imental points, as I may call
them, in the picture of the Turks, as drawn by those who have studied
them. I shall principally avail myself of the information supplied by
Mr. Thornton and M. Volney, men of name and ability, and for various
reasons preferable as authorities to writers of the present day.

1.

"The Turks," says Mr. Thornton, who, though not blind to their
shortcomings, is certainly favourable to them, "the Turks are of a grave
and saturnine cast ... patient of hunger and privations, capable of
enduring the hardships of war, but not much inclined to habits of
industry.... They prefer apathy and indolence to active enjoyments; but
when moved by a powerful stimulus they sometimes indulge in pleasures in
excess." "The Turk," he says elsewhere, "stretched at his ease on the
banks of the Bosphorus, glides down the stream of existence without
reflection on the past, and without anxiety for the future. His life is
one continued and unvaried reverie. To his imagination the whole
universe appears occupied in procuring him pleasures.... Every custom
invites to repose, and every object inspires an indolent voluptuousness.
Their delight is to recline on soft verdure under the shade of trees,
and to muse without fixing the attention, lulled by the trickling of a
fountain or the murmuring of a rivulet, and inhaling through their pipe
a gently inebriating vapour. Such pleasures, the highest which the rich
can enjoy, are equally within the reach of the artizan or the peasant."

M. Volney corroborates this account of them:--"Their behaviour," he
says, "is serious, austere, and melancholy; they rarely laugh, and the
gaiety of the French appears to them a fit of delirium. When they speak,
it is with deliberation, without gestures and without passion; they
listen without interrupting you; they are silent for whole days
together, and they by no means pique themselves on supporting
conversation. If they walk, it is always leisurely, and on business.
They have no idea of our troublesome activity, and our walks backwards
and forwards for amusement. Continually seated, they pass whole days
smoking, with their legs crossed, their pipes in their mouths, and
almost without changing their attitude." Englishmen present as great a
contrast to the Ottoman as the French; as a late English traveller
brings before us, apropos of seeing some Turks in quarantine:
"Certainly," he says, "Englishmen are the least able to wait, and the
Turks