Note 55 — Chapter III · ROMA NOVA
Reading edition
Op. cit. p. 251.
According to Augier de Busbecq, the scholarly Flemish diplomat, who, in the middle of the sixteenth century, spent eight years at the Ottoman Court, Constantinople “is a city which nature herself has designed to be the mistress of the world. It stands in Europe, looks upon Asia, and is within reach by sea of Egypt and the Levant on the south and the Black Sea and its European and Asiatic shores on the north.” Letters, Vol. I, p. 123 (trans. by D. Forster, Paris, 1881).