are really deficient in is
air; but the ladies are far from making any complaint. Naturally chilly,
and having no means of warming themselves by exercise, they remain for
hours at a time huddled on the ground before the fire, and cannot
understand that a visitor is almost choked by the atmosphere. If
anything recalls to my mind these artificial caverns, crowded with
tattered women and noisy children, I feel ready to faint."

* * * * *

The princess does not, on the whole, speak unfavourably of the Turkish
character. Perhaps the reader would judge it more severely; but still
the consensus of the best authorities supports the view taken by the
princess, and it is the governing-class, rather than the masses, that
seems to justify the general dislike. Of Turkish officials it would be
difficult, perhaps, to say anything too severe; the ordinary Turk,
however, has many good qualities, which need only the stimulus of good
government for their happy development. As to the governing-class, their
vices are the natural result of the corruption of the harems, and until
these are reformed, it is useless to expect any elevation of the low
moral standard which now unfortunately prevails among the pashas.

The Turkish people, if less enlightened than other European nations, are
not without qualities that demand recognition. They are temperate,
hospitable, and orderly. They are faithful husbands and good wives.

The Turkish peasant is at once father, husband, and lover to his wife,
whom he never contradicts willingly and knowingly, and there is little
to which he will not submit in the depth of his affection for her.

In these climates, and under the influence of coarse and unwholesome
food, the woman ages early; whereas the man, better constituted to
endure fatigue and privation, preserves his vigour almost to the last
unimpaired. Nothing is more common here than to see an old man of eighty
and odd surrounded by little children who are his flesh and bone. In
spite of this disproportion between man and woman, the union, contracted
almost in childhood, is only dissolved by death. The Princess de
Belgiojoso tells us that she has seen hideous, decrepit, and infirm
women tenderly cared for and adored by handsome old men, straight as the
mountain pine, with beard silvered but long and thick, and eyes bright,
clear, and serene.

One day, our traveller met an old woman, blind and paralytic, whom her
husban