The smallest opportunity for experience

The vast mass of the people thus grew consolidated, without a single public outlet for its energies, or the smallest opportunity for experience in affairs; the whole ability of the nation for politics, administration, law, or war, was forced into abstract speculation and social discussion; conscious that it was the real force and possessed the real wealth of the nation; increasing its resources day by day, amidst frightful extortion and incredible barbarism, which it was bound to endure without a murmur; the thinking world, to whom action was closed, kept watching the tremendous problems at stake in their most naked and menacing aspect, without any disguise, compromise, or alleviation. And in France, where the old feudal and ecclesiastical system was concentrated in its most aggravated form, there it was also the weakest, most corrupt, and most servile.

And there, too, in France the tiers Hat was the most numerous, the most consolidated, the most charged with ideas, the most sharply separated off, the most conscious of its power, the most exasperated by oppression. Thus it came about that a European evolution broke out in France into revolution. The social battle of the eighteenth century began in the only nation which was strictly marshalled in two opposing camps; where the oppressors were utterly enfeebled by corruption; where the oppressed were fermenting with ideas and boiling with indignation sofia sightseeing.

The Church was torn by factions

The fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries saw the silent universal but unobserved dissolution of the old mediaeval society. For crusades the soldier took to the puerilities of the tournament. The lordly castles fell one by one before the strong hand of the king. The humble village expanded into the great trading town. The Church was torn by factions and assailed by heresies. The musket- ball destroyed the supremacy of the mailed knight.

The printing-press made science and thought the birthright of all. The sixteenth century saw a temporary resettlement in a strong dominant monarchy and a compromise in religion. Whilst the seventeenth century in England gave power to a transformed and modified aristocracy, in France it concentrated the whole public forces in a monstrous absolutism, whilst nobility and Church grew daily more rife with obsolete oppression. Hence, in France, the ancient monarchy stood alone as the centre of the old system. Beside it stood the new elements unfettered and untransformed. It was the simplicity of the problem, the glaring nature of the contrast, which caused the intensity of the explosion. The old system stood with dry-rot in its heart; the new was bursting with incoherent hopes and undefined ideals. The Bastille fell — and a new era began.

Take a rapid survey of France in the closing years of the Monarchy. She had not recovered the desolation of the long wars of Louis xiv., the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the banishment of the Protestants, the monstrous extravagance of Versailles and the corrupt system which was there concentrated. The entire authority was practically absorbed by the Crown, whilst the most incredible confusion and disorganisation reigned throughout the administration. A network of incoherent authorities crossed, recrossed, and embarrassed each other throughout the forty provinces. The law, the customs, the organisation of the provinces, differed from each other. Throughout them existed thousands of hereditary offices without responsibility, and sinecures cynically created for the sole purpose of being sold.

The administration of justice was as completely incoherent as the public service. Each province, and often each district, city, or town, had special tribunals with peculiar powers of its own and anomalous methods of jurisdiction. There were nearly four hundred different codes of customary law. There were civil tribunals, military tribunals, commercial tribunals, exchequer tribunals, ecclesiastical tribunals, and manorial tribunals. A vast number of special causes could only be heard in special courts: a vast body of privileged persons could only be sued before special judges. If civil justice was in a state of barbarous complication and confusion, criminal justice was even more barbarous.

Preliminary torture before trial, mutilation, ferocious punishments, a lingering death by torment, a penal code which had death or bodily mutilation in every page, were dealt out freely to the accused without the protection of counsel, the right of appeal, or even a public statement of the sentence. For ecclesiastical offences, and these were a wide and vague field, the punishment was burning alive. Loss of the tongue, of eyes, of limbs, and breaking on the wheel, were common punishments for very moderate crimes. Madame Roland tells us how the summer night was made hideous by the yells of wretches dying by inches after the torture of the wheel. With this state of justice there went systematic corruption in the judges, bribery of officials from the highest to the lowest, and an infinite series of exactions and delays in trial.

Outline of Modern History

I am accustomed to recommend as a general summary the Outline of Modern History by Jules Michelet. It is unsurpassed in clearness and general arrangement. It begins with the taking of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, and has been well translated and continued to our own day by Mrs. W. Simpson. I am also old-fashioned enough to rely on the Manual of a great historian,— Heeren’s Political System of Europe which covers almost exactly the same ground, — though it is now more than eighty years old, not easily procurable in the English form, and avowedly restricted to the political relations of the European States. But its concise and masterly grouping, its good sense and just proportion, make it the model of a summary of a long and intricate period. But we must not ask more from it than it professes to give us. We shall look from it in vain for any account of the revolution directed by Cromwell or of the culture that gave splendour to the early years of Louis xiv.

Summaries and manuals are of course made for students, and it would be vain to expect the general reader, who is not about to be ‘ extended ’ on the ‘ mark-system,’ and who, tired with work, takes up a volume at his fireside, to commit to memory the dates and subdivisions which are the triumph of the examiner and the despair of the practical man. Records and summaries there must be private turkey tours, if only for reference and general clearness of heads. We must to some extent group our periods; and, without pretending to very minute details, the following may serve for practical purposes, and are those which are commonly adopted: —

1. The formation of the European monarchies and the rise of the modern State-System.

2. The revival of learning and the intellectual movement known as the Renascence. This is synchronous with, and related to, the first mentioned.

3. The Reformation and the great religious wars down to the middle of the seventeenth century.

4. The dynastic, territorial, and colonial struggles from the Peace of Westphalia to the close of the Seven Years’ War.

Holland in the sixteenth century

5. The struggle against autocracy in (a) Holland in the sixteenth century; (b) England in the seventeenth century; (c) America in the eighteenth century. This is a special phase of the general movements noted as 3 and 4.

6. The Revolution of the eighteenth century and its political, social, and industrial effects.

We will take each of these six movements in their order: —

I. For the first we have a book of established fame, now well entered on its second century, which still lives by virtue of its high powers of generalization, its pellucid style, and sureness of judgment — Robertson’s Charles V In spite of the development of research in the last one hundred and thirty years, the famous Introduction or Survey of Europe from the fall of the Roman empire to the fifteenth century remains an indispensable book, the appendix, as it were, and philosophic completion of The Decline and Fall.

Victory followed upon victory

Victory followed upon victory, and the whole Greek race expanded with this amazing triumph. The old world had been brought face to face with the intellect which was to transform it. The Greek mind, with the whole East open to it, exhibited inexhaustible activity. A century sufficed to develop a thoroughly new phase of civilisation. They carried the arts to a height whereon they stand as the types for all time. In poetry they exhausted and perfected every form of composition. In politics they built up a multitude of communities, rich with a prolific store of political and social institutions. Throughout their stormy history stand forth great names. Now and then there rose amongst them leaders of real genius. For a time they showed some splendid instances of public virtue, of social life, patriotism, elevation, sagacity, and energy. For a moment Athens at least may have believed that she had reached the highest type of political existence ephesus sightseeing.

Barren struggles and wanton restlessness

But with all this activity and greatness there was no true unity. Wonderful as was their ingenuity, their versatility and energy, it was too often wasted in barren struggles and wanton restlessness. For a century and a half after the Persian invasion, the petty Greek states contended in one weary round of contemptible civil wars and aimless revolutions. One after another they cast their great men aside, to think out by themselves the thoughts that were to live for all time, and gave themselves up to be the victims of degraded adventurers. For one moment only in their history, if indeed for that, they did become a nation. At last, wearied out by endless wars and constant revolutions, the Greek states by force and fraud were fused in one people by the Macedonian kings ; and by Macedon, instead of by true Hellas, the great work so long postponed, but through their history never forgotten, was at length attempted — the work of avenging the Persian invasion, and subduing Asia.

Short and wonderful was that career of conquest, due wholly to one marvellous mind. Alexander, indeed, in military and practical genius seems to stand above all Greeks, as Caesar above all Romans; they two the greatest chiefs of the ancient world. No story in history is so romantic as the tale of that ten years of victory when Alexander, at the head of some thirty thousand veteran Greeks, poured over Asia, crushing army after army, taking city after city, and receiving the homage of prince after prince, himself fighting like a knight-errant: until, subduing the Persian empire, and piercing Asia from side to side, and having reached even the great rivers of India, he turned back to Babylon to organise his vast empire, to found new cities, pour life into the decrepit frame of the East, and give to these entranced nations the arts and wisdom of Greece. For this he came to Babylon, but came thither only to die. Endless confusion ensued ; province after province broke up into a separate kingdom, and the vast empire of Alexander became the prey of military adventurers.

Anglican church at Kadikeuy

There are about 1200 of these native Protestants in Constantinople. Three churches have been organized among them, which manage their own ecclesiastical affairs independently of foreign control. The influence of these “ Gospel Christians ” must be reckoned upon in any summing up of forces that tend for the substitution of the service of God for the service of self in this place. Besides the native “ Gospel Churches ” in Constantinople there are congregations of English speaking Protestants connected with the chapel of the British Embassy and the Crimean memorial church in Pera, with the Union Evangelical Church which worships at the chapel of the Dutch Legation in Pera, with an Anglican church at Kadikeuy, the ancient Chalcedon, and with a little Union Church of English and Americans at Bebek on the Bosphorus.

German Protestant congregation at Bebek

There is also a German Protestant congregation at Bebek, and a more important one under the charge of the Chaplain of the German Embassy in Pera. All of these efforts to secure the spiritual culture of foreign residents of Constantinople are to be regarded as one in purpose and interest with missions among the natives, because people who do not know Christ learn of Him more influentially through the lives and conduct of his followers than through the most eloquent of sermons. It is entirely possible that an English or Swiss or German merchant, who is of incorruptible character, and who lives in Constantinople without thought of what is beyond the Bosphorus may exert a Christianizing influence in Bagdad through the return to that place of natives who have admired the Christian life of such business men tailor-made bulgaria tours.

Among these forces for the reform of life and character will be reckoned, too, every one of the foreign missionary establishments in Constantinople alluded to in the last chapter. As a type of the influence which such establishments may wield the work of the mission of the American Board may be described, since it is one of the oldest and largest of these institutions in the city.

After seeing the Colleges and the Bible House, the traveller sometimes leaves Constantinople with the idea that he has looked into all the enterprises of the American missionaries there, and that they do educational work alone. As a remedy for this idea the visitor has to be taken to see sights on Sunday. A missionary calls at the hotel at nine o’clock on Sunday morning, and takes the stranger to a chapel about two blocks away. There for the first time in his life the visitor hears “ Praise God from whom all blessings flow,” sung in Armenian to the tune of Old Hundred, and then listens to a prayer in Armenian offered by the preacher.

He is hurried away from this chapel, however, and taken to another two blocks farther along. Here an-other native congregation is assembled, and another pastor is in the midst of a service in the Greek language. There the visitor hears for the first time, perhaps, the Greek Testament read with its natural pronunciation. Thence again he is hurried a mile and a half to the Bible House, where in a neat chapel another Greek preacher is just finishing a very eloquent sermon. The bene-diction is pronounced and the congregation disperses.

The visitor wishes to go, too, when he discovers that an entirely different set of people are beginning to come into the chapel. Before he knows what is happening a new congregation has filled the place. It is composed of all classes of people, from the professional man and the merchant to the day-laborer and the donkey driver, and from the lady in silk to the tired handkerchief painter in her faded cotton dress. Then he hears for the first time a sermon in Turkish, to which the people pay profound attention, and which a Turkish officer or two also come in to hear. By their tunes he recognizes the hymns in Turkish, sung by every man, woman and child, roaring at full lung power. He further understands without the services of an interpreter, the collection, and drops a gold piece on the plate, to the vast amazement of the coppers and five-cent pieces into the midst of which it falls.

During two hundred years

During two hundred years, Europeans, often notable for refinement and culture, and since the Crimean War of 1856, considerable in numbers, have lived in Constantinople surrounded as far as possible by the requirements of their own various types of civilization. They constitute a colony, living under the protection of the curious treaty privilege of extra-territoriality, which, to the European in any Asiatic domain is what the air helmet is to the diver working in deep waters. In this European colony are many men who stand head and shoulders—in point of morals—above the Turks who style them infidel dogs. There are men whose word is sacred under all circumstances, and whose sturdy manliness might act directly to break up the Mohammedan prejudice against Christianity. But there are also in this colony numbers of Europeans who make the name of Christianity a byword by their profligate lives. And there are large numbers of Europeans in this colony who are not really Europeans at all, hut who give, in the eyes of the Turks, character to the whole body, because they are the only part of the colony with which a middle-class Turk can enter into intimate relations.

These are the half-bloods, such as throng the outskirts of every European colony in Asia. They are the somewhat nondescript offspring of European fathers and native mothers. These “ Levantines ” dress as Europeans, and have European passports. They translate the alert and active bearing of the European into a swagger that is peculiar to themselves, and that imposes itself on the simplicity of the Oriental as a token of greatness. They browbeat the natives in virtue of their superiority, they converse in polyglot fluency, pursue amusement as the Euro-pean does not, and they often lie and cheat with as clean a conscience as any native. When they go to Europe they are eyed askance as “ Greeks ” in the clubs and the gambling houses to which they find admittance guided istanbul tour.

Petit Champs of Pera

In Constantinople the average Levantine may be studied any day in the coffee houses of the Petit Champs of Pera, which he frequents as the Venetian does the Piazza of St. Mark’s, because there one may receive one’s friends without expense for hospitality. He also has among his amusements the club, because English civilization demands it. There he gambles for high stakes, because Italian civilization demands the thrill of appeals to chance. He has also the theatre and the concert hall, because French civilization demands the society drama and the singing of girls as a set-off and accompaniment to light tippling. He has also the beer garden in all its forms because German civilization requires that the pleasures of life shall be mixed with beer.

At specified times he has to go out hunting, and mentions the fact as a solemn duty done. If he has a fraction of a drop of English blood in his veins he pays penalty in unseemly and wearisome exertion on the cricket field, the golf links, or in the stern of a sail boat which he calls a yacht. Intellectual pleasures do not flourish in such soil and the Levantine is out of his element in a moment if any one broaches a subject of conversation outside of the celebrated Levantine Quadrilateral of Society, Shop, The Turk, and the Table: Society—that is to say, womankind and amusement; Shop—namely the conditions and incidents of trade; The Turk— including the daily bulls and delicious absurdities of Government officials; and The Table—the art of producing savory meats, drinks, and smokes.

Living and expenses at Constantinople

With the wish to make this volume something more than a mere recollection of travel, I have ventured to add an Appendix of such information as may be useful to any traveller about to make the same journey. Whilst on my way to the East, I remember the eagerness with which I questioned certain returned travellers respecting various points connected with living and expenses at Constantinople, about which I could get at no accurate information in the guide-books. I have now thrown together my notes on these subjects, and I hope they will be found as useful to others as I should have found them myself this time last year.

THE JOURNEY

The direct line to Constantinople by the English boats, starting from Southampton, is that usually patronized by travellers with much luggage, and in such cases is decidedly the preferable one. As full information connected with the departure of these fine vessels may be obtained at the London offices private tours istanbul, it is unnecessary to repeat it here, beyond stating that the fares are, for the first class, £41, and for the second, £27 10s. Passengers’ servants are charged £22.

The excellent service of the French Paquebots-Postcs de la Mediterrante, which start from Marseilles, is less generally known. This is by far the best method for the mere tourist unencumbered with luggage ; and it is also the most agreeable, and cheapest.

There are two lines from Marseilles to Malta. One of these is a direct one; the other touches at Genoa, Leghorn, Civitavecchia, Naples, and Messina; and both are so arranged as to correspond, at Malta, with the boat proceeding, without loss of time, to Constantinople. The departures take place three times a month, and arc very regular. The direct boat to Malta starts on the 1st, 11th, and 21st; that touching at Italy, on the 1Oth, 19th, and 29th; and all these arrive respectively in time for one or the other of the boats which leave Malta in turn, on the 5th, 15th, and 25th, and arrive at Constantinople on the- day week of their departure from that port.

From Marseilles to Constantinople

The fares are—presuming the direct line be chosen — from Marseilles to Constantinople: first class, 4G5 francs; second, 279 francs; third, 186 francs; fourth, 11G francs; or, in rough sums, respectively about 18/. 12s. ; 11/.; 71. 10s.; 41.12s. The living is not included in this, but the tariff is fixed at six francs a day for first-class passengers, and four francs for the second. This must be paid whether the passengers partake of the meals or do not. If there are servants on board, they have their meals in the second cabin, after the passengers, but are not allowed to join them at any time. The third and fourth class passengers can lay in their own stock, but may get anything from the restaurateur on board by paying for it. I add the bill of fare of one day’s dinner, in tho fore-cabin, taken at random : —

The mere expenses of conveyance from London to Marseilles, via Folkestone, Boulogne, Paris, Lyons, and Avignon, by steamer, railway and diligence, are 130 francs. This is for the banquette of the diligence and second class of the railways, but the arrangements are so good that it is a mere throwing away of money for a tourist to go in the more expensive places. The route from Paris, at present, is by rail to Tonnare, and thence by diligence to Dijon; from Dijon to Chalons by rail; from Chalons to Lyons by * steamer, on the Saone; from Lyons to Avignon by diligence, and from Avignon to Marseilles by the rail. The journey occupies three days and three nights; of these, two nights only are passed on the road. When the line of railway is completed from Paris to Avignon, of course the time will be considerably abridged. The route is most interesting, and has the incalculable advantage of avoiding all the rolling misery of the Bay of Biscay.

An hour in Constantinople

This will be a feature you cannot fail to notice before you have been an hour in Constantinople.

The chaplet, or tesbeh, contains ninety-nine wooden beads, divided into three rows by little oblong pieces of turned wood. It is used in certain forms of the Mohammedan religion; but the active minds of the Armenian and Greek traders require something to expend their irritability upon, and so they all carry these beads, constantly whirling them about, or rapidly reckoning them up by twos and threes, all the while they arc conversing or smoking.

Amongst the crowd you see porters, water-carriers, or Sakcis ; cake-men, or Lokumjees; native couriers, or Tatars, who will take you for a certain sum, everything included, to Bagdad, if you please; and bending beneath their baskets are grape-sellers, with the beautiful fruit we have before noticed — the chow-oosh-nzume, as it is pronounced, and which you should always ask for. Now two trains of mules, laden with firewood and barrels, have met, and there is great confusion, which the drivers considerably increase. On the water below, there is equal bustle. The eighty thousand caiques, said to be plying about Constantinople, must necessarily get, at times, in each other’s way ; and our own “bargees” would pale before the riot and swearing that begin when such takes place.

The other for Buyukdere

Here a heavy boat, filled with country people, is going up the Pos- phorus; there two steamers are lying, all ready to start from the bridge — one for Prince’s Islands, and the other for Buyukdere. The dogs sleep about the bridge just the same as in tire streets, and do not move for anybody. Little Greek children, taught to beg with a winning smile and courtesy, instead of the whining cant of our mendicants, get immediately before you; and the distant appearance of a camel or two at the Stamboul end of the bridge, and a buffalo drove at the other, with the opposition mules still in the centre, promises such an awkward rencontre, that our best plan is to get away as soon as possible. Hut you will often return to this Galatu bridge, and always find amusement in watching its ever-changing objects local ephesus tour guides.

My guide took me on, through the narrow, crooked streets of Stamboul — which are certainly a trifle cleaner than those of Pera — towards the chief bazaar. lie was anxious to prove that be was doing his duty; and showed and told me so much that my head was soon in an absolute whirl.

“ Here’s where they cut the heads off,” lie said, in somewhat more difficult Lmrlish than I care to distress the reader with: “ just here, where these two streets meet, and the body is left hero a day or so, and sometimes the dogs get at it. Not many executions now — only English subjects.”

There was something very startling in this information, until it was explained. By “ English subjects,” lie meant the emigrants from Malta and the Ionian Islands — natives of those places, who bear the worst characters of all the graceless scamps forming, unfortunately, a large proportion of the Pera population. There had not, however, been an execution for more than a year, with all the popular talk of Turkish scimitars and sacks.

Divides Pera from Galata

Descending the steep narrow lane, we passed an old gateway which divides Pera from Galata, and then the road became steeper and narrower still. Put the same busy throng kept slipping and jostling, and hurrying up and down ; although the absence of carriages allowed an odd kind of silence to prevail, — such as has struck one in a great London thoroughfare, when the pavement has been taken up. Now and then, a horseman clattered and stumbled over the rough pavement, in imminent danger as regarded himself, his horse, and the foot-passengers ; and occasionally some mules increased the confusion. But. everything was carried by the Ninth — even the blocks of stone from the port, to be used for the buildings high above us; andat last, I met one toiling up with a sick sailor on his back, going to a hospital.

From Galata to Stainboul

A few minutes brought us down to the bridge of boats, leading from Galata to Stainboul, across the Golden Horn, which is here somewhat over a quarter of a mile in breadth. From this point, one of the most superb views in Constantinople is to be obtained, more comprehensive than that from the steamer, as the continufttion of the port towards the arsenal is added to the range. Emerging from the close and dirty Galata, the bright panorama fairly takes one’s breath away. The wondrous and dazzling confusion of minarets, domes, towers, ships, trees, ruins, kiosks, and warehouses, with the sparkling water below, more intensely blue than the sky above, is beyond description. The ever-changing kaleidoscope, however, that the bridge affords, may be better dealt with. One has only to lean against the rails for five minutes, and he will see some specimen of every known Oriental race pass by him. Take your place, with your back to the arsenal, near where the good- tempered little cripple has permission to sit and ask for alms,, (as the blind girl iu the large straw hat, and the man with the ragged vulture, used to do on the Pont des Arts at Paris,) and make all use of your eyes. First, observe how the poor mannikin at your feet has chosen his place carefully. He knows that some paras will come in change from the toll, and he waits for them, near the gate, before you put them in your pocket. At the other end of the bridge he would have no chance of this small money. And now watch the folks before you, and lot me be the showman.

First of all comes a person high in command, upon horseback. He has adopted, in common with his Sultan, the European dress — the red fez alone distinguishes him from any other foreigner you might chance to meet. His servant, in Turkish costume, runs by his side, and can keep up with him for any distance. The trappings of the horse are magnilicently embroidered with tinsel and gold, and they carry your mind back to the days when you saw the combat between Kerim and Sanballat, in Timour the Tartar.

The old Turk with the mighty Turban, who meets him, dislikes the European dress and the simple fez; lie foresees, in the change from the lumbering costume of himself and fathers, the spirit of advancing civilization which must shake the most time-honored observances of the Eastern world, in another age ; and he knows, with sorrow to himself, that every paddle-wheel which churns the waters of the Bosphorus, produces, by its revolutions, others almost imperceptible, bnt no less certain, in his social and political state. He clings, however, to bis religion and his Koran; that will always endure, for the wily impostor who drew up the Mahom- medan code, so flattered the passions of his followers, that their allegiance was certain as long as human nature remained unchang ing.

There is loud musical female laughter now heard, and an odd vehicle crosses the bridge, drawn by a jaded horse. We have no conveyance like it in England ; nor possibly is there its fellow out ot Turkey. It has no seats; bunt on fenthions, in its interior, those dark-eyed beauties are siring. — pah1 Ciieassian girls, and inmates of the liareem of some great man. Tin* carriage halts in front of you to allow a train of mules, carrying planks, to pass on their way to Bern, and you can see the inmates plainly. One of them stares fixedly at you; you look again, and she is not angry — a few years ago, you would have been sent away. She only draws back, hut she still keeps her eyes on you — wondrous large- pupiled eyes, in whose depths your own vision appears to lose itself. Then she speaks to her companions, and, just as the vehicle moves on, they all three join in another burst of ringing laughter, and leave you to debate whether an uncompanionable beauty — to say nothing of three — can be regarded as a jewel or a bore, in a man’s household jeep safari bulgaria.

All this time the tide of foot passengers has been flowing on. Here are some Turkish soldiers; untidy-looking fellows, in blue eats and white trousers, still with the red fez. A cavass, or policeman is with them. lie wears a surtout, pistols are in his belt, a sabre is at his side, and his breast is ornamented with rows of cartridges; they are all going to take up some unfortunate wight. He is followed by a dervish—one of those who dance, on certain days, at Pera: he also keeps a shop, in Stamboul. The other way comes a group of keen Armenian merchants, each swinging a chaplet of beads about, or counting them, restlessly, and half unconsciously, with his finger.

Individual benefit

The water-side rows of bail lings were seen through forests of ships, the lines of which were agreeably broken by the slanting spars of the felucca-rigged vessels, which formed the greater portion of those at anchor. In the middle of tin stream were tjeep safari bulgaria. good-tempered, intelligent misseri eotlien’s collected his intended inmates into large caique hotel d’angleterre; young destuniano (whose father formerly best dragoman Constantinople, now keeps d’lurope) followed. i latter, anxious break party we formed putting off old scamandre, gilded barge approached us, which sitting two imposing turks, officers customs. proper duty examine our luggage but bribe three piastres sixpence satisfied scruples. gravely received this; then, proud, saluted party, away another boat. must my ears tingled when reflected share pecuniary offering these noble gorgeous gentlemen been under penny. need delicacy 4 upon matter.

Appears perfectly understood customs constantinople are established individual benefit; thus dollar any kind finds its way the sultan’s treasury. landed tophane stairs, found enough occupy attention. first all, five six turkish women got out boat just before veiled eyes, looking like nuns incantation hubert devil, throw dresses; only black skirts. then great many sellers fruit cakes former consisting grapes, honestly literally plovers’ eggs, latter species pancake. appearance, tables, what pea-and-thimble used carry races, novel amusing. directly, came string mules laden rubbish buildings pera; unloaded themselves going haunches, reached landing, allowing panniers end slide off. next, sturdy porters, itamals, seized luggage. fellows, who past prime life, wore knots half backs, capable carrying immense weights. preceded them, set off, jostled crowds variety striking costume, picking half-wild dogs, lay streets scores, did get one.

Marine a building adjacent

The man who had taken the letter into the Arsenal came back in a quarter of an hour, and told us that the effendi was over at the Marine—a building adjacent. I sent it in by a messenger, who presently returned, and said that Sali Pacha wished to see me. I was accordingly ushered in, the ceremony of taking off my shoes being dispensed with, and found this gentleman, who has an important post in the Turkish navy, sitting on a divan at the end of a large room, looking on to the Golden Horn, and swinging the string of beads to which I have before alluded. To my delight he spoke English perfectly, and was well acquainted with our metropolis. We had an agreeable chat for a few minutes, on comparison between London and Stamboul; and then he took charge of my letter, telling me that the effendi was at Smyrna, but that he would take my address, and I might calculate on its being safely delivered.

So that the document was at last, to a certain extent, on its right mission; which, but for this gentleman’s courtesy, I do not suppose it would ever have been. The trouble I had in getting rid of it may show the difficulty of presenting a Turkish letter of introduction. Stampa subsequently told me that it was a wonder how anything in the way of publicity or correspondence at Constantinople was managed at all, with streets having no names, and hundreds of people the same. He said that a post delivery was unknown. If the people did not go after their letters they never got them ; but that sometimes, even under these circumstances, they got somebody else’s, which appeared to answer just as well. Amongst the Franks this is all excellently managed. There is a letter box, both for the Austrian and French mails; besides our own steamers. I believe the Austrian despatch is the quickest, but the police in that empire have an ugly knack of opening all the letters that go through their hands.

Resident at Constantinople

That evening a few of my kind English friends, resident at Constantinople, collected in a snug little house, on the bold hill beyond the large burying ground at Pera, and gave me a dinner—an honest English dinner, of joint and pudding, and goodly beer. It was a pleasant meeting, so far from home guided istanbul tours.

It was capital to hear make the headlands over the Golden Horn echo again, through the open windows, with a fine old English sea-ballad, and laugh with such heartiness, at the latest London jokes, that his amiable wife told me afterwards she had never known him so inclined to leave the East and return again; so much had we stirred up his old home feelings by songs and stories. Even ‘‘Jeannette and Jeannot” and “When other lips” came out bran spick-and-span new ; and a scene from “Box and Cox” played extempore, with dreadful interpolations and deficiencies, was pronounced so fine a thing, that I wonder, upon the strength of the applause, the performers did not, from that moment, renounce all other pursuits but the drama. Then we had small speeches, and homely toasts; not dismal conventional affairs, but little heartfelt bits that came well into such companionship ; and be sure that there were many in England to whose health and happiness we drank that night, three thousand miles away. And when another guest arrived late, and told us, on diplomatic authority, that the Sultan had determined not to give up the poor Hungarian people who had come to him for shelter, there was such a thoroughbred British cheer, that I think that if the Emperor of Russia had heard it, it would have knocked him completely over, powerful gentleman as he is.