a monastery of dervises; having before it a large court, encompassed with marble cloisters, with a good fountain in the middle.  The prospect from this place, and the gardens round it, is the most agreeable I have seen; and shews, that monks of all religions know how to chuse their retirements.  ’Tis now belonging to a hogia or schoolmaster, who teaches boys here.  I asked him to shew me his own apartment, and was surprised to see him point to a tall cypress tree in the garden, on the top of which was a place for a bed for himself, and a little lower, one for his wife and two children, who slept there every night.  I was so much diverted with the fancy, I resolved to examine his nest nearer; but after going up fifty steps, I found I had still fifty to go up, and then I must climb from branch to branch, with some hazard of my neck.  I thought it therefore the best way to come down again.

WE arrived the next day at Constantinople; but I can yet tell you very little of it, all my time having been taken up with receiving visits, which are, at least, a very good entertainment to the eyes, the young women being all beauties, and their beauty highly improved by the high taste of their dress.  Our palace is in Pera, which is no more a suburb of Constantinople, than Westminster is a suburb to London.  All the ambassadors are lodged very near each other.  One part of our house shews us the port, the city, and the seraglio, and the distant hills of Asia; perhaps, all together, the most beautiful prospect in the world.

A CERTAIN French author says, Constantinople is twice as big as Paris.  Mr W——­y is unwilling to own ’tis bigger than London, though I confess it appears to me to be so; but I don’t believe it is so populous.  The burying fields about it are certainly much larger than the whole city.  ’Tis surprising what a vast deal of land is lost this way in Turkey.  Sometimes I have seen burying places of several miles, belonging to very inconsiderable villages, which were formerly great towns, and retain no other mark of their ancient grandeur, than this dismal one.  On no occasion do they ever remove a stone that serves for a monument.  Some of them are costly enough, being of very fine marble.  They set up a pillar, with a carved turbant on the top of it, to the memory of a man; and as the turbants, by their different shapes, shew the quality or profession, ’tis in a manner putting up the arms of the deceased; besides, the pillar commonly bears an inscription in gold letters.  The ladies have a simple pillar without other ornament, except those that die unmarried, who have a rose on the top of their monument.  The sepulchres of particular families are railed in, and planted round with trees.  Those of the sultans, and some great men, have lamps constantly burning in them.