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THE VIGIL OF VENUS

TRANSLATED FROM THE LATIN

This old poem, which commemorates the festivities with which ancient Rome hailed the returning brightness of spring, may, perhaps, awaken in our readers some melancholy reflections on the bygone delights of the same season in our own country. To the Romans, it would seem, this period of the year never ceased to bring rejoicing holidays. There is good reason to suppose that this poem was written in the declining times of the empire; if so, it seems that, amidst the public misfortunes that followed one another during that age, the people were not woe-worn and distressed; that they were able to forget, in social pleasures, the gradual decay of their ancient glory. Rome "smiled in death." England is still great and powerful, but she is no longer Merry England.

Most people have heard of the Floralia, and have learned to deduce the frolics of Maid Marian and her comrades from the Roman observances on that festive occasion. But few are aware of the close similarity which this poem shows to have existed between the customs of the Romans and those of our fathers. In the denunciations of the latter by the acrid Puritans of the 17th century, we might almost imagine that the tirade was expressly levelled against the vigils described in the Pervigilium Veneris. If the poem had ever fallen into the hands of those worthies, it would have afforded them an additional handle for invective against the foul ethnic superstitions which the May-games were denounced as representing. Hear Master Stubbes, in his Anatomie of Abuses, published in 1585:—

"Against May, Whitsonday, or other time, all the yung men and maides, old men and wives, run gadding over the night to the woods, groves, hils, and mountains, where they spend all the night in pleasant pastimes, and in the morning they return, bringing with them birch and branches of trees, to deck their assemblies withall; and no meruaile, for there is a great Lord present amongst them as superintendent and Lord of their sports, namely, Sathan prince of hel. But the chiefest jewel they bring from thence is their May-pole, (say rather their stinking poole,) which they bring home with great veneration."

Who does not remember Lysander's appointment with Hermia:

 
——"in that wood, a league without the town,
Where I did meet thee once with Helena,
To do observance to a morn of May,
There will I stay for thee."
 

These passages point us to the time when man and nature met to rejoice together on May-day: to the time before the days of the workhouse and factory; when the length and breadth of the land rung to the joyaunce and glee of the holiday-rejoicing nation, and the gay sounds careered on fresh breezes even where now the dense atmosphere of Manchester or Ashton glooms over the dens of torture in which withered and debauched children are forced to their labour, and the foul haunts under the shelter of which desperate men hatch plots of rapine and slaughter.

The poem shows that the Romans, like the English of those days, celebrated the season by betaking themselves to the woods throughout the night, where they kept a vigil in honour of Venus, to whose guardianship the month of April was assigned, as being the universal generating and producing power, and more especially to be adored as such by the Romans, from having been, through her son Æneas, the author of their race. The poem seems to have been composed with a view to its being sung by a choir of maidens in their nocturnal rambles beneath the soft light of an Italian moon. The delicious balm of that voluptuous climate breathes through every line of it, and vividly presents to the reader's imagination the scene of the festivity; but whether we can claim these celebrations for our own May-day, is a doubtful point; for Wernsdorf, who has included the Pervigilium Veneris in his edition of Poetæ Latini Minores, vol. iii., maintains that it is to be referred to the Veneralia, or feast of Venus, on the 1st of April. The Kalendar of Constantius marks the 3d day of April as Natalis Quirini. If, then, the morrow spoken of in the poem is to be taken to mean this birthday of Romulus, we must suppose the vigil of three nights to have begun on the night of the last day of March. But perhaps our readers will agree with us, that there are quite as good grounds for attributing this vigil to the Floralia, which commenced on the 27th of April, and ended on the first of May. For although the rites of the Floralia were in honour of Flora, yet we may easily conceive the principle by which the worship of Venus, the spirit of beauty, and love, and production, would come to be intermingled with the homage paid to the flower-goddess. And then the three nights would denote the nights of the Floralia already past, if we suppose the hymn to have been sung on the night before the 1st of May. This seems more natural, as coinciding with the known length of the festival, than Wernsdorf's hypothesis, which makes the vigil commence before the month of Venus had opened. As regards the time of year, too, May is far more suited than April, even in Italy, for outwatching the Bear on woodland lawns.

The question regarding the author of the Pervigilium Veneris is still a lis sub judice. Aldus, Erasmus, and Meursius, attributed it to Catullus; but subsequent editors have, with much more probability, contended that its age is considerably later. We may notice a scholastic and philosophical spirit about it, which is ill-suited to the Bard of Verona. Lipsius claimed it for the Augustan age, in consequence of the mention of Cæsar which is introduced. But we think we may safely assume, that the observance of this vigil grew into custom after the time of Ovid, otherwise it is difficult to account for the total absence of all allusion, in his Fasti, to a subject so perfectly adapted to his verse. But we will not enter any further into a discussion which Salmasius and Scaliger could not settle, but shall at once present our readers with the following translation of the Pervigilium Veneris:—

 
He that never loved before,
Let him love to-morrow!
He that hath loved o'er and o'er,
Let him love to-morrow!
 
 
Spring, young Spring, with song and mirth,
Spring is on the newborn earth.
Spring is here, the time of love—
The merry birds pair in the grove,
And the green trees hang their tresses,
Loosen'd by the rain's caresses.
To-morrow sees the dawn of May,
When Venus will her sceptre sway,
Glorious, in her justice-hall:
There where woodland shadows fall,
On bowers of myrtle intertwined,
Many a band of love she'll bind.
He that never, &c.
 
 
To-morrow is the day when first
From the foam-world of Ocean burst,
Like one of his own waves, the bright
Dione, queen of love and light,
Amid the sea-gods' azure train,
'Mid the strange horses of the main.
He that never, &c.
 
 
She it is that lends the Hours
Their crimson glow, their jewel-flowers:
At her command the buds are seen,
Where the west-wind's breath hath been,
To swell within their dwellings green.
She abroad those dewdrops flings,
Dew that night's cool softness brings;
How the bright tears hang declining,
And glisten with a tremulous shining,
Almost of weight to drop away,
And yet too light to leave the spray.
Hence the tender plants are bold
Their blushing petals to unfold:
'Tis that dew, which through the air
Falls from heaven when night is fair,
That unbinds the moist green vest
From the floweret's maiden breast.
'Tis Venus' will, when morning glows,
'Twill be the bridal of each rose.
Then the bride-flower shall reveal,
What her veil cloth now conceal,
The blush divinest, which of yore
She caught from Venus' trickling gore,
With Love's kisses mix'd, I trow,
With blaze of fire, and rubies' glow,
And with many a crimson ray
Stolen from the birth of day.
He that never, &c.
 
 
All the nymphs the Queen of Love
Summons to the myrtle-grove;
And see ye, how her wanton boy
Comes with them to share our joy?
Yet, if Love be arm'd, they say,
Love can scarce keep holiday:
Love without his bow is straying!
Come, ye nymphs, Love goes a Maying.
His torch, his shafts, are laid aside—
From them no harm shall you betide.
Yet, I rede ye, nymphs, beware,
For your foe is passing fair;
Love is mighty, ye'll confess,
Mighty e'en in nakedness;
And most panoplied for fight
When his charms are bared to sight.
He that never, &c.
 
 
Dian, a petition we,
By Venus sent, prefer to thee:
Virgin envoys, it is meet,
Should the Virgin huntress greet:
Quit the grove, nor it profane
With the blood of quarry slain.
She would ask thee, might she dare
Hope a maiden's thought to share—
She would bid thee join us now,
Might cold maids our sport allow.
Now three nights thou may'st have seen,
Wandering through thine alleys green,
Troops of joyous friends, with flowers
Crown'd, amidst their myrtle bowers.
Ceres and Bacchus us attend,
And great Apollo is our friend;
All night we must our Vigil keep—
Night by song redeem'd from sleep.
Let Venus in the woods bear sway,
Dian, quit the grove, we pray.
He that never, &c.
 
 
Of Hybla's flowers, so Venus will'd,
Venus' judgment-seat we build.
She is judge supreme; the Graces,
As assessors, take their places.
Hybla, render all thy store
All the season sheds thee o'er,
Till a hill of bloom be found
Wide as Enna's flowery ground.
Attendant nymphs shall here be seen,
Those who delight in forest green,
Those who on mountain-top abide,
And those whom sparkling fountains hide.
All these the Queen of joy and sport
Summons to attend her court,
And bids them all of Love beware,
Although the guise of peace he wear.
He that never, &c.
 
 
Fresh be your coronals of flowers,
And green your overarching bowers,
To-morrow brings us the return
Of Ether's primal marriage-morn.
In amorous showers of rain he came
T' embrace his bride's mysterious frame,
To generate the blooming year,
And all the produce Earth does bear.
Venus still through vein and soul
Bids the genial current roll;
Still she guides its secret course
With interpenetrating force,
And breathes through heaven, and earth, and sea,
A reproductive energy.
He that never, &c.
 
 
She old Troy's extinguish'd glory
Revived in Latium's later story,
When, by her auspices, her son
Laurentia's royal damsel won.
She vestal Rhea's spotless charms
Surrender'd to the War-god's arms;
She for Romulus that day
The Sabine daughters bore away;
Thence sprung the Rhamnes' lofty name,
Thence the old Quirites came;
And thence the stock of high renown,
The blood of Romulus, handed down
Through many an age of glory pass'd,
To blaze in Cæsar's at last.
He that never, &c.
 
 
All rural nature feels the glow
Of quickening passion through it flow.
Love, in rural scenes of yore,
They say, his goddess-mother bore;
Received on Earth's sustaining breast,
Th' ambrosial infant sunk to rest;
And him the wild-flowers, o'er his head
Bending, with sweetest kisses fed.
He that never, &c.
 
 
On yellow broom out yonder, see,
The mighty bulls lie peacefully.
Each animal of field or grove
Owns faithfully the bond of love.
The flocks of ewes, beneath the shade,
Around their gallant rams are laid;
And Venus bids the birds awake
To pour their song through plain and brake.
Hark! the noisy pools reply
To the swan's hoarse harmony;
And Philomel is vocal now,
Perch'd upon a poplar-bough.
Thou scarce would'st think that dying fall
Could ought but love's sweet griefs recall;
Thou scarce would'st gather from her song
The tale of brother's barbarous wrong.
She sings, but I must silent be:—
When will the spring-tide come for me?
When, like the swallow, spring's own bird,
Shall my faint twittering notes be heard?
Alas! the muse, while silent I
Remain'd, hath gone and pass'd me by,
Nor Phœbus listens to my cry.
And thus forgotten, I await,
By silence lost, Amyclæ's fate.
 

CHAPTERS OF TURKISH HISTORY. RISE OF THE KIUPRILI FAMILY—SIEGE OF CANDIA

NO. IX

The restraint which the ferocious energy of Sultan Mourad-Ghazi, during the latter years of his reign, had succeeded in imposing on the turbulence of the Janissaries,¹ vanished at his death; and for many years subsequently, the domestic annals of the Ottoman capital are filled with the details of the intrigues of women and eunuchs within the palace, and the sanguinary feuds and excesses of the soldiery without. The Sultan Ibrahim, the only surviving brother and successor of Mourad, was in his twenty-fifth year at the time of his accession; but he had been closely immured in the seraglio from the moment of his birth; and the dulness of his temperament (to which he probably owed his escape from the bowstring, by which the lives of his three brothers had been terminated by order of Mourad) had never been improved by cultivation. Destitute alike of capacity and inclination for the toils of government, he remained constantly immersed in the pleasures of the harem; while his mother, the Sultana-Walidah Kiosem, (surnamed Mah-peiker, or the Moon-face,) who had been the favourite of the harem under Ahmed I., and was a woman of extraordinary beauty and masculine understanding, kept the administration of the state almost wholly in her own hands. The talents of this princess, aided by the ministers of her selection, for some time prevented the incompetency of the sultan from publicly manifesting itself; but Ibrahim at last shook off the control of his mother, and speedily excited the indignant murmurs of the troops and the people by the publicity with which he abandoned himself to the most degrading sensuality. The sanctity of the harem and of the bath had hitherto been held inviolate by even the most despotic of the Ottoman sovereigns; but this sacred barrier was broken through by the unbridled passions of Ibrahim, who at length ventured to seize in the public baths the daughter of the mufti, and, after detaining her for some days in the palace, sent her back with ignominy to her father. This unheard-of outrage at once kindled the smouldering discontent into a flame; the Moslem population rose in instant and universal revolt; and a scene ensued almost without parallel in history—the deposition of an absolute sovereign by form of law. The grand-vizir Ahmed, and other panders to the vices of the sultan, were seized and put to death on the place of public execution; while an immense crowd of soldiers, citizens, and janissaries, assembling before the palace of the mufti early on the morning of August 8, 1648, received from him a fetwa, or decree, to the effect that the sultan (designated as "Ibrahim Abdul-Rahman Effendi") had, by his habitual immorality and disregard of law, forfeited all claim to be considered as a true believer, and was therefore incapable of reigning over the Faithful. The execution of this sentence was entrusted to the Aga of the Janissaries, the Silihdar or grand sword-bearer, and the Kadhi-asker or chief judge of Anatolia, who, repairing to the seraglio, attended by a multitude of military officers and the ulemah, proceeded without ceremony to announce to Ibrahim that his rule was at an end. His furious remonstrances were drowned by the rude voice of the Kadhi Abdul-Aziz Effendi,² who boldly reproached him with his vices. "Thou hast gone astray," said he, "from the paths in which thy glorious ancestors walked, and hast trampled under foot both law and religion, and thou art no longer the padishah of the Moslems!" He was at last conducted to the same apartment whence he had been taken to ascend the throne, and where, ten days later, his existence was terminated by the bowstring; while the Sultana-Walidah, (whose acquiescence in this extraordinary revolution had been previously secured,) led into the salamlik (hall of audience) her eldest grandson Mohammed,³ an infant scarcely seven years old, who was forthwith seated on the imperial sofa, and received the homage of the dignitaries of the realm.

Sultan Mohammed IV., afterwards surnamed Avadji, or the Hunter, who was destined to fill the throne of the Ottoman Empire during one of the most eventful periods of its history, possessed qualifications which, if his education had not been interrupted by his early accession to supreme power, might have entitled him to a high place among the monarchs of his line. Unlike most of the imperial family, he was of a spare sinewy form, and lofty stature; and his features are said by Evliya to have been remarkably handsome, though his forehead was disfigured by a deep scar which he had received in his infancy, by being thrown by his father, in an access of brutal passion, into a cistern in the gardens of the seraglio; and a contemporary Venetian chronicler says that his dark complexion and vivid restless eye gave him rather the aspect of a Zigano, or gipsy, than an Osmanli. In the first years of his reign, his grandmother, the Walidah Kiosem, acted as regent; but the rule of a woman and a child was little able to curb the turbulent soldiery of the capital; and the old feuds between the spahis and janissaries, which had been dormant since the death of Abaza, broke out afresh with redoubled violence. The war in Crete, which had been commenced under Ibrahim, languished for want of troops and supplies; while the rival military factions fought, sword in hand, in front of the imperial palace, and filled Constantinople with pillage and massacre. The janissaries, who were supported by Kiosem, for some time maintained the ascendency; but this ambitious princess was at length cut off by an intrigue, in the interior of the harem, fomented by the mother of Mohammed, who suspected her of a design to prolong her own sway by the removal of the sultan, in favour of a still younger son of Ibrahim. Seized in the midst of the night of September 3, 1651, by the eunuchs whom her rival had gained, Kiosem was strangled (according to a report preserved by Evliya) with the braids of her own long hair; and the sultan was exhibited at daybreak by the grand-vizir Siawush-Pasha to the people, who thronged round the palace on the rumour of this domestic tragedy, to assure them of the personal safety of their youthful sovereign.

The supreme power was now lodged in the hands of the young Sultana Walidah, and her confidant the Kislar-Aga; but their inexperience was little qualified to encounter the task which had wellnigh baffled the energies of Kiosem; and the expedient of frequently changing the grand-vizir, in obedience to the requisition of which ever party was for the time in the ascendant, prevented the measures of government from acquiring even a shadow of consistence or stability. Twelve vizirs, within eight years from the deposition of Ibrahim, had successively held the reins of power for short periods; and not less than six had been raised to, and deposed from, that precarious dignity, within the last ten months, while the audacity of the troops, and the helplessness of the executive, had reached an unparalleled climax. In a memorable insurrection, arising from the depreciation of the coinage, which marked the spring of 1656, the revolters, not contented with their usual license of plunder and bloodshed, forced their way into the palace, and exacted from the young sultan the surrender of two of his favourite domestics, who were instantly slaughtered before his eyes; while various obnoxious public functionaries were dragged to the At-meidan, and summarily hanged on the branches of a large plane-tree;⁴ and for several weeks this proscription was continued, till the cry of "Take him to the plane-tree!" became a watchword of as well-known and fearful import, as that of "A la lanterne!" in later times. In this emergency, when the fabric of government seemed on the verge of dissolution, an ancient Anatolian pasha, Mohammed-Kiuprili, who had lately repaired to the capital, was named by her confidential advisers to the Sultana-Walidah as a man whose eminent discernment and sagacity, not less than his fearless intrepidity, rendered him especially fitted for the task of stilling the troubled waters. In opposition to these views it was contended, that the poverty of the proposed premier would prevent his securing the adherence of the troops by the largesses which they had been accustomed to receive, and the project was apparently abandoned; but the incapacity and unpopularity of the grand-vizir, Mohammed-Pasha, (surnamed Egri, or the Crooked,) soon made it obvious that a fresh change alone could prevent another convulsion. On the 15th September 1656, therefore, in a fortunate⁵ hour for the distracted empire, Kiuprili was summoned to the presence of the sultan, who had now, nominally at least, assumed the direction of affairs, and received from his hands the seals of office.

Such were the circumstances of the elevation of this most celebrated of Ottoman ministers, whose name stands pre-eminent, not only from his own abilities and good fortune, but as the founder of the only family which ever continued to enjoy, during several generations, the highest honours of the empire. He was the son of an Arnaut⁶ soldier, who had settled in Anatolia, on receiving a timar or fief in the district of Amasia, near the town of Kiupri, ('the bridge:') from which (since distinguished from other places of the same name as Vizir-Kiupri) his descendants derived the surname under which they are generally mentioned in history. He commenced his career as a page in the imperial seraglio; which he left for a post in the household of Khosroo, afterwards grand-vizir, who was then aga of janissaries. Passing through various gradations of rank, he held several governments in Syria, and was raised to the grade of pasha of three tails: till, at an advanced age, he obtained permission to exchange these honours for the post of sandjak of his native district, to which he accordingly withdrew. But his retirement was disturbed, in 1648, by the insurrection of Varvar-Ali, pasha of Siwas, who, rather than surrender a beautiful daughter, the affianced bride of his neighbour Ipshir, pasha of Tokat, to the panders of the imperial harem, had raised the standard of revolt, and had been joined by the pasha of Erzroom, Gourdji-Mohammed, (to whose suite the annalist Evliya was then attached,) and by many of the Turkman clans of Anatolia. The Sultana-Walidah herself, who was then at variance with her degenerate son, secretly encouraged the insurgents, who endeavoured to gain over Kiuprili to their party; but as they failed in all their efforts to shake his loyalty, Varvar suddenly marched against him, routed the troops which he had collected, and made him prisoner, with two beglerbegs whom he had summoned to his aid. "I saw these three pashas" (says Evliya, who had come to the rebel camp on a mission from Gourdji-Mohammed) "stripped of their robes and turbans, and fastened by chains round their necks to stakes in front of the tent of Varvar-Ali, while the seghbans, and even the surridjis" (irregular horse) "brandished their sabres before their faces, threatening them with instant death. Thus we see the changes of fortune, that those who were the drivers become in their turn the driven," (like cattle.)

Evliya, who seems to feel a malicious pleasure in relating this mishap of the future grand-vizir, confesses to having himself received a horse and a slave out of his spoils; but even before his departure from the camp, the rebellion was crushed, and Kiuprili released, by the base treachery of Ipshir-Pasha,⁷ for whose sake alone Varvar-Ali had taken up arms. Won by the emissaries of the Porte, by the promise of the rich pashalic of Aleppo, he suddenly assailed the troops of his father-in-law, and seizing his person, cut off his head, and sent it with those of his principal followers to Constantinople—an act of perfidious ingratitude, which, even among the frequent breaches of faith staining the Ottoman annals, has earned for its perpetrator the sobriquet of Khain, or the traitor, par excellence. After this unlucky adventure, we hear no more of Kiuprili in his Anatolian sandjak, till, in the spring of 1656, we find him accompanying Egri-Mohammed on his way to the Porte to assume the vizirat: from which, in less than four months, he was removed to make way for his quondam protégé, in whose elevation he had thus been an involuntary instrument.

Mohamned Kiuprili was at this period nearly eighty years of age, and so wholly illiterate that he could neither read nor write; yet such was the general estimation of his wisdom and abilities, that the young sultan, on entrusting to him the ensigns of office, voluntarily pledged himself to leave entirely at his discretion the regulation of the foreign and domestic relations of the empire, as well as the disposal of all offices of state—thus virtually delegating to him the functions of sovereignty. The measures of Kiuprili soon showed that these extraordinary powers would not be suffered to remain dormant. The impatience of the troops at the strict discipline which he enforced, erelong announced the approach of a fresh tumult; and the ringleaders, in the confidence of long-continued impunity, openly boasted that "the plane-tree would soon bear another crop"—when on the night of Jan. 5, 1657, the grand-vizir, accompanied by the aga of the janissaries, and fortified by a fetwa from the mufti, legalizing whatever he might do, made the round of the barracks with his guards, and seized several hundreds of all ranks in the various corps, whose bodies, found floating the next day in the Bosphorus, revealed their fate to their dismayed accomplices. The Greek patriarch, on suspicion of having endeavoured to engage the Vaivode of Wallachia in a plot for a general rising of the Christians, was summoned to the Porte, and forthwith bowstrung in the presence of Kiuprili; and in the course of a few weeks, not fewer than 4000 of those who had been implicated in the previous disorders perished under the hands of the executioner: "for as in medicine," remarks a Turkish historian, "it is necessary to employ remedies which are analogous to the disease, so by bloodshed alone could the state be purified from these lawless shedders of blood!"

These terrible severities broke the spirit of insubordination in the capital; and the irregularity of their pay, which had been one of the chief grievances of the janissaries, was remedied by the good order which Kiuprili had from the first introduced in the finances. "He proportioned the expenditure of the empire," says Evliya, "to its revenues, which he also greatly enlarged, so that he gained the name of Sahib-Kharj," (master of finance.) The Venetians, who had availed themselves of the anarchy reigning at Constantinople to occupy Tenedos and Lemnos, so as to blockade the Dardanelles, were dislodged by the activity of the vizir, who directed the sieges in person, bestowing honours and rewards on the soldiers most distinguished for their bravery; and though the Turkish fleet was defeated (July 17, 1657) at the entrance of the straits, the Venetians sustained an irreparable loss in their valiant admiral Mocenigo, who was blown up with his ship by a well-aimed shot from one of the batteries on shore. But though the janissaries were thus reduced to order and obedience, the flame of disaffection was still smouldering among the spahis of Asia Minor, and broke out, in the course of the ensuing year, into a formidable and widely-organized rebellion. Not fewer than forty pashas and sandjaks followed the banner of the insurgent leader Abaza-Hassan, pasha of Aleppo, who advanced towards the Bosphorus at the head of 70,000 men, assuming the state of a monarch, and demanding the heads of Kiuprili and his principal adherents as the price of his submission. Morteza-Pasha, governor of Diarbekr, who attempted to oppose him in the field, was routed with the loss of nearly his whole army; and though the emissaries who attempted to seduce the troops in Constantinople from their allegiance were detected and put to death by the vigilance of Kiuprili, the revolt spread throughout Anatolia and Syria, and the sultan was preparing to take the field in person, when treachery succeeded in accomplishing what force had failed to effect. It has been an uniform maxim of the Ottoman domestic policy, which singularly contrasts with their scrupulous observance of the treaties entered into with foreign powers, that no faith is to be kept with fermanlis, or traitors to the Padishah; and in the assured belief, confirmed by hostages and solemn oaths, that the sultan was willing to accede to his demands, Abaza-Hassan suffered himself to be drawn from his headquarters at Aintab, with thirty of his officers, to a conference with Morteza at Aleppo: but, in the midst of the banquet which followed this interview, Abaza and his comrades found themselves in the grasp of the executioners—while their followers, dispersed through the town, were slaughtered without mercy on the signal of a gun fired from the castle; and the army, panic-stricken at the fate of its leaders, quickly melted away. But no sooner was the semblance of tranquillity restored, than the Kaimakam Ismail Pasha, an unscrupulous agent of the merciless decrees of the vizir, was sent into Asia under the new title of Moufetish, or inquisitor; and an unsparing proscription almost utterly exterminated all the remaining partizans of Abaza-Hassan, without distinction of rank; while the suppression of numerous timars or fiefs, and the removal of the occupants of others from their ancient abodes to remote districts, so effectually loosened the bands which had hitherto united the spahis, like the janissaries, into a compact fraternity, that this once powerful body was divided and broken; and they no longer occupy, as a separate faction, their former conspicuous place in the troubled scene of Ottoman history.

The termination of this great revolt freed Kiuprili from the apprehension of military sedition, and left him in the enjoyment of more absolute and undivided authority than had ever been possessed by any of his predecessors in office. The sultan, from whose mind the impression of the bloody scenes witnessed in his youth had never been effaced, rarely visited Constantinople; devoting himself to the pleasures of the chase in the forests and hills of Roumelia, and repairing only at intervals to the ancient palace of his ancestors at Adrianople, whither his harem and household had been transferred from the capital. The uncontrolled administration of the state was left in the hands of the vizir, but his implacable severity towards all who failed in implicit devotion to his will, continued unabated. "He was unacquainted" (says his contemporary, Rycaut) "with mercy, and never pardoned any who were either guilty of a fault, or suspected for it;" and neither rank nor services afforded protection to those who had incurred his jealousy or resentment. Among the numerous victims of his suspicious cruelty, the fate of Delhi-Hussein-Pasha was long remembered in Constantinople. Originally a battadji or lictor in the seraglio, he had attracted the notice of Sultan Mourad-Ghazi by his strength and address in bending a bow sent as a challenge by the Shah of Persia, and which had baffled the efforts of all the pelhwans or champions of the Ottoman court. His first advancement to the post of equerry was only a prelude to the attainment of higher honours, and he became successively governor of Buda and of Egypt, capitan-pasha and serasker in Candia. His exploits in the latter capacity had endeared him to the troops, while his noble figure and frank bearing made him equally the idol of the citizens, but his unbounded popularity led Kiuprili to foresee a future rival in this favourite hero, and the fate of Delhi-Hussein was sealed. In an interview with the vizir, he was graciously received, and invested with a robe of honour; but as he quitted the Porte he was arrested and carried to the Seven Towers, where, two days after, (in spite of the intercession of the Sultana-Walidah, and the refusal of the mufti to ratify the unjust doom,) he was bowstrung in his cell, as the murmurs of the troops prevented the vizir from risking a public execution.