since were luxuriating in that ignorance
which is proverbially stated to be bliss.
Geography and the use of the globes the
war has opened up to a surprising extent.
Persons whose information relative to the
exact position of Peckham-Rye was quite
recently of a considerable degree of vagueness,
now discourse confidently about the
Dobrudtscha, the Herzegovina, Krajova,
Kars, Little Wallachia, and Hango-Udde. I
should like to know how many men out of
ten thousand knew anything of Hango-
Udde this time last year. We are
indebted to the war for a definite notion
of that admirable glomeration of ferocity,
knavery, and villany, a Bashi-Bouzouk.
As the revolutionary troubles of eighteen
hundred and forty-eight made us acquainted
with some interesting strangers in the shape
of Bans, Sclaves, Pan-Sclaves, Magyars,
Croats, and Pandours, so has the present war
introduced us to a variety of Boyards,
Waywodes, Papas, Montenegris, Fins, Klephtes,
Palikari, Arnauts, Hospodars, and Bostandji
Bashis, whose acquaintance is as edifying as
it is delightful. It is alone worth while
paying double income-tax for a short time to
know, even through the columns of the
Invalide Russe, that valorous lieutenant of
artillery who so completely routed the
combined fleets in Odessa; in whose name there
are a couple of Sch's, with a Tch or two, with
an Off or so to finish off with, leading us to
believe that the young hero has been
studying fortification in nomenclature, as
well as in bastions and curtains, and has
entrenched the few vowels in his name with
a quite Vaubanic system of forts composed of
consonants, to prevent their being stormed
by the infidels of the West.

It is especially gratifying to remark what
an ample flood of new and varied knowledge
concerning the people and countries of the
east has flowed into English channels since
the war. The museum at the India House
might have been open for a century; Mr.
Madden, of Leadenhall Street, might have
published hecatombs of oriental books; the
Overland Mail might have arrived and
departed once a week; painters might have
flooded the albums, and print shops, and
picture galleries, with representations of oriental
scenery; yet for all this, had not the war
intervened, years would have elapsed before
we had divested ourselves of the idea that
Turkey (to take one oriental country) was a
land where the bulbul was in the constant
habit of singing to the rose; where those
generally uncommunicative plants, the orange
and myrtle, told of the deeds that were done
in their clime; where no pasha's head was
safe on his shoulders; and where the lights
of the harem passed their existence in gilded
kiosques, arrayed in costumes as per steel
plates in annuals, and soothed by amusements
as per pattern of the ballets at Her Majesty's
Theatre. Lady Mary Wortley Montague was
the first lady traveller who told us the truth
about Turkey; she showed us a Turkish harem
in all its ugliness and dull sensuality, but
that was a long time ago. Mr. Thackeray
did a great deal when he compared the
seraglio to Vauxhall by daylight. But the
war has done more. Every despatch from
our own correspondent; every well-crossed
sheet of foreign post from Captain Bandolier
of the Guards; every homely scrawl
to father and mother, from Lance-Corporal
Chokestock; will teach us more and more about
Turkey and the Turks. We know more about
them every day: it is astounding how much
we know about them already. In the little
sanded parlour of the Shoulder of Mutton
village alehouse, Colin Clout and Lubin Lump
hold forth as fluently (allowing a little for
variations of pronunciation) as my Lord on the
crimson benches of the House, or the honourable
Jack on the divan of the club smoking-
room. And of what? Of Pilaff, save the
mark! Of the forty days of Ramadan, of the
fireworks of Baïram, of yataghans, kabobs,
arabas, ulemas, Muftis, Softas, Shiekhs-ul-
Islam, Rayahs, Nishams,Bostandjis, Kavasses,
chiboucks, and papoushes; of the heights of
Scutari, the sweet waters of Europe, the hill
of Pera, the lanes of Stamboul, the arsenal of
Tophané, Seraglio point, Bujukderé, the
castles of the Dardanelles, the Island of
Princes, the barracks of Haydar Pacha, the
Almeidan, Trajan's wall, the Passes of the
Balkan, and the Sulina mouths of the
Danube!

In fact, there can scarcely be a cheerier
point of view from which to look at the
gloomy prospect of war than from the
educational Belvedere, on which we are in the
present era permitted to mount our telescopes.
When, as is poetically narrated, the
interesting and beautiful Eliza stood on the
wood-crowned height o'er Minden's plain,
spectatress of the fight, she could have seen
nothing but smoke and red flame; could
have heard nothing but the hoarse roar and
sullen din of battle. Eventually, Eliza was
shot. But our battles have their amenities.
For our information, the daily newspapers
send forth certain leal and trusty adherents
—gentlemen who have graduated at
Universities, and worn stuff gowns and horsehair
wigs in the Great Hall of Pleas at
Westminster, and who, partly through
patriotic motives, partly for the consideration
of a handsome salary, betake
themselves to the seat of war, scour the most
unfriendly and inhospitable regions, ride
long stages, foodless, upon vicious horses
with backbones like razors, and mouths like
files; drink black bitter coffee and smoke
tobacco with Agas and Effendis—to the
promotion of political knowledge, but to the
detriment of their own constitutions; eat
mutton like leather, and beef like mahogany;
abjure knives and forks; suffer hospitable but
uncleanly Pashas to stuff balls of greasy rice