But Sultan Mahmoud, after a youth of terror and a manhood of blood, had become too good a tactician to risk offending many by ennobling one; and he consequently adopted an expedient which had assuredly never been contemplated by those about his person. He caused the names of the seven candidates to be inscribed on as many separate shreds of parchment; and on the following Friday, when he visited the mosque, he cast them all in a mass beneath his prayer-carpet, where they remained during the service; at whose close, he put up a prayer to Allah and the Prophet to aid him in the hour of trial, by enabling him to withdraw the name of the individual whose alliance would prove the most beneficial, alike to his Empire, and to his daughter. Whether the prayer was heard and answered, I know not; but the Sublime fingers closed over the parchment which was inscribed with the cypher of Saïd Pasha of the Dardanelles. Saïd Pasha is a handsome man of three or four and thirty, with an expression of benevolence and amiability strikingly in his favour. He commenced his career at Court as Page to the Sultan, where he lost the favour of his master by refusing to obey a command which would have rendered him for a time the companion of grooms and serving-men; an instance of self-respect and self-appreciation so rare in Turkey, that it excited quite as much astonishment as indignation. Dismissed from the Court in disgrace, the young adventurer became a member of the sect of the _Mevlavies_, or Turning Dervishes; but, after the expiration of a year, he was recalled by the Sultan, and received a post in the army. Subsequently to this period, his rise to the Pashalik was rapid, as is generally the case in the East; and, on the last page of existence which he has turned, the characters may indeed be said to have been traced in gold. After this hasty sketch of his history, it is scarcely necessary for me to add that Saïd Pasha left the Dardanelles a poor man; nor to remind my readers that a titled Lackland was no meet match for a Sultan’s daughter. The evil cried aloud for remedy, and the cure came as speedily as its necessity had arisen. The Seraskier had adopted Halil Pasha as his son, on the occasion of his marriage with the Princess Salihè, two years ago; and had been to him a most munificent father; in the present difficulty he again stepped forward, and the portionless Saïd Pasha beheld himself at once a rich man. Upon the Seraskier it then devolved, in his double capacity of High Minister and Parent, to introduce the fortunate bridegroom to his Imperial father-in-law; and the recollection of all that the wily old courtier had done for the object of his first adoption, produced very different feelings in the breasts of the two individuals, more immediately interested in the financial arrangements of the marriage.