anged horses, and as the public curiosity continued
to increase throughout the journey, a fixed charge was at length made
for its gratification, and the head of the renowned vizier was degraded
into becoming an article of traffic exhibited at every post-house, until
it arrived at Constantinople.

The sight of this dreaded relic, exposed on the 23rd of February at the
gate of the seraglio, and the birth of an heir-presumptive to the sword
of Othman--which news was announced simultaneously with that of the
death of Ali, by the firing of the guns of the seraglio--roused the
enthusiasm of the military inhabitants of Constantinople to a state
of frenzy, and triumphant shouts greeted the appearance of a document
affixed to the head which narrated Ali's crimes and the circumstances of
his death, ending with these words: "This is the Head of the above-named
Ali Pacha, a Traitor to the Faith of Islam."

Having sent magnificent presents to Kursheed, and a hyperbolical
despatch to his army, Mahmoud II turned his attention to Asia Minor,
where Ali's sons would probably have been forgotten in their banishment,
had it not been supposed that their riches were great. A sultan does not
condescend to mince matters with his slaves, when he can despoil them
with impunity; His Supreme Highness simply sent them his commands to
die. Veli Pacha, a greater coward than a woman-slave born in the harem,
heard his sentence kneeling. The wretch who had, in his palace at Arta,
danced to the strains of a lively orchestra, while innocent victims were
being tortured around him, received the due reward of his crimes. He
vainly embraced the knees of his executioners, imploring at least the
favour of dying in privacy; and he must have endured the full bitterness
of death in seeing his sons strangled before his eyes, Mehemet the
elder, remarkable for his beauty, and the gentle Selim whose merits
might have procured the pardon of his family had not Fate ordained
otherwise. After next beholding the execution of his brother, Salik
Pacha, Ali's best loved son, whom a Georgian slave had borne to him in
his old age, Veli, weeping, yielded his guilty head to the executioners.

His women were then seized, and the unhappy Zobeide, whose scandalous
story had even reached Constantinople, sewn up in a leather sack, was
flung into the Pursak--a river whose waters mingle with those of the
Sagaris. Katherin, Veli's other wife, and his daughters by various
mothers, were