An angry correspondence is at present going on about me, between the English Consul and the Turkish authorities. The communications were made through the interpreter, but the Pasha required them to be put on paper, when it was reduced at last to this: that I had received an official letter of introduction to Sheik Nasif. The English Consul knew equally well that I had also a letter of introduction from the French Consul; but a Consul may give a letter of introduction, though a Pasha may not. not. At the same time they were officiously given to understand that "the English: embassy was very busy in obtaining from the Porte the abolition of the system of Chekib Effendi. That the Lebanon would owe this great benefit to the British, and that the Firman would be expedited in 15 days." Of course then it was needless to take any further steps; short as was the promised interval, I, in the meantime, would have been shipped on board the French steamer. The English consulate has been awakened to what is in progress, and has seen its utter powerlessness to prevent, except indeed by the expedients, which belong to Mr. Moore's "Crooked Path."

The house at Brumana was an hospital. The whole family were laid up; the Emir himself had been unwell at Beyrout, and had come up in order to receive me, but was now in bed. He got up, however, for a little, but retired again when we went to supper. Excepting the Shaab, Emir Faris, he is

the only one of the class I have met with, that, in manner and conversation, evinces signs of ordinary capacity. Nothing could exceed his cordiality, except his humility.

I had to struggle with a fit of laughter, whenever I looked at my host. He, simple-minded man, thought his name was Emir Beshir Bellamy. He did not know that in the English Blue Books he was an Emir Beshir. What would a denizen of England say, if in reading Consular Reports in a Turkish Blue Book, he came upon such a passage as this:

"The Lord John expresses his regret that he had accepted Her Majesty's offer to become Lord John." It being the Turkish Consul's intention to convey the following sense:

"Lord John Russell expresses his regret that he had accepted Her Majesty's offer to become Prime Minister."

The letters of Mrs. Malaprop about a country may be very amusing; not so the governing of a country on the principle of that gentlewoman. Here is a sentence penned by Colonel Rose, whose landlord is an Emir Beshir.

"The Emir Beshir expresses his regret that he had accepted the offer of Her Majesty's servants to become Emir Beshir."

I reached Beyrout by sunset, and found the Pasha just sitting down to dinner, with a portly and uninviting functionary, just arrived from Constanti

II.

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nople for Damascus, where he is to preside over the Megilis. As soon as I had got my answers, in which the Pasha shewed a knowledge of the detail of business which surprised me, I went to the bath, having sent on in the morning to have it kept open. I experienced its power in discussing tumours, which I had never had occasion before to try. My leg had been from Baalbeck under a tight bandage, from toe to hip joint. A large space around the spot of the original tumour, was in hard lumps, and an extensive suppuration threatened. I subjected myself to the greatest heat, until I was brought out fainting. After being revived, by dashing cold water over me, a profuse perspiration again followed, and at the end of three hours, my leg was no longer recognizable; and could I have laid up next day, it would have been well.

This is the second of the kind which I have experienced. The former one kept me laid up for two months. I now know that I should have escaped all the consequent tortures and danger, had I gone then to the bath, instead of sending for a doctor.

CHAPTER XXI.

AGONY OF TEN YEARS.

WHEN first taken ill, the tumult of an official residence being too much for me, I was removed in a sedan chair to a residence without the walls, in the house of the engineer of the Constantinople steamer, where, as I was not excluded from receiving guests, sufficient knowledge of the culinary art was attained, to enable them afterwards to convert the place into a hotel; and there I found it more convenient to alight during my excursions. I was thus thrown into intercourse with various European travellers. The experience has not been without its use in bracing me to my task. The utter deadness in reference to all that is going on as business in the world; the vacuity of idle talk; the misery of the general propositions which forms their conversation; the hopelessness of conveying to them, even if they desired it, the faintest idea of the country they have come to visit, or what is going on in it, impress me as I never have felt before with the utter powerlessness of European society, to recover any command over its own fate. The difference with the people of this country, can only be felt in passing immediately from the one to the other. Troubles

and convulsions, not speculative and theoretic, have their attractions. There is that contempt of death, that love of life, that affection for friends, and that hatred for foes, which we call up only from antiquity, and personate only on the stage.

I have already more than once drawn the contrast between the working classes of the two regions. How I have understated the case! Infidelity-not that of the New Testament, wickedness-but the verbal profession of the disbelief of the soul, proselytism, political speculation, drunkenness and prostitution, are unknown. The man who proposed to rid any European country of these curses would be held to be ignorant of human nature, yet they are unknown in this very Lebanon, which Europeans undertake to teach and correct.

Amongst these travellers I found one with whom it was possible to converse. He one day said to me; "You are constantly assuming a distinction between the Eastern and the Western mind: in what does that distinction consist ?" So questioned, I put the case thus: The European speaks without thinking; the Eastern never does. The European tells you for conversation or argument what you already know; the Eastern never does so. The European assumes that the man he speaks to is a fool; the Eastern assumes that he is speaking to a wise man. The European meets a statement by a preliminary objection; the Eastern attends to what you say. The European is offended if you shew