Note (return) — CONSTANTINOPLE

"There, said I to myself, lie, scarcely one foot beneath the surface of a swelling soil, ready to burst at every point with its festering contents, more than half the generations whom death has continued to mow down for nearly four centuries in the vast capital of Islamism. There lie, side by side, on the same level, in cells the size of their bodies, and only distinguished by a marble turban somewhat longer or deeper—somewhat rounder or squarer—personages, in life, far as heaven and earth asunder, in birth, in station, in gifts of nature, and in long laboured acquirements. There lie, sunk alike in their last sleep—alike food for the worm that lives on death—the conqueror who filled the universe with his name, and the peasant scarcely known in his own hamlet; Sultan Mahmoud, and Sultan Mahmoud's perhaps more deserving horse; 4 elders bending under the weight of years, and infants of a single hour; men with intellects of angels, and men with understandings inferior to those of brutes; the beauty of Georgia and the black of Sennaar; visiers, beggars, heroes, and women.'"