Still more revolting perhaps is the fact, that among his secret papers were found sentences of death, drawn up beforehand, against several of his most confidential servants.

In like manner it was a genuine trait of the sultan, that he afterwards, for the mere purpose of withdrawing from his enemies the trophies of victory, caused his two Greek wives, his sister and his whole harem to be put to death, and merely left to the women the choice of the mode of dying.

He prosecuted the experimental study of poisons and antidotes as an important branch of the business of government, and tried to inure his body to particular poisons.

He had early learned to look for treason and assassination at the hands of everybody and especially of his nearest relatives, and he had early learned to practise them against everybody and most of all against those nearest to him; of which the necessary consequence--attested by all his history--was, that all his undertakings finally miscarried through the perfidy of those whom he trusted.

At the same time we doubtless meet with isolated traits of high-minded justice: when he punished traitors, he ordinarily spared those who had become involved in the crime simply from their personal relations with the leading culprit; but such fits of equity are not wholly wanting in every barbarous tyrant.