From St. Sophia he proceeded to the august, but desolate, mansion of a hundred successors of the first Constantine; but which, in a few hours, had been stripped of the pomp of royalty. A melancholy reflection on the vicissitudes of human greatness forced itself upon his mind, and he repeated an elegant distich of Persian poetry:--"The spider has wove his web in the imperial palace; and the owl hath sung her watch-song on the towers of Afrasiel[151]." "The finest point from which Constantinople can be viewed," says M. de La Martine, "is from a belvidere, built by M. Truqui, on the terrace roof of his house. This belvidere commands the entire group of the hills of Pere-Galata, and the little hillocks which surround the port on the front side of the water. It is the eagle's flight over Constantinople and the sea. Europe, Asia, the entrance of the Bosphorus, and the sea of Marmora, are all under the eye at once. The city lies at the feet of the spectator. If (continues Mons. de La Martine) we were allowed to take only one point of the earth, this would be the one to choose. Whenever I ascend to the belvidere to enjoy this view (and I do so several times a day, and invariably every evening), I cannot conceive how, of the many travellers who have visited Constantinople, so few have felt the beauty which it presents to my eye and to my mind. Why has no one described it? Is it because words have neither space, horizon, nor colours, and that painting is only the language of the eye? But painting itself has never portrayed all that is here. The pictures, I have seen, are merely detached scenes, consisting of a few lines and colours without life: none convey any idea of the innumerable gradations of tint, varying with every change of the atmosphere, and every passing hour. The harmonious whole, and the colossal grandeur of these lines; the movements and the intertwinings of the different horizons; the moving sails, scattered over the three seas; the murmur of the busy population on the shores; the reports of the cannon on board the vessels, the flags waving from the mast-heads; the floating caiques; the vaporous reflection of domes, mosques, steeples, and minarets in the sea; all this has never been described;"--nor ever can be!