deed, that he is passionately fond of it;
for with him every wish, every desire, every caprice, is a
passion--an ardent and impatient passion. It is difficult for a
European to imagine, and still more difficult to understand, the
inflammability of the unruly, or rather unbridled, passions of an
Asiatic, with whom the will alone has been, since childhood, the
only limit to his desires. Our passions are like domestic animals; or,
if they are wild beasts, they are tamed, and taught to dance upon
the rope of the "conveniences," with a ring through their nostrils
and their claws cut: in the East they are free as the lion and the
tiger.

It is curious to observe, on the countenance of Ammalat, the blush
with which his features are covered at the least contradiction; the
fire with which he is filled at any dispute; but as soon as he finds
that he is in the wrong, he turns pale, and seems ready to weep.
"I am in the wrong," says he; "pardon me: takhsirumdam ghitch,
(blot out my fault;) forget that I am wrong, and that you have
pardoned me." He has a good heart, but a heart always ready to be
set on fire, either by a ray of the sun or by a spark of hell.
Nature has gifted him with all that is necessary to render him a man,
as well in his moral as physical constitution; but national
prejudices, and the want of education, have done all that is
possible to disfigure and to corrupt these natural qualities. His
mind is a mixture of all sorts of inconsistencies, of the most
absurd ideas, and of the soundest thoughts: sometimes he seizes
instantly abstract propositions when they are presented to him in a
simple form, and again he will obstinately oppose the plainest and
most evident truths: because the former are quite new to him, and
the latter are obscured by previous prejudices and impressions. I
begin to fancy that it is easier to build a new edifice than to
reconstruct an old one.

But how happens it that Ammalat is melancholy and absent? He makes
great progress in every thing that does not require an attentive and
continuous reflection, and a gradual development; but when the
matter involves remote consequences, his mind resembles a short
fire-arm, which sends its charge quickly, direct, and strongly, but
not to any distance. Is this a defect of his mind? or is it that his
attention is entirely occupied with something else? ... For a man of
twenty-three, however, it is easy to imagine the cause. Sometimes he
appears to be lis