Blackwood\'s Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. by Various

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He that never loved before,
Let him love to-morrow!
He that hath loved o'er and o'er,
Let him love to-morrow!

Spring, young Spring, with song and mirth,
Spring is on the newborn earth.
Spring is here, the time of love--
The merry birds pair in the grove,
And the green trees hang their tresses,
Loosen'd by the rain's caresses.
To-morrow sees the dawn of May,
When Venus will her sceptre sway,
Glorious, in her justice-hall:
There where woodland shadows fall,
On bowers of myrtle intertwined,
Many a band of love she'll bind.
He that never, &c.

To-morrow is the day when first
From the foam-world of Ocean burst,
Like one of his own waves, the bright
Dione, queen of love and light,
Amid the sea-gods' azure train,
'Mid the strange horses of the main.
He that never, &c.

She it is that lends the Hours
Their crimson glow, their jewel-flowers:
At her command the buds are seen,
Where the west-wind's breath hath been,
To swell within their dwellings green.
She abroad those dewdrops flings,
Dew that night's cool softness brings;
How the bright tears hang declining,
And glisten with a tremulous shining,
Almost of weight to drop away,
And yet too light to leave the spray.
Hence the tender plants are bold
Their blushing petals to unfold:
'Tis that dew, which through the air
Falls from heaven when night is fair,
That unbinds the moist green vest
From the floweret's maiden breast.
'Tis Venus' will, when morning glows,
'Twill be the bridal of each rose.
Then the bride-flower shall reveal,
What her veil cloth now conceal,
The blush divinest, which of yore
She caught from Venus' trickling gore,
With Love's kisses mix'd, I trow,
With blaze of fire, and rubies' glow,
And with many a crimson ray
Stolen from the birth of day.
He that never, &c.

All the nymphs the Queen of Love
Summons to the myrtle-grove;
And see ye, how her wanton boy
Comes with them to share our joy?
Yet, if Love be arm'd, they say,
Love can scarce keep holiday:
Love without his bow is straying!
Come, ye nymphs, Love goes a Maying.
His torch, his shafts, are laid aside--
From them no harm shall you betide.
Yet, I rede ye, nymphs, beware,
For your foe is passing fair;
Love is mighty, ye'll confess,
Mighty e'en in nakedness;
And most panoplied for fight
When his charms are bared to sight.
He that never, &c.

Dian, a petition we,
By Venus sent, prefer to thee:
Virgin envoys, it is meet,
Should the Virgin huntress greet:
Quit the grove, nor it profane
With the blood of quarry slain.
She would ask thee, might she dare
Hope a maiden's thought to share--
She would bid thee join us now,
Might cold maids our sport allow.
Now three nights thou may'st have seen,
Wandering through thine alleys green,
Troops of joyous friends, with flowers
Crown'd, amidst their myrtle bowers.
Ceres and Bacchus us attend,
And great Apollo is our friend;
All night we must our Vigil keep--
Night by song redeem'd from sleep.
Let Venus in the woods bear sway,
Dian, quit the grove, we pray.
He that never, &c.

Of Hybla's flowers, so Venus will'd,
Venus' judgment-seat we build.
She is judge supreme; the Graces,
As assessors, take their places.
Hybla, render all thy store
All the season sheds thee o'er,
Till a hill of bloom be found
Wide as Enna's flowery ground.
Attendant nymphs shall here be seen,
Those who delight in forest green,
Those who on mountain-top abide,
And those whom sparkling fountains hide.
All these the Queen of joy and sport
Summons to attend her court,
And bids them all of Love beware,
Although the guise of peace he wear.
He that never, &c.

Fresh be your coronals of flowers,
And green your overarching bowers,
To-morrow brings us the return
Of Ether's primal marriage-morn.
In amorous showers of rain he came
T' embrace his bride's mysterious frame,
To generate the blooming year,
And all the produce Earth does bear.
Venus still through vein and soul
Bids the genial current roll;
Still she guides its secret course
With 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 Caesar'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 Phoebus listens to my cry.
And thus forgotten, I await,
By silence lost, Amyclae'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.

[1] See "Chapters of Turkish History," No. III., November 1840.

[2] 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.

[3] 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.

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 want of troops and supplies; while the rival military
factions fought, sword in hand, in front of the imperial palace, and
filled Constantinople with pillage and massacre. The janissaries, who
were supported by Kiosem, for some time maintained the ascendency; but
this ambitious princess was at length cut off by an intrigue, in the
interior of the harem, fomented by the mother of Mohammed, who suspected
her of a design to prolong her own sway by the removal of the sultan, in
favour of a still younger son of Ibrahim. Seized in the midst of the
night of September 3, 1651, by the eunuchs whom her rival had gained,
Kiosem was strangled (according to a report preserved by Evliya) with
the braids of her own long hair; and the sultan was exhibited at
daybreak by the grand-vizir Siawush-Pasha to the people, who thronged
round the palace on the rumour of this domestic tragedy, to assure them
of the personal safety of their youthful sovereign.

The supreme power was now lodged in the hands of the young Sultana
Walidah, and her confidant the Kislar-Aga; but their inexperience was
little qualified to encounter the task which had wellnigh baffled the
energies of Kiosem; and the expedient of frequently changing the
grand-vizir, in obedience to the requisition of which ever party was for
the time in the ascendant, prevented the measures of government from
acquiring even a shadow of consistence or stability. Twelve vizirs,
within eight years from the deposition of Ibrahim, had successively held
the reins of power for short periods; and not less than six had been
raised to, and deposed from, that precarious dignity, within the last
ten months, while the audacity of the troops, and the helplessness of
the executive, had reached an unparalleled climax. In a memorable
insurrection, arising from the depreciation of the coinage, which marked
the spring of 1656, the revolters, not contented with their usual
license of plunder and bloodshed, forced their way into the palace, and
exacted from the young sultan the surrender of two of his favourite
domestics, who were instantly slaughtered before his eyes; while various
obnoxious public functionaries were dragged to the At-meidan, and
summarily hanged on the branches of a large plane-tree;[4] and for
several weeks this proscription was continued, till the cry of "Take him
to the plane-tree!" became a watchword of as well-known and fearful
import, as that of "A la lanterne!" in later times. In this emergency,
when the fabric of government seemed on the verge of dissolution, an
ancient Anatolian pasha, Mohammed-Kiuprili, who had lately repaired to
the capital, was named by her confidential advisers to the
Sultana-Walidah as a man whose eminent discernment and sagacity, not
less than his fearless intrepidity, rendered him especially fitted for
the task of stilling the troubled waters. In opposition to these views
it was contended, that the poverty of the proposed premier would prevent
his securing the adherence of the troops by the largesses which they had
been accustomed to receive, and the project was apparently abandoned;
but the incapacity and unpopularity of the grand-vizir, Mohammed-Pasha,
(surnamed _Egri_, or the Crooked,) soon made it obvious that a fresh
change alone could prevent another convulsion. On the 15th September
1656, therefore, in a fortunate[5] hour for the distracted empire,
Kiuprili was summoned to the presence of the sultan, who had now,
nominally at least, assumed the direction of affairs, and received from
his hands the seals of office.

[4] The Turkish historian, Naima, fancifully compares this plane
to the fabulous tree in the islands of Wak-Wak, the fruit of
which consisted of human heads, as is fully detailed in the
romance of Hatem Tai, besides various passages of the Thousand
and One Nights. Under this same plane, by a singular instance of
retribution, the heads of the janissaries massacred in the
At-meidan in 1826, were piled by order of Sultan Mahmood.

[5] The Turkish annalists do not fail to remark, that Kiuprili
crossed the imperial threshold at the moment when the call to
noon prayers was resounding from the minarets--an evident token
of the Divine protection extended to him!

Such were the circumstances of the elevation of this most celebrated of
Ottoman ministers, whose name stands pre-eminent, not only from his own
abilities and good fortune, but as the founder of the only family which
ever continued to enjoy, during several generations, the highest honours
of the empire. He was the son of an Arnaut[6] soldier, who had settled
in Anatolia, on receiving a _timar_ or fief in the district of Amasia,
near the town of Kiupri, ('the bridge:') from which (since distinguished
from other places of the same name as _Vizir_-Kiupri) his descendants
derived the surname under which they are generally mentioned in history.
He commenced his career as a page in the imperial seraglio; which he
left for a post in the household of Khosroo, afterwards grand-vizir, who
was then aga of janissaries. Passing through various gradations of rank,
he held several governments in Syria, and was raised to the grade of
pasha of three tails: till, at an advanced age, he obtained permission
to exchange these honours for the post of _sandjak_ of his native
district, to which he accordingly withdrew. But his retirement was
disturbed, in 1648, by the insurrection of Varvar-Ali, pasha of Siwas,
who, rather than surrender a beautiful daughter, the affianced bride of
his neighbour Ipshir, pasha of Tokat, to the panders of the imperial
harem, had raised the standard of revolt, and had been joined by the
pasha of Erzroom, Gourdji-Mohammed, (to whose suite the annalist Evliya
was then attached,) and by many of the Turkman clans of Anatolia. The
Sultana-Walidah herself, who was then at variance with her degenerate
son, secretly encouraged the insurgents, who endeavoured to gain over
Kiuprili to their party; but as they failed in all their efforts to
shake his loyalty, Varvar suddenly marched against him, routed the
troops which he had collected, and made him prisoner, with two
beglerbegs whom he had summoned to his aid. "I saw these three pashas"
(says Evliya, who had come to the rebel camp on a mission from
Gourdji-Mohammed) "stripped of their robes and turbans, and fastened by
chains round their necks to stakes in front of the tent of Varvar-Ali,
while the seghbans, and even the surridjis" (irregular horse)
"brandished their sabres before their faces, threatening them with
instant death. Thus we see the changes of fortune, that those who were
the drivers become in their turn the driven," (like cattle.)

[6] In a narrative by a writer named Chassipol, (Paris, 1676,)
professing to be the biography of the two first Kiuprili vizirs,
Mohammed is said to have been the son of a French emigrant, and
this romance has been copied by most European authors. But the
testimony of Evliya, Kara-Tchelibi, and all contemporary Turkish
writers, is decisive on the point of his Albanian origin.

Evliya, who seems to feel a malicious pleasure in relating this mishap
of the future grand-vizir, confesses to having himself received a horse
and a slave out of his spoils; but even before his departure from the
camp, the rebellion was crushed, and Kiuprili released, by the base
treachery of Ipshir-Pasha,[7] for whose sake alone Varvar-Ali had taken
up arms. Won by the emissaries of the Porte, by the promise of the rich
pashalic of Aleppo, he suddenly assailed the troops of his
father-in-law, and seizing his person, cut off his head, and sent it
with those of his principal followers to Constantinople--an act of
perfidious ingratitude, which, even among the frequent breaches of faith
staining the Ottoman annals, has earned for its perpetrator the
sobriquet of _Khain_, or the traitor, _par excellence_. After this
unlucky adventure, we hear no more of Kiuprili in his Anatolian sandjak,
till, in the spring of 1656, we find him accompanying Egri-Mohammed on
his way to the Porte to assume the vizirat: from which, in less than
four months, he was removed to make way for his quondam _protege_, in
whose elevation he had thus been an involuntary instrument.

[7] Ipshir Mustapha Pasha was originally a Circassian slave, and
said to have been a tribesman and near relation of the famous
Abaza. During the revolutions which distracted the minority of
Mohammed, he became grand-vizir for a few months, (Oct. 1654-May
1655,) but was cut off by an unanimous insurrection of the
spahis and janissaries, who forgot their feuds for the sake of
vengeance on the common enemy.

Mohamned Kiuprili was at this period nearly eighty years of age, and so
wholly illiterate that he could neither read nor write; yet such was the
general estimation of his wisdom and abilities, that the young sultan,
on entrusting to him the ensigns of office, voluntarily pledged himself
to leave entirely at his discretion the regulation of the foreign and
domestic relations of the empire, as well as the disposal of all offices
of state--thus virtually delegating to him the functions of sovereignty.
The measures of Kiuprili soon showed that these extraordinary powers
would not be suffered to remain dormant. The impatience of the troops at
the strict discipline which he enforced, erelong announced the approach
of a fresh tumult; and the ringleaders, in the confidence of
long-continued impunity, openly boasted that "the plane-tree would soon
bear another crop"--when on the night of Jan. 5, 1657, the grand-vizir,
accompanied by the aga of the janissaries, and fortified by a fetwa from
the mufti, legalizing whatever he might do, made the round of the
barracks with his guards, and seized several hundreds of all ranks in
the various corps, whose bodies, found floating the next day in the
Bosphorus, revealed their fate to their dismayed accomplices. The Greek
patriarch, on suspicion of having endeavoured to engage the Vaivode of
Wallachia in a plot for a general rising of the Christians, was summoned
to the Porte, and forthwith bowstrung in the presence of Kiuprili; and
in the course of a few weeks, not fewer than 4000 of those who had been
implicated in the previous disorders perished under the hands of the
executioner: "for as in medicine," remarks a Turkish historian, "it is
necessary to employ remedies which are analogous to the disease, so by
bloodshed alone could the state be purified from these lawless shedders
of blood!"

These terrible severities broke the spirit of insubordination in the
capital; and the irregularity of their pay, which had been one of the
chief grievances of the janissaries, was remedied by the good order
which Kiuprili had from the first introduced in the finances. "He
proportioned the expenditure of the empire," says Evliya, "to its
revenues, which he also greatly enlarged, so that he gained the name of
_Sahib-Kharj_," (master of finance.) The Venetians, who had availed
themselves of the anarchy reigning at Constantinople to occupy Tenedos
and Lemnos, so as to blockade the Dardanelles, were dislodged by the
activity of the vizir, who directed the sieges in person, bestowing
honours and rewards on the soldiers most distinguished for their
bravery; and though the Turkish fleet was defeated (July 17, 1657) at
the entrance of the straits, the Venetians sustained an irreparable loss
in their valiant admiral Mocenigo, who was blown up with his ship by a
well-aimed shot from one of the batteries on shore. But though the
janissaries were thus reduced to order and obedience, the flame of
disaffection was still smouldering among the spahis of Asia Minor, and
broke out, in the course of the ensuing year, into a formidable and
widely-organized rebellion. Not fewer than forty pashas and sandjaks
followed the banner of the insurgent leader Abaza-Hassan, pasha of
Aleppo, who advanced towards the Bosphorus at the head of 70,000 men,
assuming the state of a monarch, and demanding the heads of Kiuprili and
his principal adherents as the price of his submission. Morteza-Pasha,
governor of Diarbekr, who attempted to oppose him in the field, was
routed with the loss of nearly his whole army; and though the emissaries
who attempted to seduce the troops in Constantinople from their
allegiance were detected and put to death by the vigilance of Kiuprili,
the revolt spread throughout Anatolia and Syria, and the sultan was
preparing to take the field in person, when treachery succeeded in
accomplishing what force had failed to effect. It has been an uniform
maxim of the Ottoman domestic policy, which singularly contrasts with
their scrupulous observance of the treaties entered into with foreign
powers, that no faith is to be kept with _fermanlis_, or traitors to the
Padishah; and in the assured belief, confirmed by hostages and solemn
oaths, that the sultan was willing to accede to his demands,
Abaza-Hassan suffered himself to be drawn from his headquarters at
Aintab, with thirty of his officers, to a conference with Morteza at
Aleppo: but, in the midst of the banquet which followed this interview,
Abaza and his comrades found themselves in the grasp of the
executioners--while their followers, dispersed through the town, were
slaughtered without mercy on the signal of a gun fired from the castle;
and the army, panic-stricken at the fate of its leaders, quickly melted
away. But no sooner was the semblance of tranquillity restored, than the
Kaimakam Ismail Pasha, an unscrupulous agent of the merciless decrees of
the vizir, was sent into Asia under the new title of Moufetish, or
inquisitor; and an unsparing proscription almost utterly exterminated
all the remaining partizans of Abaza-Hassan, without distinction of
rank; while the suppression of numerous _timars_ or fiefs, and the
removal of the occupants of others from their ancient abodes to remote
districts, so effectually loosened the bands which had hitherto united
the spahis, like the janissaries, into a compact fraternity, that this
once powerful body was divided and broken; and they no longer occupy, as
a separate faction, their former conspicuous place in the troubled scene
of Ottoman history.

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