of the Sultan, or of the health of the nation
which has to swallow their mess although it
choke them.

It is heart-rending to know what Turkey
is, and to think what she might be. A
gunshot beyond this great city with its six
hundred thousand inhabitants, there is not a
road nor a bridge upon the most frequented
ways; there is not a house, nor a garden, nor
a thriving tree. The horseman drawing rein
upon any of the heights above the city may
take his last look of man-created things; and
riding down into the neighbouring valley, find
himself in a solitude as vast and as untilled as
that which broods over the wildest of the
Swiss Alps. Look along the shores of the
Bosphorus. They are all desert. Scarcely a
plough stirs the land that might be one of
the largest corn-growing districts in the
world. Not a merchant's bark with the
crescent flying at its mast-head anchors in
the waters; not a loom is at work; not a
wine-press; no manufactory plies its busy
trade. Here is a mine and there is a mine—
the mineral riches of the country are
immense —but where is the deep and teeming
shaft, and where are the miners? The
Turks do nothing. Even the smart little
steamboats which still run from the bridge
at Stamboul to Bujuderè, are manned with
Englishmen, and our caidji (boatman) is a
Greek.

What is the blight which has fallen like a
curse upon this lovely land, palsying men's
energies and drying up their vigour? From
the time when the last Palæologus lost life,
and crown, and kingdom, and Mohammed the
Second strode a conqueror into St. Sophia,
the curse has held on, and it began a long
time before it. Constantinople seems always
to have been an unlucky city; to have had a
strange and inscrutable doom hanging over
it like a cloud. It rose upon the ruins of
Rome. It was one of the chief causes of
the permanent division of the Roman empire.
It contributed more than all the other causes
put together to its final fall. After the
crusades, the name of the Greek emperors had
become a by-word of infamy. They were not
safe in their own capital. They poisoned,
fought, and intrigued against their rebellious
subjects and kinsmen; whose eyes they put
out when they did not destroy them by fire;
but who, in their turn, poisoned and fought
and intrigued against them. The emperors
lived in one vast slaughter-house. They were
pulled down or set up at the pleasure of
strangers, who bearded and insulted them
in their own palaces, and begat the good
saying that the government of Turkey was
a thorough despotism, tempered by regicide.

Mohammed the Second called the city a
diamond adorned with two rubies, and
certainly nothing in the world can bear any
comparison to the marvellous loveliness of its
climate and situation. To understand it, you
must let it grow upon you day by day and
month by month. The mere traveller can
hardly feel and enter into it; but, after a while
one has almost the same sort of love for the
Bosphorus as one has for a friend. There is
nothing awful or striking in it; but its beauty
wins upon you by the enchanting grace and
harmony of its details. This is what nature
made it; but what has man done? As I am
now landing for an amble on horseback we
shall see.

The streets are filthy—they are perilous
from dogs and thieves. They display no public
buildings of account; no trade, no luxury.
I will not repeat this kind of thing: every
journalist has been making merry over it
during recent events. Therefore, through
herds of donkeys and droves of Greek boys;
through swarms of street-sellers of fruit and
sherbet and lemonade; past coffee-shops and
hired horses drawn up ready saddled; past
oxen drawing open cars full of beautiful
Armenian girls, and wending slowly along; by
beasts of burden and gay promenaders;
beside mounted pashas and mounted snobs; by
European ladies and foreign ambassadors;
among tombstones and bands of music;
through the smoke of paper cigars and the
perfume of pipes; through gay throngs of
Turkish ladies in their bright coloured dresses
and yellow slippers; my horse picks his way
gently with set ears and arched neck. Down
there in the hollow, where the ground is flat
and soft, we shall get our canter— but stay.
Here comes regiment after regiment of
soldiers, with wild music screaming along. They
are not in very good order or discipline;
but are fine soldierly fellows some of them,
for all that; and I think one might have worse
companions in a mêlée than those slight fierce
wiry-looking Turks from the interior. I am
sure they would ride on to the fight with a
cheer, and stand to be hewn in pieces rather
than give ground to the enemy.

Let us defer our canter; for I love to
wander about the dark mysterious streets,
half hoping for an adventure with a magician
or a genie. I should hardly be surprised
to meet any one of the actors in the Arabian
Nights' Entertainments sauntering about. I
am sure that I already know all the Barber's
Seven Brothers by sight, and could lay my
hand upon any one of them. Some of these
days, perhaps, I shall be invited to a
Barmecide feast —it is not at all an improbable
thing —or be asked to tea with Schehezerade;
but this does not seem so likely, as it would
seem, if the Turks understood these things
better. What our Great World have agreed
to call society does not exist here; by reason
of there being a little too much secrecy at
Constantinople. The very dogs and cats in
the place prowl about with a secret and
confidential air. It is not that there is much
which is, or which ought to be, kept secret;
but it is a way your Constantinopolitan
has got. As it is, if Constantinople were full
of trap-doors we could not go to our next