proposed a little ago, at Beyrout, nor must you stake all on a single paper, which an English consul can stop. Every single city and township must send its own. The Pasha is favourable; every functionary, with one exception-Osman Bey, and he has nothing to do in the matter-is with you.

"But," exclaimed Nasif Bey, interrupting, "the Maronites, the Maronites! will they be with us?"

The Maronites are before you, and their only dread was that you (the Druzes) would be against them.

"Then all is clear. Don't say more. You make me tremble lest it should not come out as you say. Now what you have to do is to get me a Vizerial letter (implying pardon), and that will be to me a sign."

This I engaged to do, and upon this the business part of the conversation closed.

I now proposed to seek the rest I so much needed; but he again detained me with expressions of amazement and incredulity as to England and her motives. I offered him the following analogy :

Let us suppose the Turkish Government to be engaged in schemes with some other Governments for driving the English out of Asia. Its ambassador at Calcutta, and its consuls throughout the country, will be exciting the Hindoos against the Mussulmans, and the Mussulmans against the Hindoos, filling their respective dupes with illusions of inde

pendence, and doing everything which shall render insurrection certain and government impossible. Would you here in the Lebanon know what was going on there? Your men would be drafted into the Turkish armies; your money would be given to support the Turkish Government; but your will and your views would be as nothing in the machinations of Constantinople, in the operations at Delhi, in the convulsions of Oude, or in the massacres of Benares. Supposing that you were even curious to know what was going on, you would then have papers published at Beyrout, like the Portafoglio Maltese, and would, therefore, be filled with contempt and disgust for those wretched people in India, that your virtuous and generous Government was doing so much to serve.

This he accepted with a limit, placing it thus: "We might be so deceived, but that is because we are not wise. But you, who are wise and learned, cannot be so deceived. Your travellers come and see the Lebanon; they like it; they want to get it." On this I again brought the point back to one of wisdom or folly, shewing that even if we wished to get the Lebanon, it was not the way to do it, and that what we were doing here, whilst not preparing to get anything for ourselves, was preparing to lose India on the one hand, and on the other to give Constantinople to Russia; as we were undermining the Turkish Government and exciting France back again to Indian schemes; referring to the

Egyptian expedition, with the object of which he was perfectly acquainted.

"You have now to explain to me," he said, "how it is that we look upon you as being a wise and a free people." My answer was as follows:

Commercial firms often become bankrupt. This happens because those with whom they deal, and who ought to be acquainted with their affairs are not so. They continue trusting in the wealth which the firm did possess, and which it has lost. It trades upon its former credit, others trade with it on their present illusions, and so the whole breaks down. England was a political firm, with which you could have safely traded fifty years ago, but it is no longer so. Traffic with her was safe so long as she conducted her own affairs in a business-like manner. A man of business decides beforehand upon what he is going to do, and only then leaves the work to his clerks and agents. If he suffers the clerks to undertake operations of which he knows nothing, he cannot fail to be speedily bankrupt. This is what England does.

"Why did you change from the one plan to the other?"

A firm struggles to become rich, and is attentive to its business. Becoming rich, and the affairs extensive, the partners become negligent. By degrees the clerks put themselves in the place of the partners; and the partners, no longer attending to business, take to reading the newspapers. No man

in England, except one managing clerk, is engaged in any business that England is carrying on; but every man is engaged in reading what is day by day printed as news. You know that there is a Patlegan. No Englishman knows it. He cannot see, touch, handle; every event with him is in the clouds.

"But you have a great Megilis."

The Megilis is what the people are. This is the way. The English Reis Effendi writes to Consul Wood, or Rose: "Divide the Mountain." On this the Consul Wood or Rose or Moore sets to work. Nobody knows anything about it but that Reis Effendi and that Consul, and sometimes perhaps, a little, the Ambassador. You get up one morning and cut each other's throats; then people at Beyrout or elsewhere sit down and write letters. The one says, Sheik Nasif is a monster; and the other says, Sheik Nasif is a very fine man. One says, the Maronites are a very virtuous and oppressed people of Christians; another says, they are served right, for they are only Roman Catholics. One says, the Druzes have done it all; they are savages: another, the Turks have done it all; they are ferocious, perfidious and fanatic. Then the people in London begin to write, who dwell in rooms on the housetop. They say, these people are very ill off; we must protect them; or, we must convert them. must put down the

must punish them; or, we Then they all cry out, We Turkish Government. The

persons who write this are paid for it; and after it has been written and paid for, it is printed; and after it is printed, it is sold. Then all the nation buys it, and after it has bought it, it reads it while it is eating its breakfast. Then each man goes out and meets his friends and talks it. This is the way the people of England occupy themselves about their affairs; and they call it by a name which being translated means "UNIVERSAL GUESS." They smile then at each other, and say, "We are great men, we know all that is doing in the world, we govern the world; like unto us were none such since Noah came out of the Ark ;" and they are quite right. Now you know more about England than if you had lived in it all your life.

"Still there are your line-of-battle ships; these are your ambassadors. You are strong."

The house that is bankrupt at 12 o'clock, is wealthy in the morning. Ships and guns, wealth and regiments, legs and arms, go to constitute strength, but do not alone make it. You must have besides, either the brain to do wrong profitably, or the heart to abstain from doing it at all. Without these, ships and guns are as a knife to a child, or a hatchet to a maniac; first, it will destroy the life of others, and then it will take its own.

"Then there may be worse places than the Lebanon."

Certainly, both in prospects for the future, and possession for the present. There is no man amongst