Constantinople

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1629, 21 December 1912, Page 13

Constantinople

(By E. Beresford Chancellor.)'' The news from Constantinople brings the fact I forcibly home to us that' wo know less of this quarter of thanprobably of any other. Appropriately is Constantinople the outpost of Luropa in the Bust, for it is, or',has ..been till lately, the last home of that old system which has been gradually crumbling to dust. The exiguous Bospnorus alone divides it from the mysteriousness of A6l a; and its contiguity to that Continent of vast distances has had so powerful an influence on its character that it mav be regarded as not the most easterly of Western cities, but the most ' of Eastern. .. . In the light of to-day's news it is interesting to' recall tho '-impressions of two travellers in the middle, of last century. in his "Eothen," and George Warburton, in "The ..Crescent and the Cross." have left US' vivid nidures of the capital of that Empiro which has been, encroached upon during the last dentnry tosnch an extent that it is but now the half' of what it wns-a sort of Turkey carpet in which the moth has made terrible and irremediable inroads. If I.ndy Hester Stanhope may be said to have Ijeen the first that ever burst into the shy recesses of Stamboul, Kinglake was ' certainly the earlii'st to give us a vivid picture of the place and its people. A City of the Past. "Even if we don't take a part in the chant about Toques and Minarets,'" ho writes, "we can still yield praises to Stamboul. We can chant about the, harbour; we can say and sing that nowhere else does the sea come so home ,to a city; there are no_ pebbly shores—no sand bars—no slimy river brds—no block c?nals—no looks, nor docks to divide' the 'very heart of the place from the deep waters." ,

The East is proverbially slow-moving. In 330 Constantino the Great wade B~antium under it? new name of Constantinople, the capital of the T?o:oan Empire; it was not till 188S that it possessed r?ilway communication with t.ho rest of Europe. Tt Had been in turn til© seat of »or«rnment c-f many great Powers, but .not till 1887•' (lid the splendid Imperial Palace, perhaps unsurpassed ni magnificence. emerge glorious at the command of AbduMrz. In 1834, when Kinglake made the Eastern journey winch resulted in "Rotten." Constantinople was in nil essentials a city of the past. Pla<rnestricken then, as it had been intermittently through Hs Ion? centuries of existpree, he nr?ht well say that ' v.'itll all 'that is m<wt truly Oriental in its character the pln?iie is associated.' . . TV"tli.to tell, the plague takes up much of Kinglake's chapter, on Constantinople. It shows that, so far 'hom becoming lessened p'nea I*adv Mary Wortley Alontefrn wroter her letters from the citr in 1717, it had remained, and had become even a renter scour°re. She. treats it rather liehtlr, and affirms that the i-»-ports about its virulence were greatly exit rated. The peculiarly Eastern method of bargaining, which has also survived, undiminished, is amusingly recorded by ICinfrlake. Ho remarks how extraordinary it seems to an Englishman that a Turk should ask more for his Roods than he really means to take, but the Teason ha "iv?s is, of course, a sound one; the ordinary tradesman of Constantinople haa • no other way of finding out the fair market value of his property.

A Word Picture. Kimrlake's friend Eliot Warburton visited the East some years later, although his famous book appeared soon after • "Ttothen." His first view of Constantinople. as seen from the ocean, is thus; described: "Slowly emergins! from the brizht horizon, minaret after minaret, 'starts into view; mosque domes and masses of dark foliatre follow; with every wavo w« bound over somo new feature is developcd; and at length Constantinople■Hfinds revealed in all its unrivalled ma.?-.-n'fiocnce and Palaces and gardens, statelv towers and the deep hue _ of innumerable cypresses; the. purple of ; distant domes and the glowins trold of the' crescents, these arc the objects that made up Warburton's nlmost. Tnrreresone picture. The Bosphcrns he will not attempt to describe; Lady Marv Wortloy Montagu's hnndred-vear-old word picture, was as descriptive for him then as it ifl. for us to-day. ' ' ' - ■ Fa "finds the city of the. Golden Horn delightful in summer, hut sufficiently dis-atn-reahlo in winter. "The view from the burying Ground of Per<i.". lie writes and' wc remember T.ady Mary's remark that •- in her time these. cemeteries were much, Hrgpr than the whole city, "is perhaps the fiiicH: in the world: '.here all the people of the Frank city assemble in the eveninc. and wander among- the tombswith merry chat and laughter; or sit'be-', noath the' evprr" trees, eatin" ice and wmlc'iie their ch'boukes.-" "Wo look'l down," he adds, "over the roofs of Tophana and Galata upon the Golden Forn, whose appellation the sunset seems to realise; its' waters nro specked by many a..' caique, ar.d reflect the vrhite sails of a'' hundred ship?." St. Sophia moved him not so much as one mieht have exneetcd—he found it naked and tawdry. - , .: Tim ■ Glory of Another Day. The impression of Ptamboul left oil the mind after reading Kimrlnko and Eliot Warhnrton is that of (he acme of antithesis; the squalor, the deference, the ingrained humility of the poor, cheek by jowl with the ostentation and pride of tho rieh. is symbolised by the golden elory of the minarets and cre-eents. which flout the plague-stricken cabins hen°ath them. To-dav Constantinople stands imparil- [ led. Is its fate to bo scaled at last? I "The other capitals of Europe," ones wrote TVenman, "s"ero hv her side thin-* !of vosterdav. creations nf accident. Bui the citv of Constantinople abidrs, and mnst abide. Over and over bfs ilho possession of that o'ty p'olon"»tl duration of powers which mu=t. otherwise have crumbled awav. Tn the. hands or Roman. Frank, Greek, and Turk, her Ti;i- " perial mission has never left her. The eternity of the elder Rome is the. eternity of a moral influence, the eternity of" the yountrer Rome is the eternitv of 3 city and fortress fixed on a spot, wlp'ci Nature itself had destined to lv- th* seat of the empire of two worlds."