courseWith interpenetrating force,
And breathes through heaven, and earth, and sea,
A reproductive energy.
He that never, &c.
She old Troy's extinguish'd glory
Revived in Latium's later story,
When, by her auspices, her son
Laurentia's royal damsel won.
She vestal Rhea's spotless charms
Surrender'd to the War-god's arms;
She for Romulus that day
The Sabine daughters bore away;
Thence sprung the Rhamnes' lofty name,
Thence the old Quirites came;
And thence the stock of high renown,
The blood of Romulus, handed down
Through many an age of glory pass'd,
To blaze in Cæsar's at last.
He that never, &c.
All rural nature feels the glow
Of quickening passion through it flow.
Love, in rural scenes of yore,
They say, his goddess-mother bore;
Received on Earth's sustaining breast,
Th' ambrosial infant sunk to rest;
And him the wild-flowers, o'er his head
Bending, with sweetest kisses fed.
He that never, &c.
On yellow broom out yonder, see,
The mighty bulls lie peacefully.
Each animal of field or grove
Owns faithfully the bond of love.
The flocks of ewes, beneath the shade,
Around their gallant rams are laid;
And Venus bids the birds awake
To pour their song through plain and brake.
Hark! the noisy pools reply
To the swan's hoarse harmony;
And Philomel is vocal now,
Perch'd upon a poplar-bough.
Thou scarce would'st think that dying fall
Could ought but love's sweet griefs recall;
Thou scarce would'st gather from her song
The tale of brother's barbarous wrong.
She sings, but I must silent be:—
When will the spring-tide come for me?
When, like the swallow, spring's own bird,
Shall my faint twittering notes be heard?
Alas! the muse, while silent I
Remain'd, hath gone and pass'd me by,
Nor Phœbus listens to my cry.
And thus forgotten, I await,
By silence lost, Amyclæ's fate.
CHAPTERS OF TURKISH HISTORY. RISE OF THE KIUPRILI FAMILY—SIEGE OF CANDIA
NO. IX
The restraint which the ferocious energy of Sultan Mourad-Ghazi, during the latter years of his reign, had succeeded in imposing on the turbulence of the Janissaries,1 vanished at his death; and for many years subsequently, the domestic annals of the Ottoman capital are filled with the details of the intrigues of women and eunuchs within the palace, and the sanguinary feuds and excesses of the soldiery without. The Sultan Ibrahim, the only surviving brother and successor of Mourad, was in his twenty-fifth year at the time of his accession; but he had been closely immured in the seraglio from the moment of his birth; and the dulness of his temperament (to which he probably owed his escape from the bowstring, by which the lives of his three brothers had been terminated by order of Mourad) had never been improved by cultivation. Destitute alike of capacity and inclination for the toils of government, he remained constantly immersed in the pleasures of the harem; while his mother, the Sultana-Walidah Kiosem, (surnamed Mah-peiker, or the Moon-face,) who had been the favourite of the harem under Ahmed I., and was a woman of extraordinary beauty and masculine understanding, kept the administration of the state almost wholly in her own hands. The talents of this princess, aided by the ministers of her selection, for some time prevented the incompetency of the sultan from publicly manifesting itself; but Ibrahim at last shook off the control of his mother, and speedily excited the indignant murmurs of the troops and the people by the publicity with which he abandoned himself to the most degrading sensuality. The sanctity of the harem and of the bath had hitherto been held inviolate by even the most despotic of the Ottoman sovereigns; but this sacred barrier was broken through by the unbridled passions of Ibrahim, who at length ventured to seize in the public baths the daughter of the mufti, and, after detaining her for some days in the palace, sent her back with ignominy to her father. This unheard-of outrage at once kindled the smouldering discontent into a flame; the Moslem population rose in instant and universal revolt; and a scene ensued almost without parallel in history—the deposition of an absolute sovereign by form of law. The grand-vizir Ahmed, and other panders to the vices of the sultan, were seized and put to death on the place of public execution; while an immense crowd of soldiers, citizens, and janissaries, assembling before the palace of the mufti early on the morning of August 8, 1648, received from him a fetwa, or decree, to the effect that the sultan (designated as "Ibrahim Abdul-Rahman Effendi") had, by his habitual immorality and disregard of law, forfeited all claim to be considered as a true believer, and was therefore incapable of reigning over the Faithful. The execution of this sentence was entrusted to the Aga of the Janissaries, the Silihdar or grand sword-bearer, and the Kadhi-asker or chief judge of Anatolia, who, repairing to the seraglio, attended by a multitude of military officers and the ulemah, proceeded without ceremony to announce to Ibrahim that his rule was at an end. His furious remonstrances were drowned by the rude voice of the Kadhi Abdul-Aziz Effendi,2 who boldly reproached him with his vices. "Thou hast gone astray," said he, "from the paths in which thy glorious ancestors walked, and hast trampled under foot both law and religion, and thou art no longer the padishah of the Moslems!" He was at last conducted to the same apartment whence he had been taken to ascend the throne, and where, ten days later, his existence was terminated by the bowstring; while the Sultana-Walidah, (whose acquiescence in this extraordinary revolution had been previously secured,) led into the salamlik (hall of audience) her eldest grandson Mohammed,3 an infant scarcely seven years old, who was forthwith seated on the imperial sofa, and received the homage of the dignitaries of the realm.
Sultan Mohammed IV., afterwards surnamed Avadji, or the Hunter, who was destined to fill the throne of the Ottoman Empire during one of the most eventful periods of its history, possessed qualifications which, if his education had not been interrupted by his early accession to supreme power, might have entitled him to a high place among the monarchs of his line. Unlike most of the imperial family, he was of a spare sinewy form, and lofty stature; and his features are said by Evliya to have been remarkably handsome, though his forehead was disfigured by a deep scar which he had received in his infancy, by being thrown by his father, in an access of brutal passion, into a cistern in the gardens of the seraglio; and a contemporary Venetian chronicler says that his dark complexion and vivid restless eye gave him rather the aspect of a Zigano, or gipsy, than an Osmanli. In the first years of his reign, his grandmother, the Walidah Kiosem, acted as regent; but the rule of a woman and a child was little able to curb the turbulent soldiery of the capital; and the old feuds between the spahis and janissaries, which had been dormant since the death of Abaza, broke out afresh with redoubled violence. The war in Crete, which had been commenced under Ibrahim, languished for
See "Chapters of Turkish History," No. III., November 1840.
He was afterwards, in 1651, mufti for a few months; but is better known as an historian, (under the appellation of Kara-Tchelibi-Zadah,) and as having been tutor to Ahmed-Kiuprili.
His name, according to Evliya, was originally Yusuf, but was changed to Mohammed on the entreaty of the ladies of the seraglio, who said that Yusuf was the name of a slave.
