harem.

Though strangers are not allowed to see the interior of the cage in
which these birds of Paradise are confined, yet many parts of the
Seraglio are free to the curiosity of visitors, who choose to drop
a backsheesh here and there. I landed one morning at the Seraglio
point from Galata, close by an ancient pleasure-house of the
defunct Sultan; a vast broad-brimmed pavilion, that looks agreeable
enough to be a dancing room for ghosts now: there is another
summer-house, the Guide-book cheerfully says, whither the Sultan
goes to sport with his women and mutes. A regiment of infantry,
with their music at their head, were marching to exercise in the
outer grounds of the Seraglio; and we followed them, and had an
opportunity of seeing their evolutions, and hearing their bands,
upon a fine green plain under the Seraglio walls, where stands one
solitary column, erected in memory of some triumph of some
Byzantian emperor.

There were three battalions of the Turkish infantry, exercising
here; and they seemed to perform their evolutions in a very
satisfactory manner: that is, they fired all together, and charged
and halted in very straight lines, and bit off imaginary cartridge-
tops with great fierceness and regularity, and made all their
ramrods ring to measure, just like so many Christians. The men
looked small, young, clumsy, and ill-built; uncomfortable in their
shabby European clothes; and about the legs, especially, seemed
exceedingly weak and ill-formed. Some score of military invalids
were lolling in the sunshine, about a fountain and a marble summer-
house that stand on the ground, watching their comrades' manoeuvres
(as if they could never have enough of that delightful pastime);