Think how th’ all-seeing God thy ways

And all thy secret thoughts surveys.

This is only a fair specimen of the book. Surely the Colonial Church

Society had better hastily return the stereotype plates with thanks.

The Tyrol, 2nd September 1862.

Next to meeting an old friend by accident, there is nothing more

pleasant than coming in long vacation on some flower or shrub which

reminds one of former holiday ramblings. In the Tyrol the other day we

came suddenly on a bank in the mountains gemmed over with the creamy

white star of the daisy of Parnassus, and it accompanied us, to our

great delight, for 200 miles or more, till we got fairly down into the

plains again. The last time I had seen it was on Snowdon years ago. When

we got a little higher I pounced on a beautiful little gentian, which I

had never seen before except on the Alps above Lenk, in Switzerland (the

Hauen Moos the pass was called, or some such name--how spelt, goodness

knows), which I once crossed with two dear friends on the most beautiful

day I ever remember.

The flora of the Tyrol, at least that part of it which lies by the

roadside, seems to be much the same as ours. With the above exceptions,

I scarcely saw a flower which does not grow on half the hills in

England; but their size and colouring was often curiously different. The

Michaelmas daisy and ladies’ fingers, for instance, were much brighter

and more beautiful; on the other hand, there was the most tender tiny

heartsease in the world, and forget-me-nots, which were very plentiful

here and there, were quite unlike ours--delicate little creatures, of

the palest blue in the world, all the fleshiness and comfortable look,

reminding one of marriage settlements and suitable establishments, gone

clean out of them. In moving eastward with the happy earth you may

easily get from Munich to Strasburg in one day; but, if you do, you will

miss one of the greatest treats in the world, and that is a run through

the Tyrol, which you may do from Munich with comfort in a week. There is

a little rail which runs you down south or so to Homburg, on the edge of

the mountain country, from whence you may choose your conveyance, from

post carriage down to Shanks’ nag. If you follow my advice, whatever

else you do you will take care to see the Finstermunz Pass, than which

nothing in the whole world can be more beautiful. I rather wonder myself

that the Tyrol has not drawn more of our holiday folk, Alpine Club and

all, from Switzerland. The Orteler Spitz and the glaciers of his range

are as fine, and I should think as dangerous, as anything in the Swiss

Alps--the lower Alps in the Tyrol are quite equal to their western

sisters; and there is a soft Italian charm and richness about the look

and climate of the southern valleys, that about Botzen especially, which

Switzerland has nothing to match. The luxuriance of the maize crops (the

common corn of the country) and of the vines trained over trellis work

in the Italian fashion, and of the great gourds and vegetable marrows

which roll their glorious leaves and flowers and heavy fruit over

the spare corners and slips of the platforms on which the vineyards

rest--the innumerable fruit-trees, pears, apples, plums, peaches, and

pomegranates all set in a framework of beautiful wooded mountains,

from which the course of the streams may be traced down through all the

richness of the valley by their torrent beds of tumbled rock--.

remind us vividly of the descriptions of the Promised Land in the Old

Testament. Then the contrast of the people to the Bavarians is as great

as that of the countries. The latter seem to live the easiest, laziest

life of all nations, in their rich low flats, which the women are

quite aide to cultivate, while the men drink beer and otherwise disport

themselves. But in the part of the Tyrol next Bavaria it is all grim

earnest: “Ernst is das Leben” must be their motto if they are to get in

their crops at all, and keep their little patches of valley and hanging

fields cultivated--and it does seem to be their motto. After passing

through the country one can quite understand how the peasantry came to

beat the regular troops of France and Bavaria time after time half a

century ago, and the memoirs of that holy war hang almost about every

rock. There is no mistake here about battle-fields, and no difficulty in

realising the scene: the march of columns along the gorges, the piles of

rock and tree above, with Tyrolean marksmen behind, the voices calling

across over the heads of the invaders “Shall we begin?”

“In the name of the Holy Trinity, cut all loose”; and then the crash

and confusion, the panic and despair, and the swoop of the mountaineers

on the remnant of their foes. A great part of the country must be

exceedingly poor, and yet only in the neighbourhood of two or three

villages were we asked for alms, and then only by small children, who

had apparently been demoralised by the passage of carriages. Except from

one of these children, a small boy who flirted his cap in my face, and

made a villainous grimace, when he got tired of running, and from

the dogs, we had no uncourteous look or word. The dogs, however, are

abominable mongrels, and there was scarcely one in the country which did

not run barking and snapping after us. The people seem to me very much

pleasanter to travel amongst than the Swiss.

I had expected to find them a people much given to the outward forms

and ceremonies of religion at any rate--every guide-book tells one thus

much; but I was not at all prepared for the extraordinary hold which

their Christianity had laid upon the whole external life of the country.

You can’t travel a mile in the Tyrol along any road without coming upon

a shrine--in general by the wayside, often in the middle of the

fields. I examined several hundreds of these; many of them little rough

penthouses of plank, some well-built tiny chapels. I wish I had kept an

exact account of the contents, but I am quite sure I am within the mark

in saying that nine out of ten contain simply a crucifix; of the rest,

the great majority contain figures or paintings of the Virgin or Child,

and a few those of some patron saint. All bore marks of watchful care;

in many, garlands of flowers or berries, or an ear or two of ripe maize,

were hung round the Figure on the cross. Then in every village in which

we slept, bells began ringing for matins at five or six, and in every

ease the congregation seemed to be very large in proportion to the

population. I was told, and believe, that in all the houses, even in the

inns of most of these villages, there is family worship every evening at

a specified hour, generally at seven. We met peasants walking along the

road bare-headed, and chanting mass. I came suddenly upon parish priests

and poor women praying before the crucifix by the wayside. The ostlers

and stable-men have the same habit as our own, of pasting or nailing up

rude prints on the stable-doors, and of all those which I examined while

we were changing horses, or where we stopped for food or rest, there was

only one which was not on a sacred subject. In short, to an Englishman

accustomed to the reserve of his own country on such subjects, the

contrast is very startling. If a Hindoo or any other intelligent heathen

were dropped down in any English country, he might travel for days

without knowing whether we have any religion at all; but, most

assuredly, he could not do so in the Tyrol. Now which is the best state

of things? I believe Her Majesty has no stauncher Protestant than I

amongst her subjects, but I own that a week in the Tyrol has made me

reconsider a thing or two. Outwardly, in short, the Tyroleans are the

most religious people in Europe. Of course I am no judge after a week’s

tour whether their faith has gone as deep as it has spread wide. You

can only speak of the bridge as it carries you. Our bills were the most

reasonable I have ever met with, and I could not detect a single attempt

at imposition in the smallest particular. I went into the fruit market

at Meran, and, after buying some grapes, went on to an old woman who was

selling figs. She was wholly unable to understand my speech, so, being

in a hurry, I put a note for the magnificent sum of ten kreutzer (or 3d.

sterling) into her hand, making signs to her to put the equivalent in

figs into a small basket I was carrying. This she proceeded to do, and

when she had piled eight or ten figs on the grapes I turned to go, but

by vehement signs she detained me, till she had given me the full tale,

some three or four more. She was only a fair specimen of what I found on

all sides. The poor old soul had not mastered our legal axiom of _caveat

emptor_, but her trading morality had something attractive about it.

They may be educated in time into buying cheap and selling dear, but as

yet that great principle does not seem to have dawned on them.

There may be some danger of superstition in this setting up of

crucifixes and sacred prints by the wayside and on stable-doors, but, on

the other hand, the Figure on the cross, meeting one at every corner,

is not unlikely, I should think, to keep a poor man from the commonest

vices to which he is tempted in his daily life, if it does no more. He

would scarcely like to stagger by it drunk from the nearest pot-house.

If stable-boys are to have rough woodcuts on their doors, one of the

Crucifixion or of the _Mater Dolorosa_ is likely to do them more good

than the winner of the Derby or Tom Sayers.

But my letter is getting too long for your columns, so I can only beg

all your readers to seize the first chance of visiting the Tyrol.

I shall be surprised if they do not come away with much the same

impressions as I have. It is a glad land, above all that I have ever

seen--a land in which a psalm of joy and thankfulness seems to be rising

to heaven from every mountain top and valley, and, mingled with and

beneath it, the solemn low note of a people “breathing thoughtful

breath”--an accompaniment without which there is no true joy possible

in our world, without which all attempt at it rings in the startled

ear like the laugh of a madman. Those words of the old middle-age hymn

seemed to be singing in my ears all through the Tyrol:--

Fac me vere tecum flere,

Crucitixo condolere,

Donee ego vixcro.

I shall never find a country in which it will do one more good to

travel.

Vienna, 10th September 1862.

The stage Englishman in foreign countries must be always an object of

interest to his countrymen. He is a decidedly popular institution

in Germany, not the least like the Dundreary type, or the sort of

top-booted half fool, half miscreant, one sees at a minor theatre in

Paris. The latest Englishmen on the boards of the summer theatres here

are a Lord Mixpickl, and his man Jack, but the most popular, and those

which appear to be regarded in fatherland as the real thing, are the

Englishmen in a piece called “The Four Sailors.” It opens with a

yawning chorus. Four young Englishmen are discovered sitting at a German

watering-place, reading copies of the _Times_ and _Post_, and yawning

fearfully. The chorus done, one says, “The funds are at 84.”

“I bet you they are at 86,” says another, and on this point they become

lively. It appears by the talk which ensues, that they have come abroad

resolved on finding some romantic adventure before marrying, which they

are all desirous of doing. This they found impossible at home; hitherto

have not succeeded here; have only succeeded in trampling on the police

arrangements, and getting bored. They all imitate one another in speech

and action, saying “Yaas” in succession very slowly, and always looking

at one another deliberately before acting. Now the four sailors appear,

who are three romantic young women and their maid, disguised as sailors,

under the care of their aunt, a stout easy-going old lady, dressed as a

boatswain, and of lax habits In the matters of tobacco and drink. After

hornpipe dancing and other diversions, the young ladies settle to go

and bathe, and cross the stage where the Englishmen are carrying their

bathing-dresses. A cry is raised that their boat is upset; whereupon the

Englishmen look at one another. At last one gets up, takes off his coat,

folds it up, and puts it carefully on his chair, ditto with waistcoat

and hat, the others doing the same. They walk off in Indian file, and

return each with a half-drowned damsel across his shoulders. Having

deposited their burthens, they return to the front of the stage to

dress, when one suggests that they have never been introduced, upon

which, after a pause, and looking solemnly at each other and the

audience, they ejaculate all together, “Got dam!” They then take refuge

in beer, silence, and pipes. At last one says, “This is curious!” Three

yaas’, and a pause. Another, “This is an adventure!” Three yaas’, and

a longer pause. At last, “Dat ist romantisch!” propounds another.

Tumultuous yaas’ break forth at this discovery. The object of their

journey is accomplished, they marry the four sailors, and return to love

and Britain.

The summer theatres are charming institutions, but somewhat casual. For

instance, while we were at Ischl, there were no performances because the

weather was too fine. Ischl itself is wonderfully attractive, and as he

has not the chance of getting a seaside watering-place, the Kaiser Konig

has shown much taste in the selection of Ischl. The Traun and Ischl,

which meet here, are both celebrated for beauty and trout (a young

Englishman was wading about and having capital sport while we were

there). You get fine views of glaciers from the hills which rise on all

sides close to the town, and the five valleys at the junction of which

it lies are all finely wooded and well worth exploring. The town is

furnished with a drinking-hall (but no gambling), baths, a casino,

pretty promenades, and Herzogs and other grand folk, with Hussar and

other officers in plenty to enliven them. You can dance every evening

almost if you like, and gloves are fabulously good, and only a florin

a pair for men, or with two buttons, for ladies, a florin and ten

kreutzers; so, having regard to the number which are now found necessary

in London, it would almost pay young persons to visit Ischl once a year

to make their purchases. There is also a specialty in the way of pretty

old fashioned looking jewellery made and sold here cheap, but the Passau

pearls found in the great cockle-shells of these parts are dear, though

certainly very handsome. I must not forget the rifle-range amongst the

attractions of the place. I fell in with two members of the Inns of

Court, and we heard the well-known crack, and soon hunted out the scene

of operations. We found some Austrian gentlemen practising at 100 yards

at a target with a small black centre, within which was a scarcely

distinguishable bull’s-eye. When a centre is made the marker comes out,

bows, waves his arms twice, and utters two howls called “yodels.” When

the bull’s-eye is struck a shell explodes behind, the Austrian eagle

springs up above the target, and a Tyrolean, the size of life, from each

side--which performance so fascinated one of my companions that he made

interest with the shooters, who allowed him to use one of their rifles.

I rejoice to say that he did not disgrace the distinguished corps to

which he belongs. At his first shot he obtained the bow and two howls

from the marker, and at his fourth the explosion and appearances above

described followed, whereupon he wisely retired on his laurels.

You proceed eastwards from Ischl, down the beautiful valley of the

Traun to Eben; see the great store-place for the salt and wood of the

district. The logs accompany you, in the river, all the way down; and

it is amusing to watch their different ways of floating. Such of them as

are not stopped in transit by the hooks of the inhabitants are collected

by a boom stretched across the head of the Gmünden Lake, on which you

take boat at Eben See. The skipper of the steamer is an Englishman,

who has been there for thirty years--a quiet matter-of-fact man, who

collects his own tickets, wears no uniform, and has a profound disbelief

in the accuracy of the information furnished to tourists in these parts

by the natives. Long absence from home has somewhat depressed him, but

he lights up for a few moments when he gets on his paddle-box and orders

the steam to be put on to charge the boom. But travellers should

consult him if they want correct information, and should not trust in

“Bradshaw.” The lion of the neighbourhood is the Traun Falls; and a

station has been opened on the railway to Lintz to facilitate the seeing

of the falls, which station is not even mentioned in the “Bradshaw” for

August 1862. This is too bad.

I had considerable opportunities of seeing the state of the country in

Austria. The people are prosperous and independent to a degree which

much astonished me. They are almost all what we should call yeomanry,

owning from twenty to two hundred acres of land. Even the labourers, who

work for the great proprietors, own their own cottages and an acre or

so of land round; in fact, the Teutonic passion for owning land is so

strong that, unless a man can acquire some, he manages to emigrate.

Since 1848 the communes have stepped into the position of lords of the

manors, and own most of the woods and the game. The great proprietors

pay them for the right of sporting over their own lands. In faet,

whatever may be the case with the higher classes, the people here seem

to have it much their own way since 1848. We spent a Sunday afternoon

in the palace gardens at Schonbrunn, into which half the populace of

Vienna, smoking vile-smelling cigars, seemed to have poured in omnibuses

and cabs, which stood before the palace, and on foot. We (the people)

occupied the whole of the gardens, and a splendid military band played

for our behoof. You reach the gardens by passing under the palace,

so that King People was everywhere, and the Kaiser Konig, if he wants

retirement, must stay in his private rooms. A report spread that the

Emperor and Empress were coming out, whereupon King People, and we

amongst them, swept into the lower part of the palace, and right up to a

private staircase, at the foot of which an open carriage was standing.

A few burly and well-behaved guardsmen remonstrated good-humouredly, but

with no effect. There we remained in block, men, women, and children,

the pipes and cigars were not extinguished, and the smell was anything

but imperial. Presently the Emperor and Empress came down, and the

carriage passed at a foot’s pace through the saluting and pleased crowd.

The Empress is the most charming-looking royal personage I have ever

seen, and seemed to think it quite right that the people should occupy

her house and grounds. Fancy omnibuses driving into the Court-yard

of Buckingham Palace, and John Bull proceeding to occupy the private

gardens! John himself would decidedly think that the end of the world

was come. The Constitution, too, seems to work well from all I heard.

The Court party has ceased almost to struggle for power. It revenges

itself, however, in social life. Society (so called) is more exclusive

in Vienna than anywhere else, and consists of some 400 or 500 persons

all told. Even the most distinguished soldiers and statesmen have not

the _entrée_. Benedek’s family is not in society, nor Schmerling’s,

though I hear his daughter is one of the prettiest and most ladylike

girls in Austria. All which is very silly, doubtless, but the chief

sufferers are the 400 inhabitants who drive in the Prater, and go to

the Leichtenstein and Schwartzenburg parties, and after all, if

aristocracies in the foolish sense are inevitable, an aristocracy of

birth is preferable to one of money, or, _me judice_, of intellect,

seeing that the latter gives itself at least as absurd airs, and is

likely to be much more mischievous. On the other hand, my Hungarian

sympathies have been somewhat shaken since visiting the country. I

suppose the national dress has something to say to it. An Englishman

cannot swallow braided coats, and tight coloured pants, and boots all

at once, and the carriage and airs of the men are offensive. I say this

more on the judgment of several of my country-women on this point than

on my own, but from my own observation I can say that Pesth, to a mere

passer-by, has all the appearances of the most immoral capital in the

world. In the best shops, in the best streets, there are photographs and

engravings exhibited which, with us, would speedily call Lord Campbell’s

Act into operation. And the Haymarket is in many respects moral in

comparison with many parts of Pesth. It is the only place in Europe

where I have seen men going about drunk before midday. In short, you

will perceive that my inspection inclines me to suspect that there may

he more than one has been wont to believe in the assertion, that the

Constitution we hear so much of is aristocratic and one which will

give back old feudal privileges to a conquering race and enable them

to oppress Slaves, Croats, etc., as they did before 1848. There is,

everybody admits, a large discontented class in Hungary, composed

chiefly of the poor nobility (who have long ago spent their compensation

money), and professional men, especially advocates, but it is

strenuously maintained that the great mass of the people have been far

better off in all ways and more contented since 1849. I don’t pretend

to give you anything except the most apparently truthful evidence I

can pick up by the wayside, and the observations of my own eyes, and

certainly the latter have not been favourable to Hungary in any way,

though they look certainly very like a fighting race, these Magyars. The

railroad from Pesth to Basiash, where one embarks on the Danube, passes

through enormous flats, heavy for miles and miles with maize and other

crops, and very thinly peopled. It is a constant wonder where the people

can come from to reap and garner it all. The great fault of the country

is the dust, which is an abominable nuisance. Certainly the facilities

for travelling are getting to be all that can be wished in our time. A

little more than forty-eight hours will bring a man, who can stand night

journeys, to Vienna; after resting a night, eighteen hours more will

bring him to Basiash, where he will at once plunge into the old world of

turbans and veiled women, minarets and mosques; man and beast and bird,

houses and habits, all strange and new to him; and if the Danube fares

were not atrociously high, there are few things I would more earnestly

recommend to my holiday-making countrymen than a trip down that noblest,

of European rivers. Considering the present state of political matters,

too, in the world, he can hardly select a more interesting country.

Certainly the Eastern question gains wonderfully in interest when one

has seen ever so little of the lands and people about which the wisest

heads of all the wisest statesmen of our day are speculating and

scheming--not very wisely, I fear, at present.

The Danube, 13th September 1862.

The Rhine may, perhaps, fairly be compared with the Upper Danube,

between Lintz and Vienna, even between Vienna and Pesth. There is no

great disparity so far, either in the size of themselves or of the hills

and plains through which they run. The traveller’s tastes, artistic and

historical, decide his preference. The constant succession of ruined

holds of the old oppressors of the earth which he meets on the Rhine,

are wanting on the Danube. It is certainly a satisfaction to see such

places thoroughly ruined--to triumph over departed scoundrelism wherever

one comes on its relics. As a compensation, however, he will find on the

Danube a huge building or two, such as that of the Benedictine Monastery

at Molk, or the Cathedral and Palace of the Primate of Hungary at Gran,

of living interest, and with work still to do in the world. There is

not much to choose between the banks of the two streams in the matter of

general historical interest, though to me the long struggle between the

Christian and the Moslem, the footprints of which meet one on all sides,

gives the Danube slightly the advantage even in this respect. There

are longer gaps of flat uninteresting country on the eastern stream,

no doubt, which may be set off against the sameness and neatness of the

perpetual vineyard on the western; and on the Danube you get, now and

then, a piece of real forest, which you never see, so far as I remember,

on the Rhine.

Below Belgrade, however, all comparison ceases. The Rhine is half the

size of its rival, and flows westward through the highest cultivation

and civilisation to the German Ocean, while the huge Danube rushes

through the Carpathians into a new world--an eastern people, living

amidst strange beasts and birds, in a country which is pretty much as

Trajan left it. You might as well compare Killiecrankie to the Brenner

Pass, as any thing on the Rhine to the Kazan, the defile by which

the Danube struggles through the western Carpathians. Here the river

contracts in breadth from more than a mile to between 200 and 300 yards;

the depth is 170 feet. The limestone rocks on both sides rise to near

2000 feet, coming sheer down to the water in many places, clothed with

forest wherever there is hold for roots. Along the Servian side, on the

face of the precipice, a few feet above the stream, run the long line of

sockets in which the beams were fastened for the support of his covered

road by Trajan’s legions. A tablet and an inscription 1740 years old

still bear, I believe, the great Roman’s name, and a memorial of his

Dacian campaign, though I cannot vouch for the fact, as we shot by it at

twenty miles an hour; but I could distinctly see Roman letters. On the

left bank the Austrians have carried a road by blasting and masonry; and

a cavern which was held for weeks by 400 men against a Turkish army in

1692 commands the whole pass.

We had scarcely entered the defile when some eight or ten eagles

appeared sweeping slowly round over a spot in the hanging wood, where

probably a deer or goat was dying. I counted upwards of thirty before

we left the Kazan; several were so near the boat that you could plainly

mark the glossy barred plumage, and every turn of the body and tail as

they steered about upon those marvellous, motionless wings. One swooped

to the water almost within shot, but missed the fish, or whatever his

intended prey might be. A water ouzel or two were the only other living

creatures which appeared to draw our attention for a moment from the

sway of the mighty stream and the succession of the dizzy heights. Below

the pass the stream widens again. You lose something of the feeling of

power in the mass of water below you, though the superficial excitement

of whirl, and rush, and eddy, is much increased. Here, at Orsova, a

small military town on the frontier line between Hungary and

Wallachia, we turned out into a flat-bottomed steamer, with four tiny

paddle-wheels, drawing only some three feet of water, which was to carry

us over the Iron Gates, as the rapids are called; and beautifully the

little duck fulfilled her task. The English on board, three ladies and

five men, had already fraternised; we occupied the places in the bows.

The deck was scarcely a yard above water, and there were no bulwarks,

only a strong rail to lean against. The rush of the stream here beat any

mill-race I have ever seen, and the little steamer bounded along over

the leaping, boiling water at the rate of a fast train. Twice only she

plunged a little, shipping just enough water to cause some discomposure

amongst the ladies’ dresses, and to wet our feet. We shot past the wreck

of a Turkish iron Steamer in the wildest part, which had grounded on its

way up to Belgrade with munitions of war. The Servians had boarded and

burnt her, and there she lay, and will lie, till the race washes her to

pieces, for there is nothing to be got out of her now except the iron of

her hull. Below the Iron Gate, a fine Austrian steamer received us, and

we moved statelily out into the stream on our remaining thirty hours’

voyage. We had left the mountains, but were still amongst respectable

hills covered with forest, full of game, an engineer officer who was on

board told us, and plenty of wolves to be had in the winter--too many,

indeed, occasionally. A friend of his had knocked up a little wooden

shooting-box in these Wallachian forests--a rough affair, with a

living-room below, a bedroom above. He had found the wolves so shy that

he scarcely believed in them; however, to give the matter a fair trial,

he asked three or four friends to his box, bought a dead horse, and

roasted him outside. The speedy consequence was such a crowd of wolves

that he and his friends had to take refuge in the bedroom and fight for

their lives; as it was, the wolves were very near starving them out. And

now the river had widened again, and water-fowl could rest and feed on

the surface.

The hot evening, for hot enough it was, though cool in comparison of the

day, brought them out in flocks round the islands and over the shallows.

I was just feasting my eyes with the sight of wild swans, quite at their

ease in our neighbourhood, when three huge white birds came sailing past

with a flight almost as steady as the eagles we had seen in the

Kazan. “What are they?” I said eagerly to my companion, the engineer.

“Pelicans,” he answered, as coolly as if they had been water-hens. In

another moment they lighted on the water, and I saw their long bills and

pouches. Fancy the new sensation, sir! But on this part of the Danube

there is no want of new sensations. Our first stop at a Bulgarian

village--or town, perhaps, I should call it, for it boasted a

tumble-down fort, with some rude earthworks, and half a dozen minarets

shot up from amongst its houses and vineyards--may be reckoned amongst

the chief of these. What can be more utterly new to an Englishman than

to come upon a crowd of poor men, who have their daily bread to earn,

half of whom are quietly asleep, and the rest squatting or standing

about, without offering, or thinking of offering, to help when there

is work to be done under their noses? One was painfully reminded of the

eager, timid anxiety to be allowed to carry luggage for a penny or two

which one meets with at home. Here one had clearly got into the blissful

realms where time is absolutely of no account, and if you want a thing

done, you can do it yourself. Our arrival was evidently an event looked

forward to in some sort, for there were goods on the wharf waiting for

us, and several of the natives had managed to bring down great baskets

full of grapes, by which they had seated themselves. We were all

consumed with desire for grapes, and headed by the steward of the

vessel, who supplies his table here, rushed ashore and fell upon the

baskets. It seemed to be a matter of perfect indifference to the owners

whether we took them or let them alone, or how many we took, or whether

we paid or not. The only distinct idea they had, was that they would

not take Austrian money. Our English emissary returned with six or

seven huge bunches for which he had given promise to pay two piastres to

somebody. The piastre was then (ten days ago) worth one penny, it is now

worth twopence--a strange country is Turkey. There were some buffaloes

lying in the water, with their great ears flopping, to move the air a

little, and keep off flies. A half-grown Turkish lad was squatted near

the head of one of them, over which he was scooping up the water with

his hands, the only human being in voluntary activity. His work was

thoroughly appreciated; I never saw a more perfect picture of enjoyment

than the buffalo who was getting this shower-bath. The costumes, of

course, are curious and striking to a stranger, but turbans and fezzes,

camel’s hair jackets, and loose cotton drawers,--even the absence of

these in many instances, and the substitute of copper-coloured flesh

as a common garb of the country--are after all only superficial

differences. It is the quiet immobility of the men which makes one feel

at once that they are a different race, and the complete absence

of women in the crowds. The cottages, in general, look like great

mole-hills. They look miserable enough, but I believe are well suited

to the climate, being sunk three or four feet in the ground, which keeps

them cool in summer and warm in winter. Our Crimean experience bears

this out. The mud huts sunk in the ground and thatched roughly were

far more comfortable all weathers than those sent out from England. The

campaign between the Russians and Turks at the beginning of the late war

became much clearer to me as we passed down the river. It must be a very

difficult operation to invade Bulgaria from the Principalities, for the

southern bank commands the dead flat of the Wallachian banks almost all

the way down. The serious check which the Russians got at Oltenitza was

a great puzzle in England. We could not make out how it happened. Omar

Pasha seemed to have made a monstrous blunder in throwing a single

division across the river, and we wondered at his luck in getting so

well out of it. The fact is that it was a real stroke of generalship.

The Russian corps were about to cross at points above and below. Omar’s

cannon posted on the Bulgarian heights completely commanded the opposite

plain, where a considerable stream runs into the Danube. This stream

protected the left flank of the division which crossed, and they threw

up earth-works along their front and right. The Russians recalled

the corps which were about to cross, thinking to annihilate them,

and attacked under a plunging fire from the Turkish artillery on the

opposite bank, which, combined with that from the earth-works, was

unendurable, and they were repulsed with enormous loss. It is by no

means so easy, however, to understand why they did not take Silistria.

Here they had crossed, were in great force, and had no strong position

to attack. The famous work of Arab Tabia, the key of the position which

was so gallantly held by Butler and Nasmyth with a few hundred Turkish

soldiers under them, is nothing but a low mound, which you can scarcely

make out from the steamer. Why they should not have marched right over

it and into the town is a mystery.

The village of Tchernavoda where the steamer lands passengers for

Constantinople, consists of a very poor inn, some great warehouses for

corn, and some half-dozen Turkish cottages. An English company has made

the railroad across to Kustandjie, on the Black Sea, so that you escape

the long round by the mouths of the Danube. I fear it must be a very

poor speculation, but it is very convenient. The line runs through a

chain of lakes, by which it is often flooded. Once last winter the water

came nearly into the carriages. The train was, of course, stopped, and

had to remain in the water, which froze hard in the night. I believe

the passengers had to proceed over the ice. If any young Englishman who

combines the tastes of a sportsman and naturalist wants a field for his

energies, I can’t fancy a better one than these lakes. The birds swarm;

every sort of duck and sea-bird one had ever heard of, besides pelicans,

wild swans, bitterns, (the first I ever saw out of a museum) and herons,

and I know not what other fowl were there, especially a beautiful white

bird exactly like our heron, but snowy white. I saw two of these. I

don’t believe they were storks, at least not the common kind which I

have seen.

We had been journeying past the scene of the late conferences, and of

the excitement which was so nearly breaking out into war a month or two

back, and had plenty of Servians and other interested persons on board;

but, so far as I could learn, everything is quieting down into its

ordinary state--an unsatisfactory one, no doubt, but not unlikely to

drag on for some time yet. Should the Servians and other discontented

nationalities, however, break out and come to be in need of a king, or

other person of that kind, just now, they may have the chance of getting

two countrymen of ours to fill such posts. We left them preparing

to invade Servia on a shooting and exploring expedition, armed with

admirable guns, revolvers, and a powder for the annihilation of insects.

They were quite aware of the present unsettled state of affairs, and

prepared to avail themselves of anything good which might turn up on

their travels.

Constantinople, 34th September 1862.

The Eastern question! It is very easy indeed to have distinct notions

on the Eastern question. I had once, not very long ago neither. Of

course, like every Englishman, I was for fighting, sooner than the

Russians, or any other European Power, should come to the Bosphorus

without the leave of England, and that as often as might be necessary,

and quite apart from any consideration as to the internal state of the

country. But as for the Turks, I as much thought that their time was

about over in Europe as the Czar Nicholas when he talked of the sick

man to Sir Hamilton Seymour. They were a worn-out horde, the degenerate

remnant of a conquering race, who were keeping down with the help of

some of the Christian Powers, ourselves notably amongst the number,

Christian subjects--Bulgarians, Servians, Greeks, and others--more

numerous and better men than themselves. I could never see why these

same Christian subjects should not be allowed to kick the Turks out of

Europe if they could, or why we should take any trouble to bolster them

up. Perhaps I do not see yet why they should not be allowed, if they

can do it by themselves; but I am free to acknowledge that the Eastern

question, the nearer you get to it, and the more you look into it,

like many other political questions, gets more and more puzzling and

complicated and turns up quite a new side to you. A week or two on the

Bosphorus spent in looking about one, and sucking the brains of men of

all nations who have had any experience of this remarkable country, make

one see that there is a good deal to be said for wishing well to the

Turks, notwithstanding their false creed and bad practices. I hear here

the most wonderfully contradictory evidence about these Turks. They have

one quality of a ruling nation assuredly in perfection--the power of

getting themselves heartily hated. But so far as I could test them, the

common statements as to their dishonesty and corruption are vague and

general if you try to sift them, and I find that even those who abuse

them are apt in practice to prefer them to Creeks, Armenians, or any

other of the subject people in these parts. On the other hand, you

certainly do hear much of the honesty of the lower classes of the Turks.

For instance, it seems that contracts are scarcely ever made here in

writing, and in actions of debt if a Turk will appear and swear that he

was never indebted, the case is at an end, and he walks out of court

a free man. Admiral Slade, amongst his other functions, is judge of a

court which is a sort of mixture of an Admiralty and County Court,

in which he tries very many actions of debt in the year. After an

experience of nearly three years he told my informant that he had had

only two cases in which a defendant had adopted this summary method of

getting out of his difficulties. Again in the huge maze of bazaars in

Stamboul there is a quarter, some sixty yards square, at least, I should

say, which is _par excellence_ the Turkish bazaar. The Jews, Armenians,

and Greeks, who far out-number the Turks in the other quarters of the

bazaars, have no place here; or if an Armenian or two creep in, it is

only on sufferance. The Turks are a very early nation, and not given to

overwork themselves, and this bazaar of theirs is shut at twelve o’clock

every day, or soon afterwards, and left in charge of one man. I passed

through it one day when many of the shops were closing. The process

consisted of just sweeping the smaller articles into a sort of closet

which each merchant has at the back of the divan on which he sits, and

leaving the heavier articles (such as old inlaid firelocks, swords,

large china vases, and the like) where they were, hanging or standing

outside. Most of the merchandise, I quite admit, is old rubbish; still

there are many articles of considerable value and very portable, and

certainly every possible temptation to robbery is given both to those

who shut up latest and to the man who is left in charge of all this

property, and yet a theft of the smallest article is unheard of. In

this very bazaar I saw an instance of honesty which struck me much. The

custom of trade here is, as every one knows, that the vendor asks twice

or three times as much as he will take, and you have to beat him down to

a fair price. I accompanied a lady who had to make some purchases. After

a hard struggle, she succeeded in getting what she wanted at her own

price; but her adversary evidently felt aggrieved, and declared that he

should be a loser by the transaction. She cast up the total in her head,

paid the money; her _cavass_ (as they call the substitutes for footmen

here, who accompany ladies about the streets with scimitars by their

sides, and sticks in their hands, to belabour the Jews and Greeks with

who get in the way) had taken up the things, and we had left the shop,

when the aggrieved merchant came out, called us back, explained to her

that she had made a wrong calculation by ten francs or so, and refunded

the difference. I was much surprised. The whole process was so like an

attempt to cheat that it seemed very odd that the man who habitually

practised it should yet scruple to take advantage of such a slip as

this. But my companion, who knows the bazaars well, assured me that it

was always the case. A Turk does not care what he asks you, often loses

impatient customers by asking fabulously absurd prices, but the moment

he has made his bargain is scrupulously exact in keeping to it, and will

not take advantage of a farthing in changing your foreign money, or of

your ignorance of the value of his currency. This was her experience. I

might multiply instances of Turkish honesty if it were of any use, but

have been unable to collect a single instance of the like virtue on the

part of Greeks or Armenians. Every man’s word seems against them, though

their sharpness in trade and cleverness and activity in other ways are

admitted on all hands. I found that every one whose judgment I could at

all depend on, however much he might dislike the Turks, preferred

them to any other of the people of the country whenever there was any

question of trust. So, on the whole, notwithstanding their idleness,

their hatred of novelties and love of backsheesh, their false worship

and bigotry, and the evils which this false worship brings in its train,

I must say that the immense preponderance of oral evidence is in their

favour, as decidedly the most upright and respectable of the races who

inhabit Turkey in Europe. One does not put much faith in one’s own eyes

in a question of this kind, but, taking them for what they are worth,

mine certainly led me to the same conclusion. The Turkish boatmen,

porters, shopmen, contrast very favourably with their Greek and other

rivals.

In short, they look particularly like honest self-respecting men, which

the others emphatically do not.

If this be true, and so long as it continues to be true, I for one am

for keeping the Turks where they are. And this does not involve any

intervention on our parts. They are quite able to hold their own if no

foreign power interferes with them, and all we have to do is to see that

they are fairly let alone, which is not the case at present. For the

present Government of Fuad Pasha is the best and strongest Turkey

has seen for many a year. Fuad’s doings in Syria led one to expect

considerable things of him, for few living statesmen have successfully

solved such a problem as putting down the disturbances there, avenging

the Damascus massacre, quieting the religious excitement, and getting

the French out of the country. All this, however, he managed with great

firmness and skill, and since he has been Prime Minister he has given

proofs of ability in another direction equally important for the future

of his country. Turkish finance was in a deplorable state when he came

into power. I don’t suppose that it is in a very sound condition

now, but at any rate the first, and a very important, step has been

successfully made. Until within the last few months the paper currency

here, called _caimé_, has been the curse of the country. There were

somewhere about five million sterling’s worth of small notes, for sums

from ten piastres (2s.) to fifty piastres in circulation. The value of

these notes was constantly fluctuating, often varying thirty or forty

per cent in a few days. The whole of these notes have been called in by

the present Government and exchanged for small silver coin within the

last two months, so that now the value of the piastre in Turkey is

fixed. A greater blessing to the country can scarcely be conceived,

and the manner in which the conversion has been effected has been most

masterly. The English loan, no doubt, has enabled Fuad to do this, and

he has had Lord Hobart at his elbow to advise and assist him in the

operation. But, making all proper drawbacks, a very large balance of

credit is due to the Turkish Government, as will appear when the English

Commissioner’s Report appears in due course, the contents of which I

have neither the knowledge nor the wish to anticipate. The settlement,

for the present, at least, of the Servian and Montenegrin difficulties

are further proofs, it seems to me, of the vigour and ability of the

present Government. But still, giving the Turkish statesmen now in power

full credit for all they have done, one cannot help feeling that this

Eastern question is full of the most enormous difficulties, is, in

short, about the most complicated of all the restless, importunate,

ill-mannered questions that are crying out “Come, solve me,” in this

troublesome old continent of ours.

For it hardly needs a voyage to the East to convince any man who cares

about such matters that this Turkish Empire is in a state of solution.

If one did want convincing on the point, a few days here would be enough

to do it. Let him spend a few hours as I did last week at the Sweet

Waters of Asia on a Turkish Sunday (Friday), and he will scarcely want

further proof. The Sweet Waters of Asia are those of a muddy little

rivulet, which flow into the sparkling Bosphorus some four miles above

Constantinople. Along the side of this stream, at its junction with the

Bosphorus, is a small level plain, which has been for I know not how

long the resort of the Turkish women. Here they come once a week on

their Sundays, to look at the hills and the Bosphorus without the

interference of blinds and jalousies, and at some other human beings

besides the slaves and other inmates of their own harems. You arrive

there in a caique, and find yourself at a jump plump in the middle of

the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. The Sultan has built a superb kiosk

(summer-house) here, with a façade and balustrade of beautiful white

marble, one hundred yards long, fronting the Bosphorus. (They tell me,

by the way, that the whole kiosk is of the same white marble, and so

it may be, but, at any rate, if it be, it is most superfluously

covered with yellow stucco.) Outside the enclosure of his kiosk, at the

Bosphorus end of the little plain, and some fifty yards from the shore,

is a fine square marble fountain, with texts from the Koran in green and

gold upon it, and steps all round. A few plane-trees give a little shade

round it. On all the steps of the fountain, along the kiosk garden wall,

under the plane-trees, and out on the turf of the valley, are seated

Turkish women of every rank, from the Grand Vizier’s wife and family,

on superbly embroidered cushions and carpets, and cloaked in the most

fascinating purple and pink silks, down to poor men’s wives, in faded

stuffs, on old scraps of drugget which a rag-collector would scarcely

pick out of the gutter. Others of the veiled women are driving

slowly round the little plain in the strangest carriages, just like

Cinderella’s coach in the children’s books, or in arabas drawn by two

oxen, and ornamented with silk or cotton hangings. Here the poor women

sit, or drive, or walk for an hour or two, and smoke cigarettes, and eat

fruit and sweetmeats, and drink coffee, which viands are brought with

them or supplied by itinerant dealers on the ground. So far, the scene

is just what it might have been in the days of Haroun Alraschid, and the

black eunuchs standing about or walking by the carriages seem to warn

off all contact with the outer world. But what is the fact? There were

English and French ladies sitting on the carpets of the Grand Vizier’s

wife and talking with her. There were men and women of all nations

walking about or sitting close by the veiled groups, and plenty of

Turkish men looking on, or themselves talking to unbelievers, and

seeming to think that it was all quite natural. It is impossible in a

few words to convey the impression of utter incongruity which this and

other scenes of the same kind give one. Islamism and Frankism--Western

civilisation, or whatever you like to call it,--I dare not call it

Christianity,--are no longer at arm’s length. They are fairly being

stirred up together. What will come of it? At a splendid garden _fête_,

given by a great Pasha in the spring, amongst other novelties dancing

was perpetrated. The Pasha is a Turk of advanced ideas. His wife (he has

only one) and the other women of his household were allowed to look on

from the harem windows. “In two years they will be down here, in five

they will be dancing, and in ten they will wear crinolines,” said an

Englishman to one of the French Embassy with whom he was walking. “Et

alors l’empire serait sauvé,” replied the Frenchman. Not exactly so,

perhaps, but still the speakers were touching the heart of the Eastern

question. The harem or the Turks will have to go down in Europe in the

next few years. But as this letter is already too long, I hope you will

let me say what I have to say on the subject in my next.

Constantinople, 30th September 1862.

Amongst the many awkward facts which the Turks in Europe have to look

in the face and deal with speedily, there is one which seems specially

threatening. They have no class of educated men. “Some remedy _must_ be

found for this,” say their friends; “things cannot go on as they are.

The body of your people may be, we believe they are, sound and honest as

times go, superior indeed in all essentials to the other races who

are mixed up with them, but this will not avail you much longer.”

Steamboats, telegraphs, railways, have invaded Turkey already. The great

tide of modern material civilisation is flooding in upon the East, with

its restless, unmanageable eddies and waves, which have sapped, and are

sapping, the foundations, and overwhelming the roof trees, of stronger

political edifices than that of the Sublime Porte. If you Turks cannot

control and manage the tide, it will very soon drown you. Now where are

your men to do this? You have just now Fuad Pasha, and three or four

other able men, and reasonably honest, who understand their time, and

are guiding your affairs well. Besides them you have a few dozen men--we

can count them on our fingers--who have educated themselves decently,

and who may possibly prove fit for the highest places. But that

is doubtful, and for all minor offices, executive, administrative,

judicial, you have no competent men at all. The places are abominably

filled, and for one Turk who is able to fill them even thus badly you

have to employ ten foreigners, generally renegades. This is what Turkish

patriots have to look to. You _must_ find a class of men capable of

dealing with this modern deluge, or you will have to move out of Europe,

all we can say or do to the contrary notwithstanding.

All very true, say the enemies of the Turks. The facts are patent

enough, but the remedy! That is all moonshine. You _cannot_ have an

educated class of Turks, and you cannot stop the deluge; so you had

better stand back and let it sweep over them as soon as may be, and look

out for something to follow.

I believe that this dispute does touch the very heart of the Eastern

question, for it goes to the root of their social life; and the answer

to it must depend, in great part, upon the future of their “peculiar

institution”--the harem. For, alas the day! the harem is the place

of education for Turkish boys of the upper classes. And how can it be

helped? The boys must be with the women for the first years of their

lives, and the women must be in the harems. We need not believe all the

stories which are current about the abominations of these places. It

is quite likely that the number of child-murders and other atrocities,

which one hears of on all sides, may be exaggerated. But where there

is a part of every rich man’s house into which the police cannot enter,

which is to all intents beyond the reach of the law--in which the

inmates, all of one sex, are confined, with no connection with the outer

world, and no occupations or interests whatever except food and dress

(they are not even allowed to attend mosque)--one can hardly be startled

by anything which one may be told of what is done in them; and it is

impossible to conceive a more utterly enervating and demoralising place

for a boy to be brought up in. There is nothing in Turkey answering to

the great schools, colleges, and universities of Western Europe. There

is no healthy home life to substitute for them. The harem is the place

of education, and, with very rare exception, the boys come out of its

atmosphere utterly unfitted for any useful active life.

This is the great difficulty of the Turks in Europe. If they could break

the neck of it the others need not frighten them; and so the best of

them feel, and are doing something towards meeting the difficulty. Many

Turks are setting the example of taking only one wife, and of living

with her in their own houses as the men of Christian nations do. A few

have done away with the separate system, so far as they themselves are

concerned, and their harems are so only in name. They encourage foreign

ladies to call on their wives, and would gladly go further. Some of them

have even tried taking their wives with them into public; but this has

been premature. The nation will not stand it yet. The women themselves

object. The few who feel the degradation of their present lives, and

are anxious to help their husbands in getting rid of it, are looked upon

with so much suspicion that they dare not move on so fast. Honest

female conservatism has taken fright, and combines with vice, sloth, and

jealousy, to keep things as they are. However, the women will come

round fast enough if the men are only in earnest. They get all their

outer-world notions from the men, and as soon as the men will say, “We

wish you to live with us as the Giaours’ wives live with them,” the

thing will be done.

I may say, then, from what I have myself seen and heard, that a serious

attempt is being made by the Turks--few in number, certainly, at

present, but strong in position and character--to break the chain

of their old customs, especially this of the harem, and to conform

outwardly to Western habits and manners. This is being done mainly for

political reasons, and if nothing more enters into the movement will

probably fail; for, in spite of the great changes which have taken

place in Turkey in Europe of late years, there is a tremendous power of

passive resistance and hatred of all change amongst the people, which

no motives of expediency will be able to break through. It will take

something deeper than political expediency to do that. Is there the sign

of any such power above the horizon?

Well, sir, of course my opinion is worth very little. A fortnight’s

residence in a country, whatever opportunities one may have had, and

however one may have tried and desired to use them, cannot be of much

use in judging questions of this kind. Take my impressions, then, for

what they are worth, at any rate they are honest, and the result of

the best observation of a deeply interested spectator. Islamism as a

religious faith is all but gone in Turkey in Europe. Up to 1856 the

Turks were still a dominant and persecuting race, and Islamism a

persecuting creed. Since the Hatti humayoun, which was, perhaps, the

most important result of the Crimean war, there has been nominally

absolute religious toleration--actually something very nearly

approaching to it--in Turkey in Europe. Islamism was spread by the

sword, and the consequence of this method of propagation was that large

layers of the population were only nominally converted. These have never

since been either Moslem or Christians but a bad mixture of the two.

Since 1856 this has become more and more apparent. I will only mention

one fact bearing on the point, though I heard many. An American

missionary traveller in a part of Roumelia not very far from

Constantinople found the people, though nominally Turks, yet with many

Christian practices and traditions, to which they were much attached,

but which they had till lately kept secret. They did not seem inclined

to make any further profession of Christianity, or to give up their

Moslem profession, but were anxious that he should read the Bible to

them. They had not heard it for generations, but had preserved the

tradition of it. He did so; and afterwards parties of them would come

to the Bosphorus to his house to hear him read, and, I believe, do so

still. It is a curious story to hear of bodies of men sitting to hear

the old Book read, and weeping and going away. It takes one back to the

finding of the Book of the Law in Josiah’s day. Amongst the Turks proper

there is only one article of Islamism which is held with any strength,

and that is the hatred of any approach to image worship. In this they

are fanatics still. Thirty years ago the then Sultan nearly caused a

revolution by having his likeness put on coin. The issue was called in,

and to this day there is nothing but a cipher on the piastres and other

Turkish coin. The rest of their faith sits very lightly on them, and

is much more of a political than a religious garment. There is a strong

feeling of patriotism amongst the people (though it, and all else that

is noble, seems to have died out amongst the insignificant upper class,

if one may speak of such a thing here)--a patriotism of race more than

of country; and it is this, and not their faith, which is holding the

present state of things together.

Now, I am not going to tell you, sir, that the Turks in Europe are about

to be converted to Christianity. I only say that Islamism is all but

dead on our continent; that the most able and far-seeing of the Turks

see and feel this more and more every day themselves; that they are

themselves adopting, and are trying to introduce, practices and habits

which are utterly inconsistent with their old creed; that they have, in

fact, already virtually abandoned it. “We must have a civilisation,” the

best men amongst them say; “but what we want is a Turkish civilisation,

and not a French, or Russian, or English civilisation.” Yes; but on

what terms is such a civilisation possible for you? Well, sir, I am

old-fashioned enough to believe myself that the Christian faith is the

only possible civiliser of mankind. The only civilisation which has

reached the East--the outside civilisation of steam, gas, and the

like--will do nothing but destroy, unless you have something stronger to

graft it upon. What is the good of sending messages half round the world

in a few seconds, if the messages are lies; of carrying cowards

and scoundrels about at the rate of fifty-miles an hour; of forging

instruments of fearful power for the hands of the oppressors of the

earth? Not much will come of this kind of civilisation alone for any

nation; and, as for these poor Turks, it is powerful enough to blow them

up altogether, and that is all it will do for them.

When one stands in Great Sophia, and sees the defaced crosses, and the

names of Mahomet and his successors, on huge ugly green sign-boards,

hanging in the most prominent places of the noblest church of the East,

it is difficult not to feel something of the Crusading spirit. But, if

the Turks were swept out of Europe to-morrow, I doubt whether it would

not be a misfortune for the world. We should not only be expelling the

best race of the country, but they would retire into Asia sullen and

resentful, hating the West and its faith more than ever. Islamism would

gain new life from the reaction which would take place; for the Turks

will not go without making a strong fight, and Turkey in Europe would be

left to a riff-raff of nominal Christians, with more than all the vices

and none of the redeeming virtues of their late masters. It would be a

far higher and nobler triumph for Christendom to see the Turks restoring

the crosses and taking down the sign-boards. That sooner or later they

will become Christians I have no sort of doubt whatever, after seeing

them; for they are too strong a race to disappear. No nation can go

on long without a faith, and there is none other for them to turn to.

Modern Greeks may regret their old Paganism--here they say seriously

that many of them openly avow it; but for a Turk who finds Islamism

crumble away beneath him, it must be Christianity or nothing. The

greatest obstacle to the conversion of Turkey will be the degradation of

the subject Christian races. It is, no doubt, a tremendous obstacle, but

there have been tremendous obstacles before now which have been cleared

by weaker people.

I daresay I shall seem lunatic to you, sir, though I know it will not be

because you think the Christian faith is itself pretty well used up, and

ought to be thinking of getting itself carried out and buried decently,

instead of making new conquests. But if you had been living for a

fortnight on the Bosphorus, you could not help wishing well to the old

Turks any more than I, and I don’t believe you, any more than I,

could by any ingenuity find out what good to wish them, except speedy

conversion. With that all reforms will follow rapidly enough.

If you are not thoroughly outraged by these later productions of mine I

will promise to avoid the Eastern question proper, and will try to

give you something more amusing next week. Meanwhile, believe me ever

faithfully yours.

Athens, 1st October 1862.

I am afraid, to judge by my own café, it is quite impossible to give

anything like a true idea of Constantinople to those who have never been

there; at any rate it would require a volume and not two columns to do

it, but I can’t help trying to impart some of my own impressions to your

readers. Miles away in the Sea of Marmora you first catch sight of

the domes and minarets (like huge wax candles with graceful black

extinguishers on them) of the capital of the East. As you near the mouth

of the Bosphorus, on the European side lies the Seraglio Point with its

palaces, Sublime Porte, and public offices and gardens full of noble

cypresses. On the Asiatic side lies Scutari, the great hospital, with

the English cemetery and Marochetti’s monument in front of it, occupying

the highest and most conspicuous point. Midway between the two shores

is a rock called Leander’s rock, on which is a picturesque little

lighthouse. Passing this you turn short to the left round Seraglio

Point, and open at once the view of the whole city. The Golden Horn runs

right away in front of you, and on the promontory between it and the Sea

of Marmora lies the old town of Stamboul, crowned with the mosques of

St. Sophia and Sultan Achmet. A curious old wooden bridge, some five

hundred yards in length, crosses the Golden Horn and connects it with

Galata, a mass of custom-houses, barracks and offices, broken by a

handsome open square, at one end of which is the Sultan’s mosque. Behind

these the houses are piled up the steep hill side, and at the top stands

the striking old tower of Galata, from which you get the finest view of

Constantinople. Beyond comes Pera, the European quarter, where are the

Embassies and Missouri’s Hotel. Of course a vast city lining such

a harbour and strait as the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus must be

beautiful, but there is something very peculiar in the beauty of

Constantinople, which the splendid site alone will not account for. I

tried hard to satisfy myself what it was, and believe that it lies in

the wonderful colouring of the place. The mosques are splendid, but

not so fine as many Gothic churches, and the houses in general are far

inferior to those of most other capitals; and yet, seen in the mass,

they are strikingly beautiful, for those which are not of wood are

almost all covered with boarding, which is stained or painted in many

different colours. Many of them are a deep russet brown, others slate

gray, or blue, or deep yellow, some pale green with the windows picked

out in red. The colours are not fresh, but toned down. Then very many

of the houses have court-yards, or small gardens, and you get the fresh

foliage of orange-trees, and figs, and cypresses, as a further contrast,

and for flooring and ceiling the blue of the Bosphorus water and of the

cloudless Eastern sky. The moment you get into the wretched, narrow,

unpaved streets, the charm goes; but while you keep to the great high

street of the Bosphorus, I don’t believe there is any such treat in

the world for the lover of colour. And the shape of the houses, too, is

picturesque: as a rule they have flat roofs and deep overhanging eaves,

and rows of many windows with open Venetian shutters. As we have no time

to spare, we will not attempt the town, but stick to the high street.

There are three accepted ways of passing up and down the Bosphorus.

There is the common market-boat of the country--a huge, lumbering,

fiat-bottomed affair, about the size of a Thames lighter, but with high

bows and stern. It is propelled by six or eight boatmen, each pulling a

huge oar some eighteen feet long. They pull a long, steady stroke, each

man stepping up on to the thwart in front of him at the beginning of his

stroke, and throwing himself back till his weight has dragged his oar

through, and he finds himself back on his own seat, from which he at

once springs up and steps forward again for a fresh stroke. It must be

splendid training exercise, and they make a steady four miles an

hour against the stream;--no bad pace, for the boats are loaded with

fruit-baskets and packages and passengers--the veiled women sitting in

a group apart in the stern. Then there are the steamers, which ply every

hour up and down, the express boats touching at one or two principal

piers, and doing the twelve miles from the bridge at Stamboul to

Bajukdere in an hour and a quarter, the others stopping at every pier,

and taking two hours or more. They are Government boats, for passengers

only, and the fares are somewhat higher than those of our Thames

steamers. They have a long glazed cabin on the after-deck for the

first-class male passengers, and a small portion screened off further

aft, where the veiled women are crowded together. Until lately, all

women were accustomed to travel behind this screen, but the unveiled are

beginning to break the rule, and to intrude into the cabin of the lords

of creation. You see the Turks lift their eyebrows slightly as women in

crinoline squeeze by them and take their seats, but it is too late for

any further demonstration. An awning is spread over the whole deck,

cabin and all, and under it the passengers, who are too late to get

seats in the cabin, sit about on small low stools. Such a _colluvies

gentium_ and Babel of tongues no man can see or hear anywhere else I

should think. By your side, perhaps, sits a scrupulously clean old Turk,

with his legs tucked up under him and his slippers on the floor beneath.

He has the vacant hopeless look of an opium-eater, and you see him take

out his little box from his belt, and feel with nervous fingers how

large a pellet he may venture on in consideration of the bad company he

is in. On the other side an English sailor boy, delighted to be able to

talk broad Durham to somebody, is telling you how he has been down to

the bazaars and has bought a “hooble booble,” and a bottle of attar of

roses for the folk at home, and speculating how they would give £5, he

knows, at Sunderland, to see one of those women who look as if they were

done up in grave-clothes. Opposite you have a couple of silky-haired

Persians, with their long soft eyes and clear olive skins, high

head-dresses and sombre robes, and all about a motley crowd of Turks,

Circassians, and Greeks, Europeans with muslin round their wideawakes,

Maltese, English, and French skippers, soldiers in coarse zouave

and other uniforms, most of them smoking, and the waiters (Italians

generally), edging about amongst them all with little brazen

coffee-trays. An artist wishing to draw the heads of all nations could

find no richer field, and in the pursuit of his art would not of course

object to the crush and heat and odour; but as we are more bent on

comfort, we will go up the Bosphorus in the third conveyance indicated

above, a caique--and a more fascinating one can scarcely be conceived.

You may have your caique of any size, from one pair of sculls up to the

splendid twelve-oared state affairs of ambassadors and pashas; but that

with three caiquejees or rowers seems to be the most in use amongst the

rich folk, so we can scarcely do wrong in selecting it.

Our three-manned caique shall belong to an English merchant, the happy

owner of a summer villa at Therapia or Bajukdere. He shall be waiting

for us, and shall board the steamer as it drops anchor opposite Seraglio

Point. While our portmanteau is being fished up from the hold, we have

time to examine critically his turn-out. The caique is about the size

of an old-fashioned four-oar, but more strongly built, with a high sharp

bow and a capital flat floor, and lies on the water as lightly as a wild

duck. The caiquejees’ seats are well forward. The stern is decked for

some eight feet, and in this deck is a hole, so that you can stow your

luggage away underneath. When the ladies use the caique, their _cavass_,

with his red fez, blue braided coat and scimitar, sits grimly with his

legs in the hole and gives their orders to the caiquejees. Comfortable

cushions lying on a small Turkey carpet, between the little deck and

the stretcher of the stroke oar, in the roomiest part of the boat, await

you. You will lounge on them with your shoulders against the deck, a

white umbrella over your head, and a cigarette in your mouth. In the

climate of the Bosphorus, cigarettes of Turkish tobacco supersede all

other forms of the weed. The caiquejees are wiry, bronzed Turks; their

costume, the red fez, a loose coloured jacket, generally blue, which

they strip off for work, and appear in Broussa shirts of camels’ hair

fitting to the body, with loose sleeves reaching only to the elbow, and

baggy white cotton drawers tied at the knee. The stroke wears stockings,

which the others dispense with; each of them keeps his slippers under

his own seat. They each pull a pair of straight sculls fastened to

a single thole pin by a greased thong. You follow your friend and

portmanteau down the gangway and start, and are at once delighted at the

skill with which your crew steer through the crowds of Maltese boats

and caiques, and under great steamers and merchant ships, and fall into

their regular stroke, twenty-eight to the minute, which they never vary

for the whole twelve miles. Their form, too, is all that can be desired,

and would not discredit a London waterman. Turning up the Bosphorus you

soon lose sight of the Golden Horn, and the old rickety bridge which

spans it from Stamboul to Galata. You pull away at first under the

European shore, past the magnificent palace of the present Sultan,

gleaming white in the sun; and then come other huge piles, some tumbling

to pieces, some used as barracks, and private houses of all sizes

and colours, in their little gardens, and warehouses, coffee-shops,

cemeteries, fruit-markets and mosques. Not a yard of the bank but is

occupied with buildings, and the houses are piled far up the hillside

behind. It is the same on the Asiatic side, except that there the houses

next to the water are chiefly those of the rich Turks, as you may guess

from the carefully barred and jalousied windows of the harems, and that

the line of houses is not so deep. And so on for five miles you glide

up the strait, half a mile or more wide, alive with small boats moving

about, and men-of-war steamers riding at anchor, through one continuous

street. Then comes the narrowest part, where the current runs like a

mill-tail against you. On the European side stand the three towers,

connected with battlemented walls, built by Mahomed’s orders in the

winter before the taking of Stamboul and the extinction of the Western

Empire. Roumelie Hissa the point is called now, and behind it rises the

highest hill on the Bosphorus. If it is not too hot, your friend will

land and walk up with you, and when you have reached the top you will

see Olympus and the distant Nicomedian mountains over the Sea of Marmora

to the south, and the whole line of the Bosphorus below you, and the

Giants’ Mountain and the Black Sea away to the north. Behind you lie

wild moorlands, covered with heather and gum cistus, and arbutus bushes,

and a small oak shrub. Here and there in the hollows are small patches

of vines and other culture, with occasional clumps of stone pine and

Scotch fir, and chestnut and beech, amongst which scanty herds of

buffaloes and goats wander, watched by melancholy, truculent-looking

herdsmen, in great yellow capotes and belts, from which a brace of long,

old-fashioned pistols and the hilt of a long straight dagger stick out.

But, desolate as the European side is, it is a garden compared to the

Asiatic. You look across there, and behind the little bright belt of

life along the Bosphorus, there is nothing between you and the horizon

but desert heathery hills, running away as far as the eye can reach,

without a house, a tree, a beast, or the slightest sign of life upon

them. I scarcely ever saw so lovely a view, and it is thrown out into

the most vivid contrast by the life at your feet. You descend to your

caique again, and now are aware of a towing-path which runs at intervals

along in front of the houses. A lot of somewhat wretched-looking Turks

here wait with ropes to tow the caiques and other boats up the rapids.

Your stroke catches the end of the rope, and fastens it, exclaiming,

“_Haidee babai_” (so it sounds), “Push on, my fathers; push on, my

lambs”; and two little Turks, passing the rope over their shoulders,

toil away for some hundred yards, when they are dismissed with a minute

backsheesh. And now the Bosphorus widens out: on the Asiatic side comes

the valley of the Sweet Waters of Asia, and the new kiosk of the Sultan,

which I spoke of before, and afterwards only occasional villages and the

palaces of one or two great pashas. On the European side the houses are

still in continuous line, but begin to get more elbow-room, and only in

the little creeks, where the villages lie, are the hillsides much

built on. Now you begin to see the summer villas of the Europeans,

and accordingly an esplanade faced with stone, and broad enough for

carriages to pass, begins. This upper part of the Bosphorus has its own

charm. The water is rougher, as there is generally a breeze from the

Black Sea; and porpoises roll about, and flocks of sea-swallows (âmes

damnées) flit for ever over the little restless waves. The banks between

the houses and the wild common land of the hill tops are now often taken

into the gardens and cultivated in terraces; and where this is not so

they are clothed with fine Scotch fir and stone pine, and avenues of

cypress of the height of forest trees, with magnificent old gray trunks,

marking where paths run up the hillside or standing up alone like sombre

sentinels. It is not until you get almost to Therapia that there is

any break in the row of houses. Therapia, where Medea is said to have

prepared her potions, is a Greek village, built round a little bay,

the busiest and almost the prettiest place on the Bosphorus. There

are always half a dozen merchantmen lying there, and a sprinkling of

European sailors appear amongst the fezzes frequenting the quays formed

by the esplanade, and there is a café restaurant, and a grog shop,

where the British sailor can be refreshed with the strong liquors of his

country. Behind the village is the little cemetery of the Naval Brigade,

sadly neglected and overshadowed with beech and chestnut trees,

where Captain Lyons and many another fine fellow lie, to whom their

countrywomen have raised a large, simple white marble cross, which

stands up mournfully amongst the tangled grass which creeps over the

rows of nameless graves. One grieves that it is shoved away out of sight

of the Bosphorus, up which the brave fellows all went with such stout

hearts.

You pass more handsome villas and the summer residences of the English

and French ambassadors just above Therapia, and then comes the Bay of

Bajukdere, the broadest part of the Bosphorus, with the village of the

same name on its north shore, the last and handsomest of the suburbs

of Constantinople, where are the other embassies and the palaces of the

richest merchants. It was the place where Godfrey of Bouillon encamped

with his Crusaders. Beyond, the strait narrows again, and runs between

steep cliffs with a sharp turn into the Black Sea, and close to the

mouth are the storm-lashed Symplegades.

You must fill up the picture with ships of all sorts under the flags of

all the nations of the earth passing up and down, and people the banks

with figures in all the quaint and picturesque costumes of the East;

but no effort of imagination, I fear, can realise the frame in which the

whole is set, the water of the Bosphorus, and the unfathomable Eastern

sky. I never had an idea of real depth before. I doubt if it be possible

to imagine it. I am sure it is impossible to forget it.

Athens, 4th October 1862.

We left Constantinople for the Piraeus in a French packet. The sun set

behind Pera just before we started, and at the same moment a priest came

out into the little balcony which runs round each dizzy minaret some

three parts of the way up, and called the faithful to prayer. The poor

faithful! summoned there still at sunrise and sunset to turn towards

Mecca, and fall down before Him who gave that great city, and the fair

European countries behind it, to their fathers:--they must pray and work

hard too if they mean to stay there much longer. We steamed slowly out

from the Golden Horn, round Seraglio Point, and into night on the Sea of

Marmora. I was up early the next morning, and saw the sun rise over the

islands just as we were entering the Dardanelles. We stopped between

Lesbos and Abydos to take in cargo, time enough to charter one of the

fruit boats and pull off for a good swim in that romantic water. By ten

o’clock we were opening the Ægean Sea, with the road close under our

larboard bow and Tenedos in front of us. We saw the mounds on the shore,

known as the tombs of Achilles and Ajax, and so passed on wondering.

There were half a dozen young Englishmen on board, carrying amongst them

a Homer, a _Childe Harold_, and other classics. We had much debate as

we passed point after point as to the possible localities, but I am not

sure that we came to any conclusions which are worth repeating. About

noon, after we had become familiar with island after island, well

remembered as names from school and college days, but now living

realities, a faint peak was discovered in the far north-west. What could

it be? We applied to an officer, and found it was Athos. You may fancy

what the atmosphere was, sir, for Athos must have been at least sixty

miles from us at the time.

Night came on before any of us were tired of the Ægean. Next morning

at daybreak we were off the southern point of Euboea, with the coast

of Attica in sight over the bows. By breakfast-time we were rounding

Sunium, with the fair columns of a temple crowning the height, the

bay of Salamis before us, and “Morea’s Hills” for a background; and

presently the cliffs on the Attic coast gave way to low ground, and one

of our company, who had been in these parts before, startled us with

“There is the Acropolis!” “Where?” Operaglasses were handed about, and

eager looks cast over the plain, till we were aware of a little rocky

hill rising up some three miles from the shore, and a town lying round

the foot of it. The buildings of the town gleamed white enough in the

sun, but the ruins on the Acropolis we could scarcely make out. They

were of a deep yellow, not easily distinguishable on this side, and

at this distance from the rock below. The first sensation was one of

disappointment--we were all candid enough to admit it. We had seen

barren coasts enough, but none so bare as this of Attica. Hymettus lay

on the right, and Pentelicus further away on the north, behind Athens

and the Acropolis; and from their feet right down to the Piraeus, no

tree or shrub or sign of cultivation was visible, except a strip of

sombre green, a mile or so broad, which ran along the middle of the

plain marking the course of the Ilyssus. In the early spring and summer

they do get crops off portions of the plain, but by the end of September

it is as dry, dusty, and bare as the road to Epsom Downs on a Derby Day.

The little arid amphitheatre, not larger than a moderatesized English

county, with its capital and Acropolis, looked so insignificant, and

but for the bright sunshine would have been so dreary, that to keep from

turning away and not taking a second look at it, one was obliged to keep

mentally repeating, “It is Attica, after all!” Matters improved a little

as we got nearer, and before the Acropolis was hidden from our view by

the steep little hill crowned with windmills which rises up between

the Piraeus and Munychia, we could clearly make out the shape of the

Parthenon, and confessed that the rock on which it stood was for its

size a remarkable one, and in a commanding position.

You see nothing of the Piraeus till you round this hill and open the

mouth of the harbour, narrowed to this day by the old Athenian moles, so

that there is scarcely room for two large vessels to pass in it. It is

a lively little harbour enough. Three men-of-war, English, French, and

Greek, were lying there when we entered, and an Austrian Lloyd steamer

and a dozen or two merchantmen. We were surrounded by dozens of boats,

the boatmen dressed in the white cotton petticoats and long red fezzes,

not mere scull-caps like those of the Turks--a picturesque dress enough,

but not to be named for convenience or beauty with that of the Bosphorus

boatmen.

Most of our party started at once for Athens, but I and a companion,

resolved on enjoying the Mediterranean as long as we could, crossed the

hill, and descended to the Munychia for a bath, which we achieved in the

saltest and most buoyant water I have ever been in. The rocks (volcanic,

apparently), on which we dressed and were nearly grilled, were all

covered with incrustations of salt, looking as if there had been a

tremendous frost the night before. After our bath we strolled through

the little port town, hugely amused with the Greek inscriptions over

the shop-doors, and with the lively, somewhat rowdy look and ways of the

place; and, resisting the solicitations of many of the dustiest kind of

cab-drivers, who were hanging about with their vehicles on the look-out

for a fare to Athens, struck across the low marsh land, where the

Ilissus must run when he can find any water to bring down from the

hills, and were soon in amongst the olive groves. Here we were delivered

from the dust at any rate, and in a few minutes met a Greek with a

basket of grapes on his head, from whom, for half a franc, we purchased

six or seven magnificent bunches, and went on our way mightily

refreshed. We had made up our minds to be disappointed with the place,

and so were not sorry to be out of sight of it, and the olive groves

were quite new to us. Some of the old trees were very striking. They

were quite hollow, but bearing crops of fruit still quite merrily, as if

it were all right, and what was left of the trunk was all divided into

grisly old fretwork, as if each root had just run up independently into

a branch, and had never really formed part of the tree. They looked as

if they might be any age--could Plato have sat or walked under some of

them?

Vines grow under the olives, just as currant and gooseberry bushes

under the fruit-trees in our market gardens. They were loaded with fine

grapes, and the vintage was going lazily on here and there. There were

pomegranates too scattered about, the fruit splitting with ripeness. It

was tremendously hot, but the air so light and fresh that walking was

very pleasant. Presently we came to an open space, and caught a glimpse

of the Acropolis; and now that we were getting round to the front of it,

and could catch the outline of the Parthenon against the sky, it began

to occur to us that we had been somewhat too hasty.

In among the olive groves again, and then out on another and another

opening, till at last, when we came upon the _Via sacra_, we could

stand it no longer. The ruins had become so beautiful, and had such an

attraction, that giving up the grove of the Academy and Colonus, which

were not half a mile ahead of us, and which we had meant to visit, we

turned short to the right, and walked straight for the town at a pace

which excited the laughter of merry groups dawdling round the little

sheds where the winepresses were working. The town through which we had

to pass is ugly, dusty, and glaring. There are one or two broad streets,

with locust-trees planted along the sides of them, but not old enough

yet to give shade; and in the place before the palace, on which our

hotel looked, there are a few shrubs and plenty of prickly pears,

which seem to be popular with the Athenians, and are the most misshapen

hot-looking affairs which I have yet met with in the vegetable world.

But shade, shade--one longs for it, and there is none; and the glare and

heat are almost too much, even at the beginning of October--in summer

it must be unendurable. If the Athenians would only take one leaf out of

the book of their old enemies, and stain and paint their houses as the

Turks of the Bosphorus do! But though the houses are as ugly as those of

a London suburb, and there are no tolerable public buildings except

one church, the modern town is a very remarkable one, when one comes

to remember that thirty years ago there were only ten or twelve hovels

here. But you may suppose that one scarcely looks at or thinks of the

modern town; but pushing straight through it, makes for the Acropolis. A

fine broad carriage-road runs round the back of the hill, and so up with

a long sweep to the bottom of the western face, the one which we had

seen from the olive groves. You can manage to pass the stadium and the

columns of Jupiter on your left, as you ascend, without diverging, but

even to reach the Parthenon you cannot go by the theatre of Dionysus,

lying on your right against the northern face of the Acropolis, without

stopping. They are excavating and clearing away the rubbish every day

from new lines of seats; you can trace tier above tier now, right up the

face of the hill, till you get to precipitous cliff; and down below, in

the dress circle, the * marble seats are almost as fresh as the day they

were made; and most comfortable stalls they are, though uncushioned,

with the rank of their old occupants still fresh on them. You could

take your choice and sit in the stall of a [Greek phrase] as you fancied.

Below was the actual stage on which the tragedies of Sophocles and

Æschylus were played to audiences who understood even the toughest

chorus; and, for a background, Hymettus across the plain, and the sea

and islands! We passed yet another theatre as we went up the hill, but

nothing now could turn us from the Parthenon, and certainly it very far

exceeded anything I had ever dreamt of. Every one is familiar with

the shape and position and colour of the ruins from photographs and

paintings. We look at them and admire, and suppose they grew there, or

at any rate scarcely give a thought to how they did get there.

But I’ll defy any man to walk up the Propylæa and about the Parthenon

without being struck with wonder at the simple question, how it all got

there. Can the stories we have all been taught be true? Leaving beauty

altogether out of the question, here you are in the midst of the wreck

of one of the largest buildings you ever were in. You see that it was

built of blocks of white marble; that the columns are formed of these

blocks, each some four feet high, and so beautifully fitted together

that at the distance of two thousand years you very often cannot find

the joints, except where the marble is chipped. You see that the whole

of this building was originally surrounded by most elaborate sculpture;

you see that the whole side of the hill up which you approach the

great temple was converted into a magnificent broad staircase of white

marble--in short, you see probably the greatest architectural feat that

has ever been done in the world, and are told that it was done by a

small tribe--not more numerous than the population of a big English

town--who lived in that little barren corner of earth which you can

overlook from end to end from your standing-place, in the lifetime of

one generation; that Pericles thought the idea out, and the Athenians

quarried the marble, carried it up there, carved it, and built it up, in

his lifetime. Well, it _is_ hard to believe; but when one has sat down

on one of the great blocks, and looked over Salamis and Ægina, and the

Isthmus of Corinth, and then down at the groves of the Academy and

the Pynx and the Areopagus, and remembered that at this very time the

thoughts, and methods of thought, of that same small tribe are still

living, and moulding the minds of all the most civilised and powerful

nations of the earth, the physical wonder, as usual, dwarfs and gives

way before the spiritual. We saw the sunset, of course, from the front

of the Parthenon, and then descended to the Areopagus, and stood on,

or at any rate within a few feet of, the place where the glorious old

Hebrew of the Hebrews stood, and looking up at those marvellous temples

made by man, spoke a strange story in the ears of the crowd, whose only

pleasure was to hear or tell some new thing. It is the only place where

I have ever come in my journeyings right across the Scripture narrative,

and certainly the story shines out with new light after one has stood on

the very rock, and felt how the scene before Paul’s eyes must have moved

him.

We got to our inn after dark, and after dining went to a Greek play.

Theatre and acting both decidedly second-rate, the audience consisting

chiefly of officers--smart-looking young fellows enough. There were two

murders in the first act, but I regret to say that we could none of us

make out the story of the play. There were half a dozen young men, all

with good brains, none of whom had left our Universities more than two

years, at which the Greek language is all but the most prominent

study, and yet they might as well have been hearing Arabic. As for

myself--unluckily my ear is so bad that I can never catch words which

are not familiar to me--on this occasion, indeed, I could almost have

sworn the actors were using French words. But it really is a pity that

we can’t take to the modern Greek pronunciation in England. One goes

into Athens, and can read all the notices and signs, and even spell

through a column of newspaper with a little trouble, and yet, though one

would give one’s ears to be able to talk, cannot understand a word,

or make oneself understood. We managed, however, to get a clear enough

notion that something serious was going to happen; and from several

persons, French, Italian, and Greek, learned positively that Prince

Alfred was to be King of Greece shortly, which remarkable proposition

has since spread widely over the world. We sailed from Athens, after

a two days’ stay, in an Austrian Lloyd boat. The sailors were all

Italians, and there were certainly not much more than half the number

which we found on the French boat from Constantinople. And yet the

Austrian Lloyd Company has not lost a boat since it was a company, and

the Messageries Impériales have done nothing but lose theirs. Happily,

the French are not natural sailors, or there would be no peace on sea or

land.

The Run Home, October 1862.

We ran from Athens to Syra through the islands, in a bright moonlight,

and half a gale of wind, the most enjoyable combination of circumstances

in the world for those who are not given to sea-sickness. The island is

a rock almost as bare as Hymettus, and that is the most barren simile I

can think of--any hill in the Highlands would look like a garden beside

it. But it has a first-rate small harbour, which has become the central

packet-station of the Levant; and the town which has sprung up round

the harbour is the most stirring place in the East, and the commercial

capital of Greece. A very quaint place to look at, too, is Syra, for

at the back of the lower town, which lies round the harbour, rises a

conical hill, very steep, right up to the top of which a second town is

piled, with the Bishop’s palace on the highest point. This second, or

pyramidal, town is built on terraces, and is only accessible to foot

passengers, who ascend by a broad stone staircase, running from the

lower town up to the Bishop’s palace, and so bisecting the pyramid.

As restless a place as ever I was in, in which nothing seems to be

produced, but everything in the world exchanged--a very temple of

the Trade Goddess, of whom I should say there are few more devout or

successful worshippers than the Greeks. Here we waited through a long

broiling day for the steamer, which was to take us westward--homewards.

In travelling there is only one pleasure which can be named with the

start--that luxurious moment when one unstrings the bow, and leaving

one’s common pursuits and everyday life, plunges into new scenes--and

that is, the turning home. I had never been so far or so long away from

England before, so that the sensation was proportionately keen as

we settled into our places in the _Pluto_, one of the finest of the

Austrian Lloyd boats, which was to take us to Trieste. And a glorious

run we made of it. In the morning we were off the Lacedaemonian coast.

Almost as bare, this home of the Spartans, as that of their old rivals

in Attica; in fact, all the south of the Peloponnesus is barren rock. We

might almost have thrown a stone on to Cape Matapan as we passed. Above,

the western coast soon begins to change its character, and scanty pine

forests on the mountains, and not unfrequent villages, with more or less

of cultivated land round them, are visible. Towards evening we steam

past the entrance of Navarino Bay, scarcely wider than that of Dartmouth

harbour, but with room inside for four modern fleets to ride and fight;

as likely a place for a corsair to haunt and swoop out of, in old days,

as you could wish to see. Night fell, and we missed the entrance to the

Gulf of Corinth; and Ithaca, alas! was also out of sight astern before

we were on deck again. But we could not complain; the Albanian coast,

under which we were running, was too beautiful to allow us a moment for

regret--mountains as wild and barren, and twice as high, as those of

Southern Greece, streaked with rich valleys, and well-clothed lower

hills. By midday we were ashore at Corfu, driving through the old

Venetian streets, and on, over English macadamised roads, through olive

groves finer than those of Attica, up to the one-gun battery--the finest

view in the fairest island of the world. Bathing, and lunching, and all

but letting the steamer go on without us! Steaming away northward again,

leaving the shade of the union-jack under which we had revelled for a

few hours, and the delightful sound of the vernacular in the mouth of

the British soldiers, for a twenty-four hours’ run up the Adriatic, and

into Trieste harbour, just in time to baulk a fierce little storm which

came tearing down from the Alps to meet us.

Trieste is the best paved town I was ever in, and otherwise internally

attractive, while in the immediate neighbourhood, on the spurs of the

great mountains and along the Adriatic shore, are matchless sites for

country houses, and many most fascinating houses on them. For choice,

the situation, to my mind, even beats the celebrated hills round Turin,

for the view of the Adriatic turns the scale in favour of the former.

But neither city nor neighbourhood held us, and we hurried on to Venice

by rail, with the sea on our left, and the great Alpine range on our

right--now close over us, now retiring--the giant peaks looking dreamily

down on us through a hot shadowy haze all the day long. Poor Venice! we

lingered there a few days amidst pictures and frescoes and marbles; at

night drinking our coffee in the Place of St. Mark, on the Italian

side, watching the white and blue uniforms on the other, and hearing the

Austrian military band play, or gliding in a gondola along the moonlit

grand canal. English speculators are getting a finger in house property

at Venice. There were placards up in English on a dozen of the palaces,

“To be let or sold,” with the direction of the vendors below. What does

this portend? Let us hope not restoration on Camberwell or Pentonville

principles of art.

Then we sped westward again, getting an hour in the Giotto chapel

at Padua, a long day at Verona, amongst Roman ruins and Austrian

fortifications, and the grand churches, houses, and tombs of the

Scaligers. Over the frontier, then, into Italy. ‘While the Austrian

officials diligently searched baggage and spelt out passports, I

consoled myself with getting to a point close to the station, pointed

out by a railway guard, and taking a long look at the heights of

Solferino and the high tower--the watch-tower of Italy, a mile or two

away to the south. To Milan, through mulberries and vines--rich beyond

all fancy; the country looked as we passed as if peace and plenty had

set up their tent there. But little enough of either was there in the

people’s homes. The news of Garibaldi’s capture and wound was stirring

men’s minds fearfully; and all the cotton mills, too, of which there

are a good number scattered about, were just closing; wages, already

fearfully low, were falling in other trades. I came across a Lancashire

foreman, who had escaped the day before from the mill in which he had

been employed for five years, and only just escaped with his life.

Sixteen men had been stabbed and carried to the hospitals in the closing

row. He was making the best of his way back. “What was the state of

things in Lancashire to what he had just got out of,” he answered, when

I spoke of our distress. “He had been standing for three hours and more

in a dark corner, with two men within a few feet of him waiting to stab

him.” I rejoice to say that in the streets of Milan we saw everywhere

unmistakable signs that Italy is beginning to appreciate her faithful

ally. Some of the best political caricatures were as good as could

be--as Doyle’s or Leech’s--and bitter as distilled gall. At Turin we

had time to see the monuments of the two Queens, the mother and wife

of Victor Emmanuel, in a little out-of-the-way Church of Our Lady

of Consolation, where they used constantly to worship in life; their

statues are kneeling side by side in white marble--as touching a

monument as I have ever seen. Murray does not mention it (his last

edition was out before it was put up), so some stray reader of yours

may perhaps thank me for the hint. Over the Mount Cenis, and down into

Savoy, past the mouth of the tunnel which, in six years or so, is to

take us under the Alps to the lovely little town of St. Michael, where

the rail begins, we went, pitying the stout king from whom so beautiful

a birthplace had been filched by the arch robber; and so day and night

to Paris; and, after a day’s breathing, a drive along the trim

new promenades of the Bois de Boulogne, and a look round the

ever-multiplying new streets of the capital of cookery and gilded

mirrors, in ten hours to London.

Poor dear old London! groaning under the last days of the Great

Exhibition. After those bright, brave, foreign towns, how dingy, how

unkempt and uncared for thou didst look! From London Bridge station we

passed through a mile and a half of the most hideous part of Southwark

to the west. Even in the west, London was out at elbows, the roads used

up, the horses used up; the omnibus coachmen and cads,--the cabbies, the

police, the public, all in an unmistakable state of chronic seediness

and general debility. In spic-and-span Paris yesterday, and here to-day!

Well, one could take thee a thought cleaner and more cheerful, and be

thankful, Old London; but after all, as we plunge into thy fog and reek

and roar, and settle into our working clothes again, we are surer than

ever of one thing, which must reconcile any man worth his salt to making

thee his home,--thou art unmistakably the very heart of the old world.

Dieppe, Sunday, 13th September 1863.

I have just come away from hearing a very remarkable sermon at the

Protestant church here, of which I should like to give you some idea

before it goes out of my head. The preacher was a M. Bevel, a native of

Dieppe, now a minister at Amsterdam, where he has a high reputation. He

is here visiting his mother, which visit I should say is likely to be

cut short if he goes on preaching such sermons as he gave us to-day, or

else a liberty is allowed in the pulpit in France which is not to be

had elsewhere. The service began with a hymn. Then a layman read out

the Commandments at a desk. Then we sang part of Psalm xxv.; one of the

verses ran:

Qui craint Dieu, qui veut bien,

Jamais ne s’égarera,