on, in which,
contrary to the law of nations and every principle of justice, the
minister of any power against whom the Sultan happened to declare war,
was immured, until the termination of the quarrel.

This shameful and barbarous violation of the usages which prevail in
every other European government, has at all times been regretted by the
respectable Turks, who acknowledge it to be a base and disgraceful
stigma upon their national character.

From the time when the Seven Towers thus became the prison of
ambassadors, they acquired an interest and celebrity which otherwise
they never could have attained. Mystery and romance took them under
their especial protection; and Eastern imaginations joined themselves to
those of the West, in inventing tales of horror, dark, deep, and
tragical, connected with the dungeons and caverns beneath these dreaded
walls. That gloomy aperture which yawns beneath your footsteps is called
the Well of Blood; even the Turkish guide acknowledges that it has often
overflowed with human gore! Within this low arched vault, from which the
cheerful sun is for ever excluded, the victim lay extended upon the
rack, until death itself became a welcome relief; and upon its walls
were arranged, in dreadful order, all the infernal instruments of
torture, by which the cruelty of man endeavoured to extort from the
wretched prisoners a confession of crimes, perhaps never committed, and
of conspiracies, existing only in the guilty imaginations of their
oppressors. A little court within the precincts of the building was
pointed out to me as having frequently contained a pyramid of human
heads, reaching so high, that, standing upon its summit, you might have
looked over the walls, and beheld the pure and peaceful Sea of Marmora.
The guide also made me remark a number of narrow passages, scarcely high
enough to admit a dog, through which it is reported that the miserable
captive was formerly compelled to crawl upon his belly, and then left to
perish from starvation, while he licked the dust in the extremity of his
agony.

Thanks, however, to civilisation, these horrors are now no longer
perpetrated; and, indeed, for the honour of human nature, one is
desirous of believing that the greater portion of them are mere fables,
invented by the guides, for the purpose of gratifying a morbid taste for
the horrible, and to enhance the interest of the place. A few old
soldiers are at present the only occupants of this