty that the interest of the whole world is directed toward the Seraglio. Unlike the Alhambra, it is not a great artistic monument: the Court of the Lions alone in the Arabian palace is worth all the kiosks and towers of the Turkish one put together. No, the value of the Seraglio lies wholly in its great historic interest: it illustrates and gives life to almost the entire history of the Ottoman dynasty; upon its walls and the trunks of its century-old trees are engraved the most secret and intimate records of the empire. Nothing but the period covered by the past thirty[E] years and the two centuries preceding the conquest of Constantinople are wanting to complete the chronicle. From Muhammad II., who laid its foundations, to Abdul-Megid, who abandoned it to take up his residence in the palace of Dolmabâghcheh, twenty-five sultans have dwelt there. Hardly had the dynasty conquered its European metropolis when it planted its foot upon this spot; here it climbed to the apex of its glory, and here its decadence began. It was at once a palace, a fortress, and a sanctuary; here was the brain of the empire and the heart of Islamism; it was a city within a city, an imposing and magnificent stronghold, inhabited by a people, guarded by an army, embracing within its walls an infinite variety of buildings, pleasure-grounds, and prisons, city, country, palaces, arsenals, schools, offices, and mosques, where fêtes, executions, religious ceremonies, love affairs, state functions, and wild revels succeeded one another with startling rapidity; here sultans were born, elevated to the throne, deposed, imprisoned, strangled; here were woven the tangled webs of every conspiracy that threatened the empire; here resounded the hoarse cry of every popular tumult; hither flowed the purest gold and bluest blood of the Turkish dominions; here was wielded that shining blade that flashed above the heads of a hundred different peoples; and upon this spot, for nearly three centuries, was concentrated the gaze of uneasy Europe, suspicious Asia, and cowering Africa, as upon some smoking crater which threatened at any moment to overflow and engulf the whole earth. [E] This was written in 1874.--TRANS.