moral life; but they are known to be crafty,
and, when roused, cruel. They are declared
fatalists, and any Turk will see his property
fall from him without a murmur. The
doctrine of predestination has fastened itself
upon his soul; he expresses it in many
common proverbs: "The blood destined to
be shed cannot be retained in the artery;"
"When Destiny arrives the eye of Wisdom
becomes blind;" "When the darts of divine
will have been sped from the bow of Destiny,
they cannot be warded off by the shield of
Precaution." These are among the old Turk's
popular proverbs; and, although the
enlightened Ottomans of the present day have
ceased to preach the errors of fatalism,
the belief in it continues to operate throughout
the dominions of the Sultan, and to
paralyse the national energies. But while
this fatalism retards the progress of the
Ottomans, it imparts a singular dignity to
them. The old-fashioned Mussulman is never
astonished, never delighted, never stricken
down with grief. If his house is consumed
by fire, he says calmly, "It was written."
When he is upon his death-bed, he quietly
performs his ablutions, repeats his namar:
trusting to his prophet and his God, he
directs that his head shall be turned towards
Mecca, and expires.

There are, however, other Ottomans who
vehemently espouse the reforms of the Sultan,
and wish to place the Turkish empire in
its proper relation with the civilised states
of Europe. The difficulties they encounter
from the bigotry of the old school may be
aptly illustrated by reference to the
difficulty of introducing vaccination into the
country. For a long time the Mussulmans
piously suffered the ravages of the smallpox,
and devoutly believed that the remedy
sought to be introduced by the progressive
party was opposed to the Koran. At
length Ahmed Fethi Pacha luckily discovered
that, in the time of the prophet, a certain
town being smitten with the plague,
Mohammed absolutely introduced a precaution:
he ordered that no person should
enter within the walls, nor pass out from
within them. This order being recalled to
the minds of the people, they allowed the
establishment of quarantine laws, and the
introduction of vaccination. Yet, through
difficulties of this kind, the more enlightened men
of Turkey have fought from a state of absolute
barbarism to one of comparative civilisation.
Thirty years ago there were relentless
confiscations, tyrannical imprisonments,
arbitrary judgments, an organised system of
general robbery, corruption in every department
of the administration, and irresponsible
pachas quietly pillaging at their own private
will. Against all this disorder and wrong
Turkish reformers have struggled manfully;
and if at the present moment, the Ottoman
empire presents a spectacle of comparative
barbarism in close contrast to advanced
civilisation, the advance it has made during
the last thirty years from anarchy to some
kind of order and law, may tempt us to hope
that the "infidels" who have led the Mussulmans
even thus far, may yet let in more
daylight upon them. The Sultan's people venerate
the law when it is made. This is part of their
religion, and every individual not only strives
to obey it, but also watches his neighbour.
Thus, strange as it may appear, smuggling is
a crime unknown in Turkey.

The Constitution of the Turkish empire is
contained in two vast folio volumes, and is
known as the Multèqua. It was written
originally in the Arab language by the
learned Cheikh Ibrahim Halèbi, who died at
Constantinople in 1549. This work included
all the Mohammedan laws from the time of
the prophet. It treats of religious worship,
of morals, and of civil and political rights. It
is written simply, so that the laws do not
admit of twenty discordant interpretations. It
has been translated into the Turkish language,
and in 1824 was remodelled by order of the
Porte. The Multèqua is divided into eight
distinct codes. These are the religious code,
the political code, the military code, the civil
code, the code of civil and criminal process,
the penal code, the commercial code, and the
code which regulates hunting and snooting.

The religious code prescribes the exact
prayers and observances for believers in the
prophet, and describes the moral conduct of
Ottoman subjects, regulating their charity,
their dress, their diet, and their games. Thus
every Mohammedan is forbidden to eat the
flesh ot the pig, of any animal that has not
been killed, of the ass or mule, or of any
amphibious creature. Tobacco, opium, and
coffee are allowed; although some rigid
Mohammedans class these luxuries with wine,
and call them the four columns which
support the tent of the voluptuary.

The civil code regulates the treatment of
slaves, the claims between husband and wife,
and the succession to property. Slaves are
daily decreasing in number throughout
Turkey. War no longer furnishes a supply,
and open slave-trafiic is, as already stated,
prohibited throughout the Ottoman empire,
The reformed Multèqua allows the slave to
be a witness in a law court, and gives him
equal rights before the law with his master.
He often rises to an eminent position in the
state, and is not, as in America, a creature to
be universally shunned.

A Turkish subject cannot, by will, give
more than one-third of his property to any
person not related to him. The rest belongs
by right to his nearest relatives. If he leave
two or three relations of equal consanguinity
with him, his property is divided amongst
them; the male relatives taking always double
the portions assigned to the females. The
Multèqua is very strict in enforcing the inviolability
of a believer's house; which is nowhere
else so strictly his castle. No domiciliary