The throne pavilion is not the only building to which the public is now admitted. On coming out from thence we pass through a number of flower-gardens and courtyards surrounded by small buildings and Moorish archways supported upon slender marble columns. Here stood the college where the imperial pages received such instruction as should fit them for the highest offices of the state and court, and their princely residences and recreation halls; troops of servants waited upon them, and their masters were selected from among the most gifted and learned men of the empire. In the centre stood the library, consisting of a row of graceful Saracenesque kiosks with open peristyles; one of these is still standing, and is chiefly noticeable for its great bronze door ornamented with reliefs in jasper and lapis lazuli and covered with marvellous arabesques of foliage, stars, and figures of every conceivable device, so intricate and so delicately executed as to hardly seem like the work of mortal hands. Not far from the library stands the treasury, glistening with tiles, once the repository of fabulous riches, consisting for the most part of weapons seized by, or presented to, victorious sultans, and preserved by them as curiosities; but Muhammad II., who prided himself upon his skilful penmanship, left his inkstand studded with diamonds to the collection. The greater part of these treasures have now passed, converted into gold coins, into the coffers of the public treasury, but in the great days of the empire this pavilion contained a glittering array of Damascus cimeters whose hilts were solid masses of pearls and precious stones; huge pistols, their handles studded with as many as two hundred diamonds; daggers, a single one of which was worth a year’s tribute from an Asiatic province; massive silver and steel clubs, whose hand-pieces were of solid crystal, all chased and gilded; and among them the jewelled aigrettes of the Murads and Muhammads, the agate goblets in which once sparkled the wines of Hungary at imperial banquets, cups hollowed out of a single turquoise which once graced the tables of shahs of Persia, necklaces of Caramanian diamonds the size of walnuts, pearl-studded belts, saddles overlaid with gold, rugs glittering with gems; so that the whole building seemed to be on fire and one’s sight and reason alike became dazed. A little farther on, in the middle of a lonely garden, is the famous “cage” in which, from the fourth Muhammad’s[I] time on, those of the imperial princes whose liberty seemed to offer a menace to the peace of the throne were kept in confinement, until, on the death of the reigning monarch, the shouts and acclamations of the Janissaries should call one of them to succeed him, or the appearance of the executioner warn them to prepare for death. It is built in the form of a small temple, with massive walls unbroken by windows, and lighted from above. Against the single door, made of iron, a heavy stone was always rolled.