Part 2 (1/2)

I need not say that the instruction I ihly profitable to lided from the French lesson into explanatory sketches of European life and European ideas I told the Bey of our social, political, and scientific institutions, decking thehtest colours, for the European, during his first stay in the East, is always looking back with fondness to the West he has just left, and the very things he used to conde at a distance

My information was almost always received with approval and adood specilo-French allies who had coainst the Russians; the Turks were, therefore, eager to learn all the particulars having reference to the Western land, and if the descriptions of these excited now and then their envy, roused them to disapproval or called out their conceit, they were always listened to, and that with pleasure

At the close of the lesson a well-prepared and abundant breakfast was always brought in, and Iof the better classes in Constantinople had enlisted astronomic partiality It frequently happened, too, that we started immediately after breakfast for a ride on horseback,his calls in my company; in short, I passed a considerable portion of the day in the society of Turks, and I used to return to Pera, that is, to European life, in the evening only

My perst Turks dates, however, from the time when, at the recommendation of a countryeneral of a division, to enter his house as the teacher of his son, Hassan Bey

I rely situated row of houses at Fyndykly; there I got a separate room, and enjoyed for the first time the amenities of Oriental quiet and Turkish comfort The life in a strictly Mohammedan part of the town, in the vicinity of a loo rand prospect fro in the sea near by, with its thousand crafts, and the nified and patriarchal air which pervaded the whole house--were all things which had the charet

The figure of the ray-bearded Anatolian, however, has perhaps ood ent towards ainst the strictly Oriental custoreat pains to teach ht me to carry my head and to use my hands with propriety, and how I should yawn, sneeze, and so forth His attention embraced the e city; you have just entered polite society,” he benignly said, ”and you ”

Of course the oldfrom the land of ”black infidelity,” a land to which, in his opinion, decency, good ers, and he see from those parts needed to be educated quite as hbourhood of Kharput and Diarbekir

The pasha hie It was he who afterwards became known as the leader of the celebrated Kuleili conspiracy, a conspiracy whose object was nothing less than the rerandees; the conspirators flattering themselves with the belief that all the causes of the decay of Turkey would be thereby extirpated, and that, with one stroke, the old and infirm Ottoman Empire could be restored to its ancient power

I was an inmate of his house at the ti hatched and the plans for its consudad, by the naifts, i, ascetic life, and boundless fanaticism was the life and soul of the whole conspiracy He had taken part in the whole of the Criion), bareheaded and barefooted, and clad in a garb whose austere sies of Islam His sword never left his lean loins, nor his lance the firht, except when he said his prayers, five tih the snow, in the stor toilsohost-like for flames, and always at the head of the division, under the command of my chief

It was quite natural that such a man should please Hussein Dairown into a sort of relationshi+p by consanguinity; for the leanabout barefoot in Constantinople, had the privilege of crossing even the threshold of the harem, where, under the protection of the sacredness of Turkish faot rid of There was so in the appearance of Ahmed Effendi which terrifiedmyself to be called by my pasha, for the sake of intimacy, Reshi+d (the brave, the discreet), came this terrible man near , fro converted to Islam A very false inference!

But I did not destroy the hopes of the zealot, gaining thereby his good-will, and getting hiive me instruction in Persian

Ahmed Effendi allowed me even to visit him in his cell in the yard of thewere those hours which I spent, sitting at his feet, with other youths ere eager to learn! It see, to my dazzled eyes in one moment, the whole of Moha, alh Arabic and Persian scholar, and knehole series of classics by heart I had only to begin with a line froel's Persian Chrestomathy, and he would at once continue to recite the whole piece to the end Indeed he would have been able to go on with his declamation for hours

To this Ahmed Effendi I was indebted, more than to anybody else, forof my transformation, I trust the friendly reader will not suppose, for one moment, that a ht had led my mind away from the spirit of the West A thousand times, no!

Rather the reverse was the case The more I studied the civilization of Islaher rose, in my estimation, the value of western civilization

III

LIFE IN STAMBUL

In the year 1860, I was, perhaps, the only European who had an easy and uninterrupted access to all classes of Turkish society, and, probably, saw at that tienuine Stambul life than any one before me

And, surely, no one will find fault with me, if I recall now, in the enerous hospitality I have met with, at the hands of the noblest Turks, in their own houses The easy affability of persons of high positions in the State, the utter absence of all pride or over-bearing superciliousness, are virtues, indeed, which would often be looked for in vain in our civilized West The stupid ponorance of certain aristocracies present a miserable picture, when contrasted with the behaviour of the Asiatic grandees, whom it is the custom to sneer at in Europe The Oriental is particular about nobility of blood only in the s, whereas, with us, the select are boasting of such ”anies” that I should like to knohat country of Europe an unknown stranger erness to learn, in obtaining access to the ood-will and protection With us, to be sure, there is no lack either of protectors and patrons of exalted station, who assist the man of books and art, but in this they never approach the intimacy and close friendshi+p which patrons bestow in the East upon intellectual pursuits In Europe, the possessors of long pedigrees, the owners of family trees with decayed roots and worned to them the leadershi+p in society, but not so in Asia The Arabs will boast of the heroic deeds and generous actions of their ancestors, but not for their own exaltation, as is the case inover tomy stay in Stambul, I will only mention that I published, in 1858, a German-Turkish dictionary, a ss of which, I am by no means unaware; but it was the first that had been written, and is, to this day, the only available one which a Geret There were two main points which I had principally in view in my studies of Turkish literature I had, in the first place, found, in the history of the Ottoman Empire, so much that was of interest to the history of my own country, that I felt ih these translations, I entered, at an early period, into relations with the Hungarian Acade, for the ment, but the laborious and circumstantial completeness of their inforenerally known that the Turkish Sultans who, at the head of their destructive armies, ainst whom so many Crusades were preached, were constantly accoraphers, and have done more for Clio, the Muse, than many a truly Catholic prince of that time

I had found, in the second place, in the course of uistic researches in the study of Eastern Turkish, a field which had been, at that time, barely cultivated, and devoted to it ot hold of in the various libraries, which were of great assistance to me in my studies, I frequented the _Tekkes_ (cloisters), inhabited by the Bokhariots, and provided h understanding of these works, with a teacher as a native of Central Asia Mollah Khalmurad, as my teacher was called, acquainted ht of Central Asia I used to hang passionately on his lips when he was relating stories about Bokhara and Samarkand, and told of the Oxus and Taxartes, for he had travelled a great deal in his own country He had already es to the holy cities of Arabia, and possessed, to a high degree, the cunning and clearsightedness peculiar to every Asiatic, but particularly to the much-travelled Asiatic