Three Years in Constantinople

A fresh eye is quick to detect distinctions and peculiarities. On the other hand, “ an old resident,” on the same principle, is more deeply impressed by the changes which have been wrought in the life and aspect of the city of his abode, since the days of his early recollections. To the visitor the old is new, and the new is old; while to the resident the old is familiar, and the new is strange.

If the former observer has the advantage of seeing things from a more striking and picturesque point of view, the latter is closer to fact and truth. Colonel White, writing in 1844, in his interesting book, Three Years in Constantinople, which such a competent authority as Sir Henry Layard pronounced to be the best work on Turkish life, said, that if a certain policy were pursued, “fifty years cannot elapse ere travellers will flock to Constantinople in search for relics of Moslem institutions with as much eagerness as they now seek for vestiges of Christian or Pagan antiquities. ” It would be an exaggeration to say that this prophecy has been literally fulfilled.

But events have verified its forecast to such an extent, that one is tempted to assume the prophet’s mantle, and predict that Colonel White’s words will come to pass in the next half-century. At any rate, if the world here has moved slowly, it has moved very far. The descriptions of Constantinople in such works as Miss Pardoe’s City of the Sultan, and Colonel White’s Three Years in Constantinople, seem to-day descriptions of another city.

Christian populations

In the political situation, in the matter of education both among the Turks and the Christian populations, the changes are simply enormous. This is, however, not the place to expatiate upon these serious topics, although it is only by their consideration that the greatness and far-reaching consequences of the new state of things can be properly appreciated. But look at the change in the matter of dress. Where is now the variety of costume, where the brightness of colour that made the movement of the population at all times a procession in gala dress? So far as her garb is concerned, a Turkish woman to-day is a sere and withered leaf.