The sultan performs this sacrifice at his own palace before the morning prayers. As he stands at the threshold, a ram with gilded horns is laid at his feet, and girding himself with a silken towel, he completes the sacrifice. The solution of this act of devotion is, that they believe that the faithful will be transported over the surat or bridge of hair into paradise on the backs of these immolated victims. The old seraglio, which was the residence of so many sultans, and the scene of the aggrandizement and downfall of so many good Mussulmans; under whose latticed windows the Bosphorus flows so deeply as to tell no tales of the hundreds of living and beautiful maidens that have perished in the blue waves and left no sign of their sad fate--the bloody and mysterious seraglio is now deserted, save on such occasions as have been described--notwithstanding travellers' assertions to the contrary. How many of the royal blood, even sultans themselves, within this time-worn palace, have either drained the insidious and poisoned potion, or been dispensed with by the surer cord, or assassin's dagger! The last victim was Sultan Mustafa, or the uncle of the present monarch; and Mahmoud himself was miraculously preserved by the attachment and perseverance of his lala or eunuch, who concealed him in the fire-place of the bath, until the fury of the mob had subsided--thus saving him, whom Allah had reserved for the proud distinction of being the savior and regenerator of his country. No wonder, then, that the sultans of later times have recoiled from such associations and built for themselves other palaces on the bright and smiling shores of the "ocean stream." Abd-ul-Medjid has just erected a magnificent residence opposite the entrance to the Marmora, the palace of Dolma Bahché. CHAPTER XXI. ROMANCE OF THE EAST. The ordinary course of events, the humdrum monotonous tinkling of life's daily and ever recurring necessities, is wearisome to the soul. There is a longing for variety; the love of the marvelous craves wherewith to slake its thirst, the imagination seeks its food, and the beautiful, in fancy or reality, must sometimes minister its soothing charms. Anything to escape from the physical, cumbersome part of our nature, into the world of romance and visionary exultation. War and its glory, its sudden vicissitudes of victory and defeat, its brilliant arms and thundering voices excite the most thrilling emotions in the bosoms of care-worn mortals. Love, with its gentle wooing, its kind sympathies, and tender ministry, comes to the heart, sick of itself, as the very balm of Gilead. Religion calls the crushed and bleeding spirit to an unseen world, where fancy may luxuriate in realms of ethereal anticipations, anon to become the realities of Faith, as the soul is discharged from its mortal tenement.