Turks. To call a man "a pretty Turk" in
England, is not to pay him a compliment.
Even in Turkey no man likes to be called a
Turk; he is an Ottoman; a Turk in his eyes
is a barbarian.

The Turk or Ottoman of the present day,
is a being who differs very widely from the
savage gentleman of popular fiction. He is
brought up to respect the laws as he respects
his religion, and to consider them a part of
it; he usually confines himself to one wife;
and, when he returns home in an angry
mood he does not tie his lady up in a sack
and throw her into the Bosphorus. He is
not often in the habit of stabbing people
in the dark; he is not always hard-hearted
and cruel; he can be honest in his dealings, and
is far from being outrageously impure in his
morals—that is, in the morals which are held
up to him as proper. The law protects his
wife against cruelty or neglect; and his
chance of rising in the world depends very
much upon his own exertions. He is not
elbowed off the public scene by hereditary
legislators; he may be born of a slave mother,
and yet live to be the great chamberlain
of the palace. Every office is open, in Turkey,
to every man.

Montesquieu's description of Turkey and
its inhabitants is no longer applicable. When
he wrote, it was true that property was not
respected; that civil law was not known;
that slavery had degraded the people; and
polygamy had destroyed the purity of social
life. But things have changed within the
last fifty years, under the rule of the present
Sultan and his predecessor. The Koran has
been interpreted anew, to serve the great
cause of human advancement. Its direction
to believers to bring light even from China,
has been used to sanctify the introduction of
the arts of Western Europe; and, to make
the introduction of modern military science
popular, Mahommedans were reminded that
the arms even of the enemy might be used
to crush him. Provinces that were ravaged
by incessant civil wars; that were by turns a
prey to the rapacity of the predominant pacha
within, or to the lust and brutality of armed
bandits from without, have been brought
within the influence of Constantinople.
Officials, who exacted presents and sold
justice, have been subjected to the utmost
rigour of the law. The slave market has been
suppressed, and slaves have been surrounded
with the protecting spirit of the government,
so that, at the present moment, no master
may ill-use them. A new and merciful code
of laws has been drawn up, and commerce
has been re-arranged on the French model.
Thus it will be seen that the Turk (for we
must still call him so) born in the present
times, does not enter upon a scene quite so
barbarous as that upon which his
grandfather played a part. No mountain of light
may be descried about him, but we may see a
glimmer of promise.

The care with which the Osmanlis have
always kept their wives and daughters apart,
still prevails in Constantinople. To ask a
Turkish gentleman after his wife or his
daughter, is to give him mortal offence. If
he alludes to them he calls them "the home,"
or "the house." He will tell you that the
house is well. Also when he announces to
his friends the birth of a daughter, he says,
"a veiled one," or "a stranger has been given
to me." He is taught by the Koran to
honour his wife, and to believe that she will
be, equally with himself, a participator in
Heavenly felicity. This teaching effectually
displaces the vulgar error that declares
the Mahommedans to believe women have
no souls. Polygamy is allowed to this day in
Turkey, but it is so surrounded with social and
religious difficulties that it is rarely practised.
The Koran allows a Mussulman to marry four
legitimate wives, but tells him expressly that
it is meritorious to marry only one. In
Constantinople the ulemas, the great bodies of
government officials, the naval and military
officers, the tradesmen and the workmen,
have generally only one wife. In the provinces
one wife is even more universally the rule.
And now, all the great officers of state make
a merit of wedding one wife only, to show a
good example to their countrymen. Nor is
the wife a slave entirely. In her own apartments
she is supreme mistress. She may
receive her female friends, and her male
relations; she may go out in the day-time
(veiled and attended); and her husband
consults her on all his affairs.  She is not the
painted doll we have read of. She is
thoroughly domestic, and is effectually
protected by the state from cruel treatment.
The Mussulman is bound by law to maintain
her according to his rank; if he fail in this
she may claim a divorce. When he marries
her he gives a present to her relatives,
instead of expecting a dower, as with us. She
has the care of his household, and if he
be poor, she employs her leisure in spinning.
She has the exclusive right, by law, to bring
up her children—the girls until they are
married, the boys until they enter one of the
public schools. If the Ottomans have one
tender chord in their breasts, it is that which
is always awakened within them at the sound
of the maternal name. Women may even
perform the functions of the Imam, recite
prayers, and under extraordinary
circumstances they may be invested with political
powers. Yet, undoubtedly, the Turkish
woman is not yet free. The law allows her
to see her distant relatives only once in each
year, if her husband objects to more frequent
visiting; her near relatives are also subject
to legal interference.

The Ottoman at home, therefore, is not a
Bluebeard—his wife is not a slave. Yet in
his house he has slaves, whom he buys as
sheep are bought. These slaves are said to
be well used, and can, with reasonable