May xx.
I returned again to my lodgings at Galata, and the next day crossed the water in company with Mr. Goodfellow to Constantinople, where after a visit to the mosque of Solymán the Magnificent, we obtained leave to ascend one of the minarées, from which the muezins call the Turks to their namáz, being about an hundred and twenty feet high. Here we took a delightful prospect of the whole situation and extent of Stambol, as likewise of Galata, Pera, and Scutari, with the neighbouring seas, canals, and land that encloses them. But the peculiar happiness of this day was the employment of about two hours, which we leisurely spent in viewing the stupendous church of Sophía[86], now profaned by its conversion into a Turkish mosque. It chiefly merits the regard of any curious traveler for the reliques of its rich mosaic work; the variety of pretious marble[87], which adorns it, consisting of serpentine, alabaster, and porphyry; and the architecture of its large and flat tho sublime cupola[88], in which are still the entire figures of Christ and the twelve Apostles, and in the windows many inscriptions in mosaic work from the New Testament.