Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 December 1876 — The Turkish Treasure-Room. [ARTICLE]

The Turkish Treasure-Room.

Charles Dudley Warner, in a chapter about Constantinople, writes as follows: “The apartment in the seragjio which is the object of curiosity and desire is the treasure-room. I suppose it is the richest in the world in gems; it is certainly a most wearisome place, and gave me a contempt for earthly treasure. In the center stands a Persian throne— a chair upon a broad platform, and both incrusted with rubies, pearls, emeralds, diamonds; there are toilet-tables covered to the feet with diamonds, pipe-stems glistening with huge diamonds, old armor thickly set with precious stones, saddle-cloths and stirrups stiff with diamonds and emeralds, robes embroidered with pearls. Nothing is so cheap ns wealth lavished in this manner; at first we were dazzled by the flasfiing display, but after a time these heaps of gems seemed as common in our eyes as pebbles in the street. I did not even covet an emerald as large as my flst, nor a sword-hilt in which were fifteen diamonds each as iarge as the end of my thumb, nor a carpet sown with pearls, some of which were of the size of pigeons’ eggs, nor aigrettes which were blazing with internal fires, nor chairs of state, clocks and vases, the whole surfaces of which were on fire with jewels. I have seen an old oaken table, carved in the fifteenth century, which gave me more pleasure than one of lapis lazuli, which is exhibited as tlie most costly article in this collection; though it is inlaid with precious stones, and die pillars that support the mirror are set with diamonds, and the legs and claws are a mass of diamonds, rubies, carbuncles, emeralds, topazes, etc., and huge diamond pendants ornament it, and the deep fringe in front is altogether of diamonds. This is but a barbarous, ostentatious, and tasteless use of the beautiful, and I suppose gives one an idea of the inartistic magnificence of the Oriental courts in centuries gone by. “ This treasure-house has, Fpresume, nothing that belonged to the Byzantine Emperors before the Moslem conquest, some of whom exceeded in their magnificence any of the Osmanli Sultans. Arcadius, the first Eastern Emperor after the division of the Roman world, rivaled in the appointments of his palace (which stood upon this spot) and in his dress the magnificence of the Persian monarchs; anil perhaps the luxurious califs of Bagdad at a later day did not equal his splendor. His robes were of purple, a color reserved exclusively for his sacred person, and of silk, embroidered with gold dragons; his diadem was of gold set with gems of inestimable worth; his throne was massy gold, and when he went abroad he rode in a chariot of solid, pure gold, drawn by two milk-white mules shining in harness and trappings of gold. “No spot on earth has been the scene of such luxury, cruelty, treachery, murder, faithlessness of women and rapacity of men, as this site of the old palace; and the long record of the Christian Emperors —the occasionally-interrupted anarchy and usurpation of a thousand years—loses nothing in these respeets in comparison with the Turkish occupation, although the world shudders at the unrevealed secrets of the seraglio. At least we may suppose that nobody’s conscience was violated if a pretty woman was occasionally dropped into the Bosphorus, and there was the authority of custom for the strangling of all the children of the sisters of the Sultan, so that the succession might not be embarrassed.”