country, and that again the honour and glory of a community is well served by making ample provisions for the encouragement of art. Both Author and Artist wish these Seraglio buildings a glorious future in their present warlike and peaceful missions.
But romance and mystery cling to the place and live in the name Seraglio. It is jealously walled in, the wall being of Turkish construction and comparatively recent, and to it may be seen clinging quaint wooden houses.
No doubt Byzas dwelt somewhere about here, though the exact spot is possibly beyond the ken of the keenest archæologist. Remains of solid masonry, huge blocks of stone, have been discovered near the Seraglio kitchens, of which a fine view is offered from the railway, peeps of the massive, high-standing building through the ranks of its solemn escort of cypress-trees.
When Byzantium became the City of Constantine it was found necessary to extend the enceinte of the older fortifications, as the number of inhabitants had grown prodigiously, and this first rampart was of greater extent than the present Seraglio walls. The many improvements made by Constantine, the palace he built unto himself, the Forum and Hippodrome he laid out, and the churches he erected, are nearly all within the immediate neighbourhood of the Seraglio, if not inside its precincts. So here again was the centre of the civic and religious life of the city, rising rapidly to the zenith of its power, and here it has remained until most recent times.
There were walls and towers round the point to guard the city both against her enemies and the violence of the elements, and, sooth to say, it was the latter caused more damage than the former. These had need to be constantly repaired. Of the very earliest walls no trace remains, yet they too had their page in history. Not far from where our distinguished travellers landed, just round the eastern point and looking east, is Top Kapoussi, which means cannon-gate, for here stood a gate dedicated to St. Barbara, who is the patron saint of gunners. But a more likely reason for the Turks to retain the memory of the original name is that close by stood a magazine or military arsenal when they conquered the city, and may have stood for years after. It seems that there was a yet older gate at this spot, a gate through which the Spartan admiral Anaxibius entered the Acropolis when he escaped from the city by boat along the Golden Horn, what time Xenophon and his truculent Greeks were in possession.
After Constantine had led his people, or at least those under his immediate influence, into the fold of the Christian community, many churches sprang up about this northern extremity of the promontory. (There are, no doubt, those who will differ from the Author on the subject of Constantine’s conversion, who may say that his people led Constantine to adopt Christianity, and that reasons of policy rather than the conviction born of a sudden inspiration guided him, but the Artist will on no account allow such a prosaic version.) Five churches stood about here, one dedicated to St. Barbara, as we have seen, another to St. Demetrius, a third to St. Saviour, yet another to St. Lazarus, and a fifth one built to St. George on the highest ground available just there, according to custom, for in former times all churches dedicated to the warrior’s patron saint were built on higher ground, as if to give the saint an opportunity of keeping a good look-out from his sanctuary. This church gave to the Sea of Marmora its mediæval name of Braz St. George.