The large cannon of the Dardanelles will no more perform the part of the flying artillery in modern warfare, than their grave masters habituate themselves either to the military evolutions, or to the busy, peaceful pursuits of the West. To acquire European habits, the Turk must forswear that potent drug, which of old used to intoxicate his valour to desperate enterprise, but which now stupifies

* The Turks have foregone the habit of swallowing opium to take up that of hard drinking. In 1847-8 we hardly met with one opium-eater, but we were constantly meeting Osmanlee dram-drinkers. Among the more prosperous classes of Turks it is rare to find one that has the least scruple about drinking the forbidden wine, or the raw ardent spirit of the country, which is called raki, or, indeed, any other intoxicating liquor. They have no sense of moderation. They may sometimes abstain, but they can never refrain. When they drink, they invariably do it to excess. Before sitting down to dinner, a tray, with raki, baked nuts, biscuits, pieces of salted fish, olives, &c., is brought in, handed round, and generally kept in circulation for a good quarter of an hour, or more. I never saw a Turkish gentleman sit down to his dinner with any appetite. The danger of dining with one of them is, getting fuddled before the dinner commences. Their stomachs are deranged and vitiated, and the effects of this way of living are visible on the persons of most of them. The example of this outrage on the law of the Prophet proceeded from the highest quarter-from the representative of the Prophet, the Sultan himself. The late Mahmoud was a notorious toper, and so were all his pashas, or all the officers most about him.

I certainly did not expect to find that the habit had spread very widely among the common people; yet, with a few exceptions, every Turk we met, whether in Asia or in Europe, would drink raki without any scruple and quite openly; and it was not

him to a stately indifference to his humiliation. He must emancipate his mind from the moral opium of predestinarianism, which, in the same manner, during the days of his ambition and glory, bred the noble defiance of danger and the contempt of death, now reconciles him to his most inglorious destiny. Mashallah! (as God will!), once the proud exclamation of constant victory, is still the consolation of complacent apathy under defeat. It appears almost impossible that the most intimate connexion with Europeans should work a complete revolution in a national character, to a certain degree inborn, and confirmed by centuries of pride or security; and that change, either repelled by the inert resistance of ancient habit, or but partially admitted, it seems more inconceivable how it is to compete with the rapidly advancing activity of the rest of Europe; alone to stand still, or advance but slowly, in the midst of the heady current which is flowing with such violence throughout the Christian world."*

often that they would refuse to partake of our wine. Delirium tremens was a malady by no means unknown among them.

Twenty-five years ago it would have been difficult to find in Asia Minor (a little inland) the Turkish peasant who would not have been furiously incensed if a Christian had offered him the forbidden drink.

*Quarterly Review,' vol. xlix., April to July, 1833.

There can be no doubt that the arm of Turkish power was greatly weakened by the adoption of the new system, by the destruction of the Janissaries, and most of all by the subversion of that splendid old irregular cavalry called Spahis. General Valentini observes, that "an enlightened sovereign, far from attempting to introduce among them anything of European practice, would rather seek to develope those peculiar qualities of which the germ evidently exists in these extraordinary people." There is something in this, but, after all, there is no efficient force like that of a regular army. The Spahis, like the Cossacks, were wild and disorderly in their attacks, spreading themselves in small bodies among the rocks and bushes, dashing down narrow passes and through places apparently impracticable, appearing suddenly and unexpectedly on the flank or rear of an enemy. "Two or three men," says an experienced witness, "will advance and look about them; then you will see all at once five or six hundred, and woe to the battalion which marches without precaution, or which is seized with a panic!" The new system put an end to the wild assaults of these native guerrillas, and Mahmoud was thus left with a halfformed army, easily thrown into a complete state of disorganisation.

Having destroyed one species of effective force, and being hurried into the field by the Russian war of 1828-9, before there was time to consolidate another, Sultan Mahmoud required all his iron nerves to contemplate his situation. After the battle of Prevadi his new troops scarcely ventured to face a Russian force, however small. The result was, that the army of the Tzar crossed the Balkan without meeting with any opposition whatever, and dictated terms of peace at Adrianople. Reduced as it was, it might have marched on to the capital.

In the course of my first travels in the country I often heard a well-bearded Turk-an Osmanlee of the old school-declare that the European discipline, training, and dress, would never do for his countrymen; that the Turks, who had been accustomed to fight bravely enough when left to fight in their own national way, would turn out poltroons if set to the work in the European fashion—that they would lose their skill in their own methods of warfare, and never perfectly acquire the art of moving and fighting like French, or Germans, or Russians. I saw Sultan Mahmoud's tacticos or regulars in the earliest stages of their formation, and very strange soldiers they were. In 1828 their uniforms were half European half Oriental.

Those very imperfectly disciplined troops, composed in good part of unformed striplings, torn by force from their homes and families, almost disappeared in the defensive war against the Russians, which was terminated in the summer of 1829 by the treaty dictated at Adrianople by the victorious generals of the Emperor Nicholas.*

* When the Russian army reached Adrianople, it counted only some 10,000 wearied, very sickly men. The Turks had at hand a force of from 30,000 to 40,000 irregulars; yet they dared not attempt a combat. They would have capitulated if the Russians had been only half the number, and twice as sickly as they were. The Mussulman population of Adrianople looked on with a stupid wonder or a total indifference; the Rayahs, whether Greeks, Bulgarians, Armenians, or Jews, secretly rejoiced at the approach of the Tzar's army. Some of the pashas absconded; others were too much frightened even to run away.

A council was called, which was very thinly attended, and which concluded nothing. All was terror and confusion. The poor inhabitants were more afraid of the Sultan's irregulars than of the Russians. My friend Mr. E. Schnell, a merchant of the place, first went out to arrange the terms of capitulation with the Russian generals, and, but for his forethought and perfect self-possession, it is doubtful whether any conditions would have been made. There was not a thinking man who witnessed that day's proceedings, and that utter prostration of the once proud Osmanlees, but was convinced in his own mind and heart that the knell of the expiring Ottoman empire had sounded, and that for a brief and precarious remnant of existence it must be indebted to foreign steel and foreign ranks, or to the jealousy borne by the great powers of the West towards Russia.

In 1848, and on the spot, I took much pains to ascertain the truth: during eight days I spoke with many persons of different races, interests, opinions, and religions, and they one and all affirmed that the feeling of the Turks in general was one of