are to be sold, if you consider
Their passions, and are dext'rous, some by features
Are bought up, others by a warlike leader;
Some by a place, as tend their years or natures;
The most by ready cash, but all have prices,
From crowns to kicks, according to their vices.

The account of the interior of the seraglio in Don Juan is also only
probably correct, and may have been drawn in several particulars from
an inspection of some of the palaces, but the descriptions of the
imperial harem are entirely fanciful. I am persuaded, by different
circumstances, that Byron could not have been in those sacred
chambers of any of the seraglios. At the time I was in
Constantinople, only one of the imperial residences was accessible to
strangers, and it was unfurnished. The great seraglio was not
accessible beyond the courts, except in those apartments where the
Sultan receives his officers and visitors of state. Indeed, the
whole account of the customs and usages of the interior of the
seraglio, as described in Don Juan, can only be regarded as
inventions; and though the descriptions abound in picturesque beauty,
they have not that air of truth and fact about them which render the
pictures of Byron so generally valuable, independent of their
poetical excellence. In those he has given of the apartments of the
men, the liveliness and fidelity of his pencil cannot be denied; but
the Arabian tales and Vathek seem to have had more influence on his
fancy in describing the imperial harem, than a knowledge of actual
things and appearances. Not that the latter are inferior to the
former in beauty, or are without images and lineaments of graphic
distinctness, but they want that air of reality which constitutes the
singular excellence of his scenes drawn from nature; and there is a
vagueness in them which has the effect of making them obscure, and
even fantastical. Indeed, except when he paints from actual models,
from living persons and existing things, his superiority, at least
his originality, is not so obvious; and thus it happens, that his
gorgeous description of the sultan's seraglio is like a versified
passage of an Arabian tale, while the imagery of Childe Harold's
visit to Ali Pasha has all the freshness and life of an actual scene.
The following is, indeed, more like an imitation of Vathek, than
anything that has been seen, or is in existence. I quote it for the
contrast it affords to the visit referred to, and in