Unbroken evolution of human civilisation

There is something alien to the true historic spirit in any race jealousy and ethnological partisanship. History is the unbroken evolution of human civilisation; and the true historians are they who can show us the unity and the sequence of the vast and complex drama. Theories of race are of all speculations the most cloudy and the most misleading.

And to few nations are they less applicable than to England. Our ethnology, our language, our history are as mixed and complex as any of which records exist. Our nationality is as vigorous and as definite as any in the world; but it is a geographical and a political nationality; and not a tribal or linguistic nationality. To unwind again the intricate strands which have been wrought into our English unity, and to range them in classes is a futile task. If we exaggerate the power of one particular element of the English race, one source of the English people, one side of English institutions, one contributory to the English language, we shall find it a poor equipment for historical judgment.

Professor Clifford

Race prejudices are at all times anti-historic. Professor Clifford used to talk about morality as an evolution of the ‘ tribal ’ conscience. Assuredly confusion is the only possible evolution for a ‘tribal ’ history. The Carlylese school, and the Orientalists turkey sightseeing, and the Dentsch and Jutish enthusiasts, bid fair to turn our language and its literature into an ungainly polyglott. Their pages bristle with Bretwaldas and Heretogas, Bnrhs and Mitnds, Folkfriths and Tungere- fas; or with Reicks, Kurffirsts, Pfalzes, and Kaisers.

All this is very well in glossaries, but not in literature. How absurd it is to write — ‘ The Kurfiirst of Koln or ‘ The Ealdorman of the Hwiccas ! ’ It is as if one wrote — ‘The Due of Broglie was once Ministre of the Affaires Etranghes ’; or that ‘ Wellington defeated the Empireur Napolion and all his Mardchauxjust as they do in a lady’s-maid’s high-polite novel. Why are Deutsch and Jutish titles to be introduced any more than French or Spanish? In glossaries they are useful; but histories of England should be written in English. And it is pleasant to turn to a great book of history, like that of Bishop Stubbs; where, in spite of the temptations and often of the necessities of a specialist dealing with a technical subject, the text is not needlessly deformed with obsolete, grotesque, and foreign words.

A wide range of ethnology and philology shows us that these origins and primitive tongues were themselves the issue of others before them, and are only a phase in the long evolution of history and language. These Engles, and Saxons, and Jutes, these Norse and Welsh, had far distant seats, and far earlier modes of speech. They were no more ‘Autochthones’ in the forests of Upper Germany than they were in Wessex and Caint.

Their speech has been traced back to Aryan roots current in Asia. And there, by the latest glimmerings of ethnographic science, we lose all these Cymric, and British, and Teutonic tribes in some (not definable) affinity, in some (not ascertainable) district of Central Asia, with some (not recoverable) common tongue of their own. So that these war cries about the White Horse, and Engles, and Jutes, turn out to mean simply that a very industrious school of historians choose to direct their attention to one particular phase of a movement which is in perpetual flux; and which, in time, in place, and in speech, can be traced back to very distant embryos in the infinite night of conjecture.

It is treason to our country and to scientific history to write, as Mr. Greene ventured to do in his fine and elaborate Making of England, that ‘ with the landing of Hen- gest English history begins.’ The history of England is something more than the tribal records of the Engles. The history of England began with the first authentic story of organised communities of men living in this island: and that most certainly existed since Caesar narrated his own campaigns in Britain.

The history of England, or the history of France, is the consecutive record of the political communities of men dwelling in the lands now called England and France. The really great problem for history is the assimilation of race and the . co-operation of alien forces. And so, too, the note of true literature lies in a loyal submission to the traditions of our composite tongue, and respect for an instrument which is hallowed by the custom of so many masterpieces. Loyal respect for that glorious speech would teach us to be slow how we desecrate its familiar names with brand- new archaisms; how we ruffle its easy flow with alien cacophonies and solecisms, and deform its familiar topog-raphy with hieroglyphic phonograms.

London defies adaptation and adjustment

Size and numbers are not necessarily bad things per se. But unhappily the size and numbers of London have alarming consequences of their own. Great cities have to grow organically, with some kind of self-adaptation to their development. But the increase of London defies adaptation and adjustment. The 70,000 new souls a year arrive before London has time to consider what she can do with them. The bricks pour down in irregular heaps, almost as if, in some cataclysm or tornado, it were raining bricks out of heaven on the earth below. The huge pall of smoke gets denser and more sulphurous, stretching out, they say, some thirty miles into the country, till Berkshire, Bycks, Herts, and Kent are beginning to be polluted by its cloud. From Charing Cross or the Royal Exchange a man has to walk some five or six miles before he can see the blessed meadows or breathe the country air. Few of us ever saw more than half of the city we live in, and some of us never saw nine-tenths of it. We all live more or less in soot and fog, in smoky, dusty, contaminated air, in which trees will no longer grow to full size, and the sulphurous vapour of which eats away the surface of stone.

Our once silver Thames

The beautiful river — our once silver Thames — is a turbid, muddy receptacle of refuse; at times indescribably nasty and unwholesome. The water we drink at times comes perilously near to be injurious to health. Our burying-places, old and new, are a perpetual anxiety and danger. Our sewers pour forth 5,500,0 tons of sewage per week, almost all of it waste- fully and dangerously discharged. An immense proportion of our working population are insufficiently housed, in cheerless, comfortless, and even unhealthy lodgings. Not a few of these are miserable dens or squalid cabins unfit for human dwelling-place sightseeing turkey. Every few years some epidemic breaks out which carries off its thousands. In some four- fifths of London the conditions of life are sadly depressing and sordid, with none of the advantages which city life affords. The amusements, such as they are, are often unworthy of us; the resources of health and recreation are too few; whilst the dangers to life, to morality, to the intelligence, are very real and ever present.

Is this monster city again to double and treble itself? its water supply to get still more precarious and defective, are its dead still more to endanger the living, its dreariness to grow vaster, and its smoke even thicker? It is a strange paradox that, whilst those who have the means are always seeking to get away from London, those who are destitute are perpetually pouring into London; whilst it is the ambition of every well-to-do Londoner to retire to freedom in the country or in the suburbs, it is the instinct of every countryman in distress to find his way up to London.

Constantine discovered on the Bosphorus

1. Nothing further need be said as to the unique source of strength, both for offence and for defence, which the genius of Constantine discovered on the Bosphorus. The removal of the seat of empire from the Tiber to the Bosphorus was the only mode in which the Empire could have been preserved, whilst, at the same time, this made possible its political, religious, and moral transformation. The exact steps, details, and ultimate type of this transformation are precisely the points on which we need light. We see the stupendous machine which this bureaucracy and State Church became, but we know very little about its actual working and its inner life.

We judge its power by results only, and by the startling paradox that the machinery of a most disparate organism goes on working undisturbed by fatuity, strife, and anarchy in the supreme centre. Whatever the vices and follies which raged in the imperial palaces for generations together, disciplined and well-armed troops, powerful navies, military engines and stores, skilful generals, able governors, and expert diplomatists, rise up time after time in infinite succession to save the empire, hold it together, restore its losses, and increase its wealth, and this over the whole period of eight centuries from Theodosius to Isaac Angelus.

2.The material source of this strength in the empire was primarily its sea-power and its command for five centuries of the commerce of the whole Mediterranean. When we study the campaigns of Heraclius and of Nicephorus, when we follow in Leo the Deacon the great expedition to recover Crete, we are struck with the vast maritime resources, the engines and ships of scientific war which the empire possessed in the seventh and tenth centuries. Nothing in Europe at that date could produce any such sea-power. As Nicephorus Phocas very fairly told the angry envoy of Otto ephesus daily tour, he could lay in ashes any sea-board town of the Mediterranean. When the cities of Italy succeeded to the commerce of Constantinople, they held it in shares and fought for it amongst themselves. But until the rise of Venice, Pisa, and Palermo, Constantinople ruled the seas from Sicily to Rhodes, and relatively to her contemporaries with a far more complete supremacy.

Central position in the Bosphorus

3.It was this maritime ascendency, this central position in the Bosphorus, and this vast Mediterranean commerce which was the foundation of the wealth of the empire — a wealth which, relatively to its age, exceeded even the wealth and maritime ascendency of England in our day, which for eight centuries hardly ever suffered a collapse, and was continually being renewed. We must discount the petulant sneers of the irritable Bishop Luitprand, when baffled by the fierce Nicephorus. The silk industry, the embroidery, the mosaic, the enamel, the metal work, the ivory carving, the architecture, the military engineering, the artillery, the marine ‘appliances, the shipbuilding art; the trade in corn, spices, oil, and wine; the manuscripts, the illuminations of Byzantium, far surpassed anything else in Europe to be found in the epoch between the reign of Justinian and the rise of the Italian cities. Much of what we call mediaeval art decoration and art fabrics had their real origin, both industrial and aesthetic, on the Bosphorus, or were carried on there as their metropolitan centre.

Nowhere else in Europe under the successors of Clovis and Charlemagne could such churches have been raised as those of the Holy Wisdom and Irene, such palaces as that beside the Hippodrome or the Boucoleon, such mighty fortifications as those which stretched from Blachernae to the Propontis. Nowhere could Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries produce such enormous wealth as that possessed by Theophilus, Basil i., or Constantine Porphyrogennetus, or equip such fleets and armies as those of Nicephorus, John Zimisces, and Basil.

We are accustomed to compare the art and the civilisation of the Byzantine Empire with those of much later ages than its own, mainly because we have nothing else wherewith to compare it of its own epoch. If we honestly set it against the contemporary state of Europe, from the era of Justinian to that of the Crusades, it will be seen to be not only supreme in the traditions of civilisation, but almost to stand alone. In the eleventh century, without doubt, Western Europe was organised, and began its triumphant career, with the Catholic Church and the feudal organism in full development; and from that date the Byzantine Empire ceased to be pre-eminent. But its vast resources and the splendour and civilised arts of Constantinople still continued to amaze the Crusaders, even down to the thirteenth century.

The indigo the current grape

The climate, the continuous blaze of the sun, the long months of complete drought, the dusty plains and dry water-courses, the aloes, the date palms, the cotton, the indigo, the current-grape, the jackal, the cha- maeleon, and the small crocodile — even the camel which has been seen in use — are Eastern and Southern rather than European. When we land in Greece, we find ourselves in the middle of the week before last, that is to say, they still use the Calendar of the Eastern Church, and are twelve days behind us in Europe. And in A.D. 1900 this will have become thirteen days, for in the West we shall omit that leap-year and gain another day. In Greece they talk of the post coming in from Europe, which it only does when a ship arrives, and they speak of European things, in the sense of foreign. In spite of the conventional statements of the geographers, Greece is not in Europe; but a half-. way house between Europe and Asia.

Another important fact, which the geographers ignore, is this — that Greece is an island for any practical purpose — or rather an interminable string of islands scattered along the Eastern Mediterranean over a space of sea that may measure some 500 miles, both north and south, east and west. The maps may show Greece as a prolongation of the Balkan Peninsula; but it would not be practicable for an ordinary traveller to reach Greece except by sea. Athens, though it is a capital city of Europe, cannot be reached by the continental railways.

The train will carry us direct from Calais to the furthest extremities of the Spanish, Italian, Austrian, Russian, and even Turkish dominions in Europe. But railways do not reach in the Balkan Peninsula south of Salonica, in Turkey. The Romans and the Turks had roads into Greece proper; but it is now unsafe, very fatiguing, and costly, to travel by land from Salonica to Athens, and nobody does so. Hence, practically, socially, politically, and economically speaking, Greece is an island, a vast cluster of islands placed in the Egean Sea, very far East and very far South. Athens lies east of Poland and of Hungary. The whole of Greece lies south of Naples and Taranto; and Crete lies south of the Algerian coast and of any point of Europe bulgaria trips.

Greece by sea

We must go to Greece by sea: and the sea voyage is most instructive. There is a long, lonely, restless stretch of sea, some 400 miles broad between the coast of Sicily and sight of the mountains of Attica. When the vast pinnacle of Aetna, with its trailing pennon of smoke, a pinnacle which hour after hour seems to rise in the sky, at last fades out of sight in the west, a long reach of unbroken sea has to be ploughed. Long before we sight the mountains of Taygetus or the headlands of Taenarum or Malea, between which lies the vale of ‘Hollow Lacedaemon,’ one has come to realise that we have left Europe far behind and are entering on the land of the rising sun. The old saw ran — ‘ When you have passed Cape Malea, make your will and say farewell to your kindred.’ That is no longer necessary or even prudent. But by the time that we have rounded Cape Malea and are steering north-east instead of south-east, it breaks upon us that we have left Europe some distance behind us.

Whatever geographers may pretend, there is not any such country as Greece—and there never was. There is no definitely marked portion of Europe inhabited by a people politically and socially one, with national traditions and habits. There is not now, and there never has been in ancient or in modern times. If we take a list of the illustrious Greeks of antiquity, we shall find that far the larger part of them belonged not to continental Greece proper, but to Greek communities spread out over the world from the coast of Spain to the banks of the Euphrates, from the Euxine to the coast of Africa.

Ancient City was dark enough

The obverse to the bright picture of the Ancient City was dark enough. If the citizens engaged in war, and war was always, until the consolidation of empire by Rome, a possible event, defeat meant the risk of having the city razed to the ground, or turned into an open village; sometimes a general massacre, or slavery for man and woman. Or, if in domestic politics, a crisis occurred, which with us means a change of government, in Greece or Italy it might imply to the losers at the ballot confiscation and exile; and the defeated party, be they democrat or aristocrat, lost home and country, and became outcasts and outlaws until they could get a reversal of the sentence.

Furthermore, it must be remembered that the full privileges of citizen belonged only to a portion of the inhabitants of the city — a portion which might not exceed one-tenth, whilst ninety per cent, of the actual dwellers within the walls might be slaves, freedmen, aliens, strangers, clients; and camp-followers. And the slaves in the public service, in the mines and factories, or in the farms, docks, ships, or warehouses led a life too often of appalling misery and toil. Even the household slaves who shared the intimacy of their master or mistress, who were often their superiors in culture and refinement, were liable to horrible punishments, to bodily and moral degradation, and to any cruelty or insult which brutality and caprice might inflict city tours istanbul.

During the brilliant age at Greece

During the brilliant age at Greece, and at last under the empire at Rome, domestic life in our modern sense was stunted or corrupt. At Greece, the wife was too often the drudge or the appendage of the household; at Rome, she too often became the tyrant. Female society in its higher meaning was unknown, unless in a depraved sense. Vice, indolence, indecency, were not only things not involving shame, but things which in an elegant form were a matter of public pride.

Thus this apotheosis of the City had both black and brilliant sides. But there is no essential connexion between its bright and its dark aspect. This religious veneration of the City, this worship of the City as the practical type of religion, was extravagant, anti-social, and inhuman in the wider sense of patriotism and human duty. But it had elements of fixity, of dignity, of reality, and of moral and religious fervour, that are wholly unknown to our city life, inconceivable even by us, elements to which our tepid Patriotism makes but a feeble approach.

The citizens were not indeed the members of a great nation, but a very close, jealous, and selfish civic aristocracy. Within their own order they gave the world fine examples of equality, simplicity, sociability, and public devotion, such as are hardly intelligible to modern men, such as no republican enthusiasm has ever in modern days attempted to revive. In the horror of dirt and the religion of personal health and perfection, they gave the world inimitable examples at which we look back in wonder and awe. For the love of beauty we have taken to us the love of comfort; for the profusion of art we have substituted material production; for the religio loci we prefer the vague immensities of the Universe; in place of public magnificence and social communion, we make idols of our domestic privacy and private luxuriousness.

ANCIENT MEDIAEVAL MODERN IDEAL

Since this essay appeared in 1890, Miss Betham-Edwards has published her own most valuable and interesting survey, her France of To-day, 2 vols., 1892-94. This book is the result of her exhaustive study of French agriculture, over twenty-five years. It forms the pendant to Arthur Young, and as being a study exactly one hundred years later, over the same ground and embodying an even more extensive knowledge of France than that of the old traveller, it becomes a work of rare value to the student of history and of politics. Miss Betham-Edwards is also the well-known author of several other books of travel in France; and her readers rejoice to learn that her life-long labours have received most honourable recognition from the Government of France as well as that of England.

Fluctnat nec mergitur should be the motto not of Paris but of France. The indomitable endurance of her race has enabled her to surmount crushing disasters, .losses, and disappointments under which another race would have sunk. She bears with ease a national debt the annual charge of which is more than double that of wealthy England, and a taxation nearly double that of England, with almost the same population — a permanent taxation (exceeding 100 francs per head) greater than has ever before been borne by any people. She loses over one war, a sum not much short of the whole national debt of England, and she writes off, without a murmur, a loss of 1,200,000,000 francs, thrown into the Panama Canal. If France is thus strong, the backbone of her strength is found in the marvellous industry and thrift of her peasantry. And if her peasantry are industrious and thrifty, it is because the Revolution of ’89 has secured to them a position more free and independent than that presented by any monarchical country on the continent of Europe city tour istanbul.

THE CITY: ANCIENT — MEDIAEVAL — MODERN — IDEAL

The life that men live in the City gives the type and measure of their civilisation. The word civilisation means the manner of life of the civilised part of the community of the city-men, not of the country-men, who are called rustics, and once were called pagans, or the heathens of the villages. Hence, inasmuch as a city is a highly organised and concentrated type of the general life of an epoch or people, if we compare the various types of the city, we are able to measure the strength and weakness of different kinds of civilisation.

How enormous is the range over which city-life extends, from the first cave-men and dug-out wigwams in prehistoric ages to the complex arrangements and appliances of modern Paris (which we may take as the type of the highly organised modern city of Europe). How vast is the interval between one kind of town-life and another kind ! — say comparing Bagdad with Chicago, or Naples with Staleybridge.

The differences in the humblest forms of rural life are far less apparent, whether we deal with different epochs or different races. The ploughman and the shepherd to-day on the Cotswolds, or the Cheviots, certainly the tenants of mud-cabins in Connemara or Skye, do not, in external modes of material life, differ so greatly from their predecessors in the days of the Crusades or even of the Heptarchy; and a herdsman of Anatolia, of La Mancha, or of Kerry, eats, sleeps, and works in very similar ways. But how vast is the interval between the habits and conditions of the Londoners who built the Lake-village of Llyndyn, or the Parisii who staked out the island of Loukhteith, and the modern Londoner and the modern Parisian !

Most assuredly the close of the eighteenth century

Let us avoid misunderstanding of what we are now speaking. Most assuredly the close of the eighteenth century in France displayed a convulsion, a frenzy, a chaos such as the world’s history has not often equalled. There was folly, crime, waste, destruction, confusion, and horror of stupendous proportions, and of all imaginable forms. There was the Terror, the Festival of Reason, the Reaction, and all the delirium, the orgy, the extravagance, which give brilliancy to small historians and serve as rhetoric to petty politicians. Assuredly the revolution closed in with most ghastly surprises to the philanthropists and philosophers who entered on it in 1789 with so light a heart.

Assuredly it has bequeathed to the statesmen and the people of our century problems of portentous difficulty and number. But we are speaking now neither of ’93 nor of ’95, nor of ’99, of no local or special incident, of no single event, nor of political forms. We are in this essay dealing exclusively with ‘ the ideas of ’89/ with the movement which at Versailles, on 5th May 1789, took outward and visible shape. And we are about to deal with it in its deeper, social, permanent sofia sightseeing, and human side, not in its transitory and material side. The Seine, the Loire, and the Rhone have washed away the blood which once defiled their streams, the havoc caused by the orgies of anarchy has been effaced, years make fainter the memory of crimes and follies, of revenge and jealousy. But the course of generations still deepens the meaning of ‘the ideas of ’89,’ of the social, intellectual, economic new birth which then received official recognition, opening in a conscious and popular form the reformation that, in a spontaneous form, had long been brooding in so many generous hearts and profound brains.

No reading of merely French history, no study of the reign of Louis xvi. by itself, can explain this great movement—no political history, no narrative of events, no account of any special institution. Neither the degeneration of the monarchy, nor the corruption of the nobility, nor the disorder of the administration, nor the barbarism of the feudal law, nor the decay of the Church, nor the vices of society, nor the teaching of any school, nor all of these together — are adequate to explain the revolution.

They are enough to account for the confusion, waste, conflict, and fury of the contest — i.e. for the explosion. But they do not explain how it is that hardly anything was set up in France between 1789 and 1799 which had not been previously discussed and prepared, that between 1789 and 1799 an immense body of new institutions and reformed methods of social life were firmly planted in such a way that they have borne fruit far and wide in France and through Europe.

Religious fanaticism

Nor do any of these special causes just enumerated suffice to explain the passion, the contagious faith, the almost religious fanaticism which was the inner strength of the revolution and the source of its inexhaustible activity. What we call the French Revolution of 1789, was really a new phase of civilisation announcing its advent in form. It had the character of religious zeal because it was a movement of the human race towards a completer humanity.

Rhetoricians, poets, and preachers have accustomed us too long to dwell on the lurid side of the movement, on its follies, crimes, and failures; they have overrated the relative importance of the catastrophe, and by profuse pictures of the horrors, they have drawn off attention from its solid and enduring fruits. In the midst of the agony it was natural that Burke, in the sunset of his judgment, should denounce it. But it was a misfortune for the last generation that the purple mantle of Burke should have fallen on a prophet, who was not a statesman but a man of letters, who, with all Burke’s passion and prejudice, had but little of his philosophic power, none of his practical sagacity, none of the great Whig’s experience of affairs and of men.

The universal bonfire ’ theory, the ‘ grand suicide ’ view, the ‘ chaos-come-again ’ of a former generation, are seen to be ridiculous in ours. The movement of 1789 was far less the final crash of an effete system than it was the new birth of a greater system, or rather of the irresistible germs of a greater system. The contemporaries of Tacitus, Trajan, and Marcus Aurelius could see nothing but ruin in the superstition of the Galileans, just as the contemporaries of Decius, Julian, and Justinian saw nothing but barbarism in the Goths, the Franks, and the Arabs.

six volumes of Latin Christianity

The whole of the closely-packed six volumes of Latin Christianity are possibly beyond the limits of many general readers. But we can point to those parts which may be best selected from the rest. The Introduction in the first book, and the General Survey which forms the fourteenth book at the end of the work, are the parts of the whole of the widest general grasp. To these we may add the chapters which treat of the greater Popes: Leo the Great in Book ii., Gregory the Great in Book iii., Hildebrand in Book vii., Innocent the Third in Book ix., Boniface VIII. in Book xi. — the chapters on Theodoric, Charlemagne, the Othos, the Crusades, St. Bernard, St. Louis — those on the four Latin Fathers, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory, the monastic orders of St. Benedict, St. Dominic, and St. Francis—the Conversion of the Barbarians, and the Reformers and Councils of the fifteenth century. As is natural and fortunate, the Dean is strongest and most valuable just where Gibbon is weakest or even misleading.

Auguste Comte recommended as the complement of Gibbon

In his Library, Auguste Comte recommended as the complement of Gibbon, the Ecclesiastical History of the Abb6 Fleury. But it seems in vain to press upon the general reader of English a work in French so bulky, so unfamiliar, and so far removed from us in England to-day both in date, in form, and in tone. It was published in 1690, more than two hundred years ago, and is in twenty volumes quarto, and only in part translated into English. It contains an excellent narrative, which was warmly praised by Voltaire. But it is entirely uncritical; it is of course not on the level of modern scholarship; and as the work of a prelate under the later reign of Louis xiv., it is naturally composed from the theological and miraculous point of view. The Abbe gives us the view of the Catholic world as seen by a sensible and liberal Catholic divine in the seventeenth century. The Dean has painted it as imagined by a somewhat skeptical and Protestant man of the world in the nineteenth private turkey tours.

When we pass from Mediaeval to Modern History, we are confronted with the difficulty that modern history is infinitely the more intricate and varied, and that, as we advance, the histories become continually more and more devoted to special epochs and countries, and are minute researches into local incidents and chosen persons. The immediate matter in hand in this essay is to direct attention to great books of history, meaning thereby those works which take us to the inner life of one of the great typical movements, or which in manageable form survey some of the great epochs of general history. Such surveys for the last four centuries are exceedingly rare. There are many valuable standard works, which are supposed to be in every gentleman’s library, and which are familiar enough to every historical student. But they form a list that can hardly be compressed into one hundred volumes, and to master them is beyond the power of the average general reader to whom these pages are addressed. We can mention some of them: though they are hardly ‘great books,’ and neither in range of subject, in charm, or in insight, have they the stamp of Herodotus or Gibbon.

Victory followed upon victory

Victory followed upon victory, and the whole Greek race expanded with this amazing triumph. The old world had been brought face to face with the intellect which was to transform it. The Greek mind, with the whole East open to it, exhibited inexhaustible activity. A century sufficed to develop a thoroughly new phase of civilisation. They carried the arts to a height whereon they stand as the types for all time. In poetry they exhausted and perfected every form of composition. In politics they built up a multitude of communities, rich with a prolific store of political and social institutions. Throughout their stormy history stand forth great names. Now and then there rose amongst them leaders of real genius. For a time they showed some splendid instances of public virtue, of social life, patriotism, elevation, sagacity, and energy. For a moment Athens at least may have believed that she had reached the highest type of political existence ephesus sightseeing.

Barren struggles and wanton restlessness

But with all this activity and greatness there was no true unity. Wonderful as was their ingenuity, their versatility and energy, it was too often wasted in barren struggles and wanton restlessness. For a century and a half after the Persian invasion, the petty Greek states contended in one weary round of contemptible civil wars and aimless revolutions. One after another they cast their great men aside, to think out by themselves the thoughts that were to live for all time, and gave themselves up to be the victims of degraded adventurers. For one moment only in their history, if indeed for that, they did become a nation. At last, wearied out by endless wars and constant revolutions, the Greek states by force and fraud were fused in one people by the Macedonian kings ; and by Macedon, instead of by true Hellas, the great work so long postponed, but through their history never forgotten, was at length attempted — the work of avenging the Persian invasion, and subduing Asia.

Short and wonderful was that career of conquest, due wholly to one marvellous mind. Alexander, indeed, in military and practical genius seems to stand above all Greeks, as Caesar above all Romans; they two the greatest chiefs of the ancient world. No story in history is so romantic as the tale of that ten years of victory when Alexander, at the head of some thirty thousand veteran Greeks, poured over Asia, crushing army after army, taking city after city, and receiving the homage of prince after prince, himself fighting like a knight-errant: until, subduing the Persian empire, and piercing Asia from side to side, and having reached even the great rivers of India, he turned back to Babylon to organise his vast empire, to found new cities, pour life into the decrepit frame of the East, and give to these entranced nations the arts and wisdom of Greece. For this he came to Babylon, but came thither only to die. Endless confusion ensued ; province after province broke up into a separate kingdom, and the vast empire of Alexander became the prey of military adventurers.

Gedik Pasha Mission House

By the time that this service is finished the visitor is tired and wants to go back to the hotel for dinner. But the missionary says firmly but gently, “ You have come out to see the missionary work in the city and you ought to finish seeing it.” So they go on another half mile into the very heart of the old part of the city, and come to a shabby old shed which they enter, and see empty seats for some two hundred people, with a few of the congregation of Armenians which has just been dismissed, lingering to finish their chat before they go home. Near by, they enter a great stone house, which the visitor is told is the Gedik Pasha Mission House of the Woman’s Board of Missions. Some American ladies receive them cordially and give them a lunch at railroad speed, because Sunday School begins at half-past twelve.

After lunch the whole of the Mission House is a bee-hive for a couple of hours. There is no room in it large enough to seat all the people at once, so that for the preliminary exercises all sit as they can in adjoining rooms with doors wide open. The visitor is taken through the house to see the various classes; the old men and the young men, the old women and the young women, and the boys graded by themselves and the girls by themselves, and the infant classes with their pictures and their frequent hymns. He is shown, also, the further subdivisions made necessary by the fact that some of the people who come know Greek only, and some, Armenian only, and some, Turkish only. And he is caused to note that the work is not done by the missionary ladies alone, but that natives have come forward to do the work of the teacher tailor-made bulgaria tours.

Sabbath School at the Mission House

Right there is an illustration of the manner in which the missionary work does its most effective and permanent good service. It is in multiplying workers, so that by the grace of God the single labourers become a hundred or a thousand because the Gospel cannot be hid nor can it abide alone when it has fallen into the sincere heart. He sees also an illustration of the capabilities of this city as a place in which to do the work of the missionary. Not half of the people in the Sabbath School at the Mission House are permanent residents of Constantinople. The other half are from distant portions of the country to which they will take what is taught them here in this Mission House, to brood over the lesson until it causes at least some improvement in life. As these facts are pointed out to the visitor, lie can not but feel enthusiasm when the reckoning of attendance is given him, and he finds that about three hundred people will attend the Bible lessons at the Mission House almost any Sunday.

Perhaps the stranger is more than satisfied with his morning’s work. But he is not allowed to stop his travels about the great city. He is made to go back to the Bible House again that he may see there at three o’clock a meeting of the Young Men’s Christian Association managed by a clear-headed young Armenian. From there again he is taken across the city to a district near the old harbour of the Wheat Merchants on the Sea of Marmora, where he finds another congregation of Greeks, coming down stairs from an upper room which serves as a chapel at Ivoumkapou, and where he sits a while to hear the missionary preach in Turkish to another congregation which collects as the Greeks disperse.

The road toward Buyukdere

The afternoon of the Levantine brings out carriages full of ladies and gentlemen, and sends them spinning over the hills toward the Sweet Waters of Europe, or far up the road toward Buyukdere. The reputation of Constantinople for its bodge podge of races is justified by study of the types seen in any gathering of the ladies of the European colony. There is the long-featured, fair-haired English woman, who clings to the London cut of her dress, notwithstanding its power to attract the astonished eyes of all other nations; there is the stout and crimson German woman, with her fondness for startling buttons; there is the slight and smiling French woman, serene in the midst of a colour scheme harmoniously worked out to the tips of her dainty shoes. There is the Italian woman, black of hair and brilliant of eye, who loves to introduce into her neat dress discords of gold chains, and a hat al-ways too ambitious. There is the buxom brunette of an Armenian, with full lips and too full a nose, and there is the Greek, most celebrated of all the southern peoples for features that are irregular, a voice that is mellow, and eyes that have a special glaze upon them for concealing thought behind a crystal promise of frankness.

Greek from Athens

If there is a woman in all the crowd less liable than any other to find acceptance as a type of beauty in feature or in complexion, for some mysterious reason that woman is sure to be a Greek from Athens. But next to her is the Levantine, who is colourless in her complexion and composite in her features, who assures you that she is English, or French, or Italian, but who knows no environment save that of Pera, although she can talk to you in French or English or Italian or Greek or Turkish, and in either language shows by her accent that it is not quite her own. She too will never venture in her conversation outside of the safe limits of the Levantine quadrilateral, devised to avoid giving offence to unknown and incomputable susceptibilities guided istanbul tour.

The principle of assuming the existence of difficulties unknown and unknowable in a medley of races, limits the character of the social life of Pera. This life is like that in a house where visitors unacquainted with each other have been brought together and must be amused by such devices as the hostess commands. It is marked by a frenzied pursuit of amusements known to be found in every country. One cannot give a dinner party without having it followed by a ball, and preferably a ball in costume or in masque, and as the Turk bent on a tour of exploration among the curiosities of Pera, discovers that Pera ladies, are ogled by lines of young men as they come out of the church of Santa Maria, or gently carried to the ball in Sedan chairs through the narrow streets, he fancies that in this tenderness toward woman he has seen the source of the peculiar power of the European to push his affairs, to succeed in business, and to live in what seems like limitless luxury. Perhaps he has.

Rythmical blows the waters of the sea of Marmora

CONSTANTINOPLE

Rhythmical blows the waters of the sea of Marmora, the most placid of inland seas. This sea is sheltered from serious turmoil of storm, by the friendly approach to each other of the two continents of Europe and Asia. The measured stroke of the propeller helps one to sleep in peace, after the first strangeness has worn off. It is like the “ All’s well! ” of the watchman of old. If not heard there is reason for instant waking. As it pounds out its beats at half speed, there appears in the dreams a half-consciousness that it is beating time to music. Finally, a persistent monotony of musical impressions destroys the power of sleep; the senses gain control and re-establish connections between the various ganglia, and then the beating of the propeller is found to be accompanied in actual fact by a singular wailing chant. One has to go on deck to learn the meaning of the strange and mournful sound.

By the cool, limpid light of early dawn, the deck passengers, Greeks, Turks and Albanians, have spied the landmarks of the approach to Constantinople, and have let their emotion break forth in song. West and East differ in temperament and in habits of thought and expression, and never more so than in their music. Even with words of joy the music of Turkey is always in the minor key; as though the people had not yet felt joy real and irrepressible. The minor strains of the song of the passengers clustered at the bow of the ship, might seem to imply sorrow. But to them their song is a sweet brooding of reminiscence, like “ Home, Sweet Home.” It is the tribute of their hearts to the greatness of the city to which they are drawing nigh private tours istanbul.

The sun was soon to rise from behind the blue mountains of Asia, and had already kindled a rosy glow amid the haze along their crests. The glassy sea, which near at hand is blue as no other sea is blue, paled into a silver sheet where its level surface passed into the distance and reflected in strange tints the overhanging hills. Up-‘n the sea, twenty miles away to the right, lay the rounded knolls of the Princes’ Islands. Still farther to the right, and some distance behind the coast hills of Asia, was the lofty Bythinian Olympus, a white pile cold as an iceberg and pure as the Jungfrau in springtime. On the left, but close at hand, lay the bare brown hills of Europe, rising from a shore dotted with groups of houses and gardens, and churches, and white-steeled mosques.

Suddenly the sun arose. The haze of the distant hills blazed with a golden glory. Europe reddened at the greeting of the rays, while the mighty curve with which Asia swept around to meet the Western lands, was still dark under the lingering shadows of the hills. A shout went up from the motley crowd at the bulwarks of the bows. “There it is! There it is! Stamboul, Oh, Stamboul! ”

The top of the hill of Bulgarin

A very hot walk of an hour took us to the top of the hill of Bulgarin, from which the finest panorama of Constantinople, tho Sea of Marmora, Prince’s Islands, and the contiguous Asiatic country, can be seen.

1 was much pleased, ou my return to the hotel, to find on my key-hook a card left by Lord Mandeville, who was staying at Misseri’s. He had been attacked by robbers, a day’s journey from Smyrna; and they had taken everything that he had about him. Whilst talking of the affair, a report arrived that Mr. Urquhart had suffered also from thieves, but on the sea — his boat having been attacked by pirates. These two misadventures made sufficient noise to prove that such robberies upon Eastern travellers were of rare occurrence.

The way in which the first robbery came about was this. The steamers of the Austrian Lloyd’s Company, arriving at Smyrna in the morning, do not start again until noon the nest day, and so Lord Mandeville, and a gentleman who accompanied him,—Mr. Percy Herbert, — determined to spend their time in riding to Nimfi; where, a short time ago, one of the most ancient monuments of the world was discovered, in the shape of an enormous human figure, sculptured in the solid rock. It agrees closely with the description of a monument given by Herodotus, and is said to be a trophy of Sesostris.

Our travellers placed themselves first in the hands of a doubtful dragoman, — as great a robber, by their account, as any they were attacked by, — and left him to make the arrangements for the journey, Nimfi being about five hours distant from Smyrna. He engaged a Surroudjee, or horse-attendant, to be at the inn about four o’clock in the afternoon, with five horses.

Before starting, they thought it would be advisable to go to the consul, and mention their plans and arrangements. They found an old gentleman in an ill temper, wrapped up in a flannel gown, and groaning, as he said, from rheumatism. Upon asking him if the price they paid for the horses was just, he replied that he knew nothing at all about it, and, indeed, appeared to be bored at being thus troubled : so they went away local ephesus tour guides.

Having started at the appointed time, for a wonder, they were stopped at the first guard-house they came to, which is about half an hour out of Smyrna, and asked for their Teskcre, which is a species of passport, combined with an order for post-horses and other matters connected with Turkish travelling. Neither the consul nor tho dragoman had thought about this, and so they were compelled to wait two hours at the guard-house, whilst the latter returned for the necessary permit.

Reach Nimfi

As last, he arrived; but, from this delay and other causes, they did not reach Nimfi until the middle of the night. The dragoman, who had assured them that he had often been there before, was now unable to find the house they were to sleep in; and they must have couched a la belle etoile, had they not, by chance, found a man sitting up in some place where wine was being made, who directed them.

They started again at daylight, the next morning, for the spot where the monument is to be seen, distant from Nimfi about an hour and a half. After a pleasant ride of eight or nine miles, through a very pretty country, they went up a small path, leading through a narrow gorge in the hills, where there was barely room for more than the stream running through it, the way being sometimes in the course of the stream, and sometimes on one side of it, twisting about, to pass the blocks which had rolled down from the sides of the hills.

They were passing one of these masses, with some brushwood on the other side of the path, when two men sprang forward and stopped the Surruudjee. At the same moment, two other fellows appeared in the rear, and they were directly afterwards joined by a fifth. All these men were armed. They made the travellers dismount, tore off their coats to see if they wore armed, which, fortunately, they were not; and then quietly rifled their pockets taking all they wanted. Fortunately, Lord Mandeville had nothing of great value about him, except a gold watch. This, of course, they appropriated, as well as his sash, his pocket-handkerchief, and even a strip of silk lie wore round his neck. Just as he was remounting, one of the rascals saw a ring on his finger. They tried to get this off, but as it, had been a lady’s, it was not very easy, and tho chief of the party drew his yatagan to take away finger and all. The dragoman, however, interfered, and contrived to release it with his mouth. When everything available had been taken, the fellows departed.

Stambonl may be termed Constantinople

Stambonl may be termed Constantinople proper, inhabited by the Turks, and containing the seraglio, chief mosques, great public offices, bazaars, and places of government and general business. It is the most ancient and most important part, j)ar excellence. Galata is tho Wapping of the city : here we find dirty shops for ships’ stores, merchants’ counting-houses, ami tipsy sailors. Tophant is so called from the large gun-factory close at hand. Both these suburbs are situated at the base of a very steep hill; the upper part of which is Pera, the district allotted to the Franks, or foreigners, and containing the palaces of the ambassadors, the hotels, the European shops, and the most motley population under the sun. Scutari is to Stamboul, as Birkenhead to Liverpool ; and is in Asia. It is important in its way, as being the starting-place of all the caravans going inland. There are some other districts of less interest to the average tourist.

As soon as we left the landing-place, and entered the steep lane that leads up to Pera, all the enchantment vanished. In an instant, I felt that I had been taken behind the scenes of a great “ effect.” The Constantinople of Yaushall Gardens, a few years ago, did not differ more, when viewed, in front from the gallery, and behind from the dirty little alleys bordering the river. The miserable, narrow, ill-paved thoroughfare did not present one redeeming feature, — not even picturesque dreariness. The roadway was paved with all sorts of ragged stones, jammed down together without any regard to level surface ; and encumbered with dead rats, melon-rinds, dogs, rags, brickbats, and rub- bi.’h, that had fallen througli the mules’ baskets, as they toiled along it. The houses were of wood — old and rotten ; and bearing traces of having been onee painted red. There had been evidently never any attempt made to clean them, or their windows or doorways. Here and there, where a building had been burnt, or had tumbled down, all the ruins remained as they had fallen. Even the better class of houses had an uncared-for, mouldy, plague- imbued, decaying look about them ; and with their grimy lattices, instead of windows, on the upper stories, and dilapidated sh’utters and doors on the ground floors, it was difficult to imagine that they were inhabited by people who had such notions, according to report, of home and cleanliness, that they never sought for society apart from their own divans, or harems, and never were fit for prayers until they had, moro or less effectively, washed them* selves jeep safari bulgaria.

We found our hotel possessed the double advantage of being a stone building, and completely insulated — a great comfort in so combustible a district as Pera. I got a good bedroom, that overlooked the Sosphorus, part of the Golden Horn, and a few of the Mosques; came to an understanding about expenses,—which is always advisable; had the inexpressible comfort of washing and dressing in a large well-appointed room, after the confined closet of the Scamandre; and then we all sat down to breakfast, learning that everything was to be had in Constantinople but fresh butter. Some white bitter compound, perfectly uneatable, was produced once or twice during my stay; but it was so unpalatable, that we usually preferred “ Irish ;” and at last came to cat, with a relish, what many of our Kngli.>h servants would have turned up their noses at. The tea was excellent, and so were the cutlets; but there was some wine on the table,— a native production, I believe, — like very bad siill champagne, sickened with coarse moist sugar, to which I preferred the grapes in their natural state.

The strict Moslem costume

All the Turks were old, and wore turbans. There was but one in the simple fez. They were evidently sticklers for the strict Moslem costume, and clung to its decaying insignia, as old country-gentlemen with us now and then are still seen with Hessian boots, powder, and bygone hats. One ancient Turk had a turban so high that its volutes were twisted six or seven times round his head; and I fancied that each day it increased in importance. Another—a Circassian—had a very strange head-dress, looking for all the world like a felt sugar-loaf pushed through a black mop. He was armed to the teeth, and never laid any of his accoutrements aside during the voyage. The only one in a fez was the head eunuch of the royal seraglio. He was grandly dressed in yellow silk, spotted with scarlet, and blue trousers. He, however, wore European boots — the only Frank innovation to be seen amongst them.

Yet we had not got entirely away from English enterprise; for on going down to supper, although the plates bore the motto, “ Naviyazione a v a pore del Lloyd Austriaco,” yet on the back there was the name of “Davenport,” on the familiar scroll. The cabin was small, but the berths were clean, and we had our choice of the entire twelve. I did not, however, sleep very well, for the pillows and mattress were of horsehair, with nothing but a fine sheet over them, so that the little ends coming through caused me to hear nearly all the hells, all the night through.

Dardanelles early next morning

We were in the Dardanelles early next morning; and the process of washing and dressing, in the cabin, was of the greatest interest to two young Arabs, who watched us through the sky-light with the keenest curiosity. They called one of their fellows after a time, and especially directed his attention to the nailbrush, and mimicked what I had been doing with it. In the cabin, the rules of the boat were hung up, in five languages—Italian, German, Greek, French, and English. From the latter I copied, “Rule 12. Passengers having a right to be treated as persons of education, will no doubt conform themselves to the rules of good society, by respecting their fellow- travellers, and paying a due regard to the fair sex.” This was a sensible rule; and, indeed, the others were equally so. I never saw any of them broken, at any time, on the Mediterranean: this will show the great superiority of the second-class places in the foreign boats, over the same division in our own. I am sorry to confess this, but it is the case.

We passed the Dardanelles that day, from which the people put off with crockery as before, and the Turks each purchased a huge water-jug. At night I saw the most beautiful sunset I had ever witnessed. The sky in the west was at first like burnished gold, with silver edges to the clouds. This turned to a bright orange, streaked horizontally with vermilion, whilst the mountains of Asia Minor on our left were tinted with the richest purple, and the whole of the eastern heavens were glowing with a lovely violet guided istanbul tours.

There was very little wind; the sea was as smooth as a canal, and about eight on the following morning we were onee more at Smyrna.

We now found that we were to change our boat, and as this transfer led to a most annoying and unpardonable occurrence, I shall give the Austrian Lloyd’s Company the entire benefit—or otherwise— of its publicity. We had been assured at their office in Galata, there would be no quarantine on our arrival at Alexandria. The same intimation was given to us at Smyrna, during the day and a half we stopped there, on this present occasion ; and so far as that went, our minds were at rest.

We spent the next morning in making a few farewell purchases—a carpet or two ; some drums of choice figs and raisins, and some minor souvenirs which were left in the eare of Messrs. Hansom to be forwarded by the first ship to England; and on the afternoon of the 28th, took final leave of Turkey.

An officer from the health office accompanied us in the boat to the Wien, another vessel belonging to the Austrian Lloyd’s fleet. I supposed this was usual, and thought no more about the matter, until looking up by chance, after I got on board, I saw the yellow flag flying. I asked what it meant, of one of the officers, but he was very busy, and passed on without deigning to reply. Presently the engineer erupt out of the engine-room, and he had such an English face that I addressed him at one in my own tongue.