CONSTANTINOPLE.*
A DESCRIPTIVE history of Constantinople has long been
wanting to the traveller and student, who, until to-day, has had to depend upon his Murray or his Baedeker abroad, and
• Conotantinoplf. By Edwin A. Grosvenor, London: Sampson bow and Clo.
the voluminous Gibbon at home. A book was needed which would combine the information of an unsympathetic guide- book with the instruction of a scholarly history ; and that book has now been supplied by Professor Grosvenor, whose Long residence in Constantinople, unique facilities for obtain- ing and verifying information, and considerable linguistic and scholarly attainments, have singularly fitted him for the post of an authoritative guide. We cannot speak too highly of the skilful plan upon which his work is arranged, or of the clear and lucid style in which it is written ; the painstaking industry with which he has prosecuted his researches in the streets of Stamboul and the volumes of ancient authorities, speaks for itself upon almost every page. Perhaps we ought to add a word of warning lest the tourist should imagine that he is to be provided with a convenient hand- guide,—physically speaking, Professor Grosvenor's work is a rather ponderous one, being contained in two volumes of exceptional weight.
The history of Constantinople may be divided into three epochs, corresponding with its three names, Byzantium, Constantinoupolis, Stamboul. During the first two periods it stood as the fort of Europe against Eastern invasion; during the last, as the fort of the East in its invasion of Europe. The author has succeeded in compressing the history of the earlier periods into a brief sketch of rare con- eiseness and ability, in which, in spite of the magnitude of the subject, nothing is lost of its importance and interest. He protests strongly against the view of its history, born of Roman prejudice and too often entertained by Western writers, which represents it as recording only "deeds without grandeur, struggles without glory, and Emperors known above all by their crimes and follies " :—
"Yet the fact remains that during more than eleven hundred years after her consecration by Constantine, Constantinople yielded but once to foreign attack, when, in the thirteenth century, she was sacked by the Latin Crusaders. Many times assaulted by Persia, which, under her Sassanide Kings, had reached a height of prosperity and power ancient Persia hardly attained ; by the Arabs, in all the fiery glow of a new and until then triumphant faith ; by innumerable hosts, constantly renewed, of Goths, Avars, Bulgarians, and Slavonians—enemies as power- ful and relentless as ever thundered at the gates of Rome—Con- stantinople vanqui6hed them all, surrendering only at last to Sultan Mohammed II. and the Ottomans. No other capital pre- sents so sublime a spectacle during the Middle Ages. Alone of all the cities of Europe, she towered erect, unsubmerged amid the wild torrents of invasion. This record is the highest tribute, both to the pre-eminent superiority of her position, and to the skill and heroism of her sons."
Had not Constantinople been the Imperial capital, but only a fortified frontier town, the author fancies that the first Arab attack would have been resistless, and Mahommedanism, reinforced by the later invasion of Saracenie and Moorish hosts in the West, would have swept Europe from end to end, blotting out its churches, as it had already blotted out the even stronger churches of Northern Africa. We think he somewhat exaggerates the force of the Arab attack, and the serious consequences of its victory, even though that victory had been followed by an alliance with the fierce Slavonic and pagan nations of the North. We have not space, however, to do justice to the author's historical views, and must content ourselves with saying that his account of ancient Byzantium—the city whose origin is lost in the mists mythology, and whose walls stood so often as a bulwark Greek freedom—of the Cons'a.ntinople of the Roman Emperors, of ever-changing dynasties, of religious and racial warfare, of the factions of the Blue and the Green, and Lastly, of the Constantinople of the Ottomans, leaves nothing
to be desired in point of clearness and interest. The real story of the third and last epoch in the life of the city is, the author says, to be read in the silent tombs of its Sultans and Sultanas. The passage is worth quoting " The history of a metropolis under Mussulman government is hardly anything more than a reflection of the character and condition of the sovereign. It is a mirror on the dead level of whose placid face appears no life or emotion of its own, and yet which reproduces in faithful delineation the whole existence, even the momentary passion, the slightest tremor, the faintest breath of its ruler. Its individuality is lost and merged in his absorbing being. So has it been with Constantinople under her twenty- seven Sultans. In each reign what the Sultan was, the city was. So the history of the Ottoman Dynasty, a drama, a romance, often a tragedy, sometimes a poem, has been the history of Stamboul. Rebellion, earthquake, fire, pestilence, have indeed many times racked the surface of her ground, laid low her mosques and dwellings, and filled the trenches with her dead. Yet these phenomena of man or nature bare been regarded by the Otto- mans as intimately associated with the contemporary reign, half caused by it, half indicative of some phase in it, or of its general character."
Is this, we wonder, true of Constantinople to-day ? Professor Grosvenor gives a very striking account of the ceremonial of the Act of Homage, as it is still performed on great occasions in the Palace of Dolma Baghtcheh. His description of the palace itself, and of the yet more beautiful palace of Beylerbey, is as thorough in the matter of detail as any to be found in the most plodding and matter-of-fact of guide-books. It is hard to say how the author's description of the scenic wonders of Constan- tinople and the Bosphorus will impress a reader who has never seen them with his own eyes. For his part the reviewer, who has more than once gone over the same ground, confesses to the liveliest admiration of the way in which the author has succeeded in conjuring up for him again those lovely shores, and recalling, by some felicitous phrase, the half-forgotten emotion that they once stirred within him. Once more he has seen the blue waters of the strange stream that separates Europe from Asia, the gleam of the marble palaces that fringe its shores, the frowning towers of the Roumeli Hisser, the climbing pile of mosque upon mosque, of minaret out- towering minaret, showing white as snow against the dark foliage of the sad cypresses. How much of the beauty of the marvellous panorama that spreads before one's eye from the lofty height of the Galata Tower is owing to the presence of the minaret and the cypress, few writers have acknowledged. Among the mosques, the author gives the palm to that of Souleiman the Magnificent, of course setting aside the unique history and interest of Sancta Sophia. Our own preference is for the mosque of Achmet L, and next, the far less beautiful pile of the Bayezid mosque with its strange denizens, both human and feathered. But wherever we have followed him through the streets of Stamboul, even through the intricate mazes of the bazaars, the author seems to have left no nook or corner unexplored ; almost every yard of the ground has its story, and to these he has added many more, hitherto forgotten or ignored. His greatest feat as an antiquarian is perhaps his success in restoring the plan of the ancient Hippodrome in conformity with its existing traces and the descriptions of old authorities. In this connection, by the way, he draws attention to a common error which often confounds the Atmeidan, the present open space where the Hippodrome once stood, with the Etmeitlan, the old barracks of the Janis- saries. Like most other writers, he expresses horror of the fashion in which that peculiar military body was first recruited; but after all, in its actual effects upon the Christian and Jewish population, the early method of filling the ranks of the Janissaries was considerably less inhuman and cruel than that which supplied Frederick the Great with his bodyguard. Taken altogether, Professor Grosvenor's work appears to us to be quite the most complete and interesting guide-book to Constantinople that we have yet encountered ; while we have reason to believe that it is also the most accurate. So far, we have said nothing that is not highly commendatory ; bat, in honesty, we must confess that the work has its faults.
In the first place, though it is a minor drawback easily remedied, it would be the better for a larger and more comprehensive map. Those maps which are given are by no means up to the standard of the excellent illustrations with which the book is lavishly provided. The second fault is concerned with the more delicate question of taste. The author possesses an excellent style,—clear, lucid, and elo- quent, without being either pompons or exaggerated ; but,.
when his subject moves him, he has an exasperating habit of dropping into poetry, after the fashion of Silas Wegg ; and the poetry, like that of Silas Wegg, is sometimes of no very great merit. To do him justice, he does not indulge in this habit very often ; but, as we have conceived a strong admira- tion for his prose, we should have been better pleased if he had not marred it by indulging at all. Another criticism, rather captions perhaps, and made with even more delicacy and hesitation, would remind Professor Grosvenor that even the mention of his own great country seems a little out of place in a consideration of ancient Constantinople. Com- parisons are proverbially odious, so the author will forgive us for saying that some of those which he makes jar not a little upon nerves that are strung rather higher by his own eloquence. Here, too, he very rarely offends, and his pages are, as a rule, very free from Americanisms of any kind.
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