duty, were selected for personal attendance upon the Sultan; and the _shaghirds_, or novices, undergoing the necessary course of instruction in order to fit them for the vacant posts among the _ustàs_; and a swarm of slaves gathered from all lands, of every shade of complexion and type of beauty; carefully selected from among thousands of others, who filled the hive-like compartments of that huge gynæceum with a rush and stir of eager, radiant youth, a hot breath of Asiatic and African voluptuousness, which, mounting to the head of the god of the temple, expended itself in his fierce passions throughout the entire empire. [Illustration: A Turkish Woman.] What associations are connected with the trees of those gardens and the walls of those little white kiosks! How many beautiful daughters of the Caucasus, the Archipelago, the mountains of Albania and Ethiopia, the desert and the sea, Mussulman, Nazarene, idolator, conquered by pashas, bought by merchants, presented by princes, stolen by corsairs, have passed like shadows beneath those silver domes! Can these be the selfsame walls and gardens amid which Ibrahim, his head crowned with flowers, his beard glittering with jewels, committed his mad acts of folly--he who raised the price of slaves in every market in Asia, and caused Arabian perfumes to increase to double their usual value; which witnessed the frantic orgies of the third Murad, father of a hundred sons, and of Murad IV., worn out by excesses at the age of thirty-one, and which re-echoed to the delirious ravings of Selim II.? Here were celebrated those strange nocturnal revels when ships and vases of flowers were traced in fiery outlines upon the domes and trees and roofs, their dancing flames reflected in innumerable little mirrors like a great burning flower-garden. Crowds of women pressed around the bazârs overflowing with precious objects, while eunuchs and slaves went through the swaying measures of the dance half hidden in clouds of burning spices and perfumes, which the breezes from the Black Sea wafted over the entire Seraglio, and accompanied by strains of barbaric and warlike music. Let us try to bring it all to life again, just as it appeared on some soft April day during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent or the third Ahmed.