The open porch, with its deeply projecting roof painted in fresco, is supported by two pillars of coarse old Byzantine architecture, and composed of delicately-veined white marble. This porch gives admittance only to the Court of the Tomb-house, and presents a spectacle probably unique, and so characteristic of the progress of the fine arts in this country, that it deserves especial mention. The pillars to which I have alluded as supporting the porch are reversed; the sculptured capitals rest on the earth, and a plaistered summit has been supplied, gaudily painted in blue and yellow; while the pillars themselves are only just beginning, thanks to time and weather, to reveal the material of which they are composed, through their decaying coat of whitewash! When a frightful old woman, huddled up in a scarf of coarse white cotton, at length made her appearance, key in hand, and admitted us to the Inner Court, a second anomaly nearly as startling as the first presented itself. The enclosure was thickly planted with young trees, among which a pomegranate, gorgeous in its livery of green and scarlet, was the most conspicuous; and a sparkling fountain was pouring forth its copious stream of clear cool water into a marble reservoir; while the long flexile branches of a wild vine were gracefully wreathed across the entrance of the Mausoleum. But here again the hand of barbarism had been at work; and the four slender Ionic columns of gray marble which support the porch, had undergone the same melancholy process of painting, and their capitals were decorated with a wreath of many-coloured foliage! Little did such an exhibition of modern Vandalism prepare me for the splendid coup-d’œil that awaited me within. The Mausoleum is a portion of an ancient Greek monastery, dismantled by Sultan Orcan at the capture of the city; and is supposed to have been a private chapel in which the Emperor was accustomed to perform his devotions. It is of an oval form; and, previously to a fire which partially destroyed it a few years since, was entirely lined with rich marbles. Those now deficient have been replaced by paint and stucco, in precisely the same taste as that which operated on the exterior; but, as their number is comparatively small, the general effect is not greatly marred.