rife, and all the more so that recent disturbances have enabled it to clothe itself in a political guise. In many parts of the country roads do not exist; and, where they have been made, they are of so poor construction that the first rain destroys them, and they are suffered thereafter to fall into utter neglect. The defective internal administration in matters like this needs no inherent vice to account for it; it is simply due to a Government overweighted in its task, and as yet unable to get rid of anarchy, that disturbs its simplest and most urgent functions. But these are just the functions with which alike a good and a bad Government is rendered, by disturbance, unfit to deal.

It is in regard to education that we find the most hopeful view of Turkish advance, though here, too, enormous difficulties have had to be met. Till recently, the only education was to be obtained in the Mekteb, or primary school, and the Midresé, or Mosque-college. Both alike were under religious control, and in both the education was for the most part theological. It was the Sultan Mahmoud who first saw the need of breaking through the cloud of ignorance, if a better era was to dawn for Turkey, and he attempted to achieve the task by establishing schools on the European model. His chief reform was in the establishment of the Ruchdiyé, or intermediate school, which was intended to give an education somewhat wider than the dreary exposition of Arabic Scripture, which was the only food for the growing intelligence hitherto. But the movement was hardly developed as it might have been. Difficulties as to schoolmanagement and regulations crept in. Religion still formed a stumbling-block, and the inherent apathy of the Turk indisposed him for mental exertion. If progress has been made, it is still slow; and it is not so much to Turkish reform, as to the mental activity of the Greek, the self-interest of the Jew and the Armenian, and the missionary spirit of the American, that the advance of education in Turkey is due. There the activity and its results are encouraging in the extreme; and even the Bulgarian, inferior as he is in intelligence to the Greek, has learned to the full to appreciate the benefits of education. The inhabitants rate themselves to maintain the schools: the teachers are ardent in their task: the perseverance of the Bulgarian compensates for his dulness: and, further, a healthy rivalry with the Greek is not without a stimulating power. Above all, the untiring energy and liberality of the American missions has worked a transformation on the race.

We have not space to speak of the matters dealt with in other chapters of the peculiar customs and superstitions of each of the races, and of the usages that attend the Mussulman and the

rayah,

rayah, at birth, through infancy, in marriage, death, and burial. Some of these are strangely interesting, and all repeat that variety which at once surprises us in Eastern society, and makes its organization a task so difficult. The very presence of clearly divided customs seems to have bound each race more closely to its own; and it is strange to find, for instance, amongst the Greeks a marriage ceremony which repeats something of the old Dionysiac worship. Superstition is not confined to one race, but seems to enthral all the people of Turkey alike. It takes two principal forms: the belief in spectres, above all that of the Vrykolakas, or vampire, which is the spirit of some evil-doer haunting the scene of his misdeeds; and the belief in magic and the evil eye, which is at once the source, and perhaps the product, of the mutual distrust that is inseparable from a population so mixed, and with no common bond of union save that of a feeble Government. Whatever its origin, however, some of the illustrations of this feeling are amusing enough :—

'A Turkish lady, however high her position, invariably attributes to the influence of magic the neglect she experiences from her husband, or the bestowal of his favour on other wives. Every Hanoum I have known would go down to the laundry regularly and rinse with her own hands her husband's clothes after the wash, fearing that if any of her slaves performed this duty she would have the power of casting spells to supplant her in her husband's good graces. Worried and tormented by these fears, she is never allowed the comfort of enjoying in peace that conjugal happiness which mutual confidence alone can give. A buyu boghcha (or magic bundle) may at any time be cast upon her, cooling her affection for her husband, or turning his love away from her. The blow may come from an envious motherin-law, a scheming rival, or from the very slaves of whose services the couple stand daily in need. A relative of Sultan Abdul-Medjid assured me that on the death of that gentle and harmless Padishah, no fewer than fifty buyu boghchas were found hidden in the recesses of his sofa. All these were cast upon the unfortunate sovereign by the beauties who, appreciated for a short time and then superseded by fresh favourites, tried each to perpetuate her dominion over him.'

The two prominent forms of religious belief are dealt with very fully, and without any undue partiality. In Islam we have, on the one hand, the Ulema, or the hereditary expounders of the Koran-the Established or orthodox Church of Turkey; on the other, the fanatical Dervishes, whose authority is derived from inspiration rather than learning, and who are strong in the support of the people. The latter have at once the enthusiasm and the vices of fanatics: dangerous to society, as inimical to improvement as the Ulema, and yet often too strong to be crushed

by

by authority, even when most exasperated. But Islam to the ordinary Turk hardly means acquiescence either in Ulema or in Dervish. The centre of his faith, that which moulds his character, that which shapes his action, is Kismet, or Destiny. Against its orders he will not strive; and the same belief that brings him resignation in calamity gives him a dogged obstinacy in refusing to prepare against its approach. It is this that makes him at once, as an individual and as a race, not inert merely, but obstinate in stagnancy.

But if the central feature in Islam tends to check all improvement and all growth, there is quite as little ground for any enthusiasm in the mass of degraded superstition which goes under the name of the Holy Orthodox Church, and which has so kindled the partisanship of clerical agitators amongst ourselves. A degraded, servile, and ignorant clergy; a superstition revolting in its utter childishness; a corruption to which even the annals of priesthood can hardly afford a parallel ;—this is the truth, shortly stated, about a Church which, because it happened to suit certain ambitions of clerical policy, has been hailed by zealots as a worthy ally for ourselves in combating the Turk.

The account in the closing chapters of the various phases of Christianity in Turkey, of union and separation between the Churches, of the bitterness and jealousy that sectarianism has produced, is an instructive history. It points, too, to what we hold to be the real solution of the vexed question of Turkey's future. As we review the picture of Turkey with all her various races, all her confusedly mixed institutions and usages, all that diversity of creed and language and sympathy, we feel that the great plague-spot is not far to seek. Reform will not come by railing against the moribund cliques of the Palace, against corruption in official life, against seraglio intrigue. All these are results, not causes; you must check them at the root, not in the fruit. In the main we agree with the wise advice which the full experience of 'A Traveller' has recently prompted him to give in his letters to the Times' on the Future of Turkey.' First and foremost, we must have absolute religious equality before the law. Mussulman and rayah must at once feel that the majesty of law stands supreme, that their own distinctions of creed are accidents with which the State is not concerned to deal. On that foundation any reformed administration must be based. And for such reformed administration, we distrust the ready-made paper constitutions that may be introduced by wholesale transplantation from the West, to mock the aspirations of a nation for a few weeks, and then to slumber undisturbed in dust; and we equally distrust the schemes of reconstruction

which would establish for us nuclei' of separate nationalitieshotbeds of intrigue and jealousy, in which religious antipathy and the feuds of race would be carefully cherished and kept alive. We must not think to begin and end by crushing the life out of a dying Administration. Reconstruction must begin with the provinces; and two aims should guide us in such reconstruction. The government of the provinces must be made more secure, more stable, more independent, and no longer continue obnoxious to the caprices of a Palace clique. Each governor must have a certain security of tenure in his office; and further, he must have, and through him the province must have, representation in the central Government. By such a scheme we should have, on the one hand, the principle of law supreme over religious distinctions and jealousies of race; and, on the other, a healthy bond established between the centre and the provinces. Thus only should we be secure that the cliques and corruption of the Palace would not merely disappear, but be replaced by something, which, while it held Turkey together, would itself be affected by every pulsation of national life in the provinces. Re-organize provincial government and its relations to the capital, and the Porte will soon reflect the healthier spirit of the country. In the mixed races of Turkey there is no insuperable difficulty. Diversity might be a guarantee against intellectual torpor; as it is, it only proves a hotbed of bitterness and restless suspicion.

When the Congress has removed the jealousies of Europe, and reached some settlement of the vexed Eastern Question, in its wider sense, then will be the time for a helping hand to be held out to Turkey in her own work of reconstruction; and we are convinced that such a work will best be achieved for all those various races that we have had under review, with all their diverse usages and creeds and characteristics, not by divisions, not by perpetuating religious distinctions, not by uprooting institutions, but by consolidating and compacting the whole under the overruling majesty of uniform law.

When the Congress opened, we felt the presence of many threatening clouds, and refrained from undue hopefulness. We foresaw that it was only too easy for a seeming settlement to contain in itself the seeds of future difficulties, only for the moment glozed over, and which a few years might bring to light. Unscrupulous ambition was for a time balked of its full aims; but it might soon have another opportunity in the disturbances, certain to be the fruit of its own works, for renewing the attempt. Full of danger as the Eastern Question had always been, by far the greatest danger had arisen from the

way

way in which it had been dealt with in the past two years. Slowly it was ripening, and infinite caution, united with bold statesmanship, might have been able to reach some firm ground. But on a sudden all caution was thrown to the winds; a cruel and barbarous war laid waste the most prosperous and fertile districts of Europe, and did to death five hundred thousand innocent people; and the ambition at whose bidding all this misery was spread was applauded by the victims of religious fanaticism and party rancour amongst ourselves as a 'more than knightly' inspiration! All the future calamity that a so-called settlement may involve we might not live to see; it might well serve to embitter more than one generation. As of old, the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth might be set on edge.

With all the greater thankfulness and satisfaction we greet the announcement that a means has been found for checking Russian encroachment without the horrors of war. By a rare combination of bold and foreseeing policy, we have been enabled to obtain precautions quite as valid as any that could have been gained by a long, costly, and devastating war. It is long since we affirmed that the words of Lord Beaconsfield two years ago embodied the true policy of England. In the face of an overwhelming outburst of popular feeling, swelled by every petty device of party rancour and religious zeal, he had the courage to maintain his first attitude unchanged. In the Anglo-Turkish Treaty we find a full and consistent embodiment of the policy. traced by Lord Salisbury when he assumed the seals of the Foreign Office. That Treaty has supplied the guarantee without which any plan of settlement adopted by the Congress would have been worse than useless. It at once secures our Eastern Empire, and furnishes a basis for the amelioration of Turkey. That Eastern Empire, indeed, was never one which we held by the sufferance of foreign Powers, or which any but a few fanciful theorists thought us likely to relinquish. But its security might have been bought by the protracted anxiety that foresees inevitable danger, and has to take ceaseless precautions against it-anxiety only to be dispelled at last by the issue of a terrible war. Years of mutual suspicion between England and Russia might have seen us at last drifting into a position, for which neither could find an outlet but by the arbitration of the sword. By our hold upon Cyprus the position

* For an account of the present state and antiquities of this island, which now has an added interest for Englishmen, we would refer our readers to General di Cesnola's work on the Ancient Cities, Tombs, and Temples of Cyprus,' a work of rare value, to which we hope to draw attention more fully in our next number.

of