op of the worthy Hadji Mustapha, on the south side of the street
called Divan-Yolly, stands unequaled; while horticulturists and
poetasters should be informed, that in spite of Lord Byron's fragrant
descriptions of "the gardens of Gul in their bloom," the finer
European roses do not sympathize with the climate. Lady Ponsonby's
attempts to introduce the moss-rose at Therapia failed; and the only
place where they have succeeded is the garden of Count Stuermer, the
Austrian Internuncio, whose palace is, in more respects than one,
according to Mr White, the Gulistan of Stamboul society.

But we cannot take leave of this part of the subject without
remarking, that while all praise is due to Mr White's accuracy in
describing the scenes and subjects on which he speaks from personal
knowledge, his acquaintance with past Turkish history appears to be by
no means on a par with the insight he has succeeded in acquiring into
the usages and manners of the Turks of the present day. The
innumerable anecdotes interspersed through his pages, and which often
mar rather than aid the effect of the more solid matter, are
frequently both improbable and pointless; and the lapses which here
and there occur in matters of historical fact, are almost
incomprehensible. Thus we are told (i. 179,) that the favour enjoyed
(until recently) by Riza Pasha, was owing to his having rescued the
present sultan, when a child, from a reservoir in the Imperial Gardens
of Beglerbey, into which he had been hurled by his father in a fit of
brutal fury--an act wholly alien to the character of Mahmoud, but
which (as Mr W. observes,) "will not appear improbable to those
acquainted with Oriental history"--since it is found related, in all
its circumstances, in Rycaut's history of the reign of Ibrahim, whose
infant son, afterwards Mohammed IV., nearly perished in this manner by
his hands, and retained through life the scar of a wound on the face,
received in the fall. This palpable anachronism is balanced in the
next page by a version of the latter incident, in which Mohammed's
wound is said to have been inflicted by the dagger of his intoxicated
father, irritated by a rebuke from the prince (who, be it remarked,
was only seven years old at Ibrahim's death, some years later) on his
unseemly exhibition of himself as a dancer. As a further instance of
paternal barbarity in the Osmanli sultans, it is related how Selim I.
was bastinadoed by command of his father, Bajazet