The highest generalisations of history

Therefore, if we are desirous of keeping in the highest generalisations of history, and indeed for many practical purposes, the six great epochs of universal history may be reduced to these four: —

1. The Ancient Monarchies—or the Theocratic age.

2. The Gmeo-Roman world—or the Classical.

3. The Catholic and Feudal ivorld—or the Medieval.

4. The Modern — or the Revolutionary ivorld of Free Thought and Free Life.

These dominant epochs (whether we treat them as six or as grouped into four) should each be kept co-ordinate and clear in our minds, as mutually dependent on each other, and each as an inseparable part of a living whole. No conception of history would be adequate, or other than starved and stunted, which entirely kept out of sight any one of these indispensable and characteristic epochs. They are all indissoluble; yet utterly different, and radically contrasted, just as the child is to the man, or the man to the woman; and for the same reason — that they are forms of one organic humanity.

It follows, that it is not at all the history of our own country which is all-important, overshadowing all the rest, nor the history of the times nearest to our own. From the spiritual, and indeed the scientific, point of view, if history be the continuous biography of the evolution of the human race, it may well be that the history of remoter times, which have the least resemblance to our own, may often be the more valuable to us, as correcting national prejudices and the narrow ideas bred in us by daily custom, whilst it is the wider outlook of universal history that alone can teach us all the vast possibilities and latent forces in human society, and the incalculable limits of variation which are open to man’s civilisation. The history of other races, and of very different systems, may be of all things the best to correct our insular vanities, and our conventional prejudices. We have indeed to know the history of our own country, of the later ages. But the danger is, that we may know little other history private tour istanbul.

Successive phases of civilisation

Thus one who had a grasp on the successive phases of civilisation from the time of Moses until our own day; vividly conceiving the essential features of Egyptian, Assyrian, Chaldean, and Persian society; who felt the inner heart of the classical world, and who was in touch with the soul of the mediaeval religion and chivalry — would know more of true history than one who was simply master of the battles of the seventeenth century, and could catalogue, with dates and names, the annals of each German duchy, and each Italian republic. No doubt, for college examinations, they wring from raw lads, as Milton says, ‘ like blood from the nose,’ the details of the Saxon coinage, and the latest German theory of the mark-system.

These things are essential to examinations and prizes, and the good boy will give his whole mind to them. But they are far from essential to an intelligible understanding of the course which has been followed in the marvellous . unfolding of our human destiny. To see this, in all the imposing unity of the great drama, it is not enough to be crammed with catalogues of official and military incidents. It is needful to have a living sense of the characteristic types of life which succeeded each other in such glaring contrast, and often with such deadly hatred, through the dominant phases of man’s society on earth.

Larger tribes could now collect

With the institution of pastoral — a modified form of nomad — life, a great advance was made in civilisation. Larger tribes could now collect, for there was now no lack of food; tribes gathered into a horde; something like society began. It had its leaders, its elders, perhaps its teachers, poets, and wise men. Men ceased to rove for ever. They stayed upon a favourable pasture for long periods together. Next, property — that is, instruments, valuables, and means of subsistence — began; flocks and herds accumulated; men were no longer torn daily by the wants of hunger ; and leisure, repose, and peace were possible. The women were relieved from the crushing toil of the past. The old were no longer abandoned or neglected through want. Reflection, observation, thought began ; and with thought, religion. As life became more fixed, worship became less vague and more specific.

Some fixed, great powers alone were adored, chiefly the host of heaven, the stars, the moon, and the great sun itself. Then some elder, freed from toil or war, meditating on the world around him, as he watched the horde start forth at the rising of the sun, the animals awakening and nature opening beneath his rays, first came to think all nature moved at the will of that sun himself, perhaps even of some mysterious power of whom that sun was but the image. From this would rise a regular worship common to the whole horde, uniting them together, explaining their course of life, stimulating their powers of thought guided tour ephesus.

Kind of knowledge commenced

With this some kind of knowledge commenced. Their vast herds and flocks needed to be numbered, distinguished, and separated. Arithmetic began; the mode of counting, of adding and subtracting, was slowly worked out. The horde’s course, also, must be directed by the seasons and the stars. Hence astronomy began. The course of the sun was steadily observed, the recurrence of the seasons noted. Slowly the first ideas of order, regularity, and permanence arose.

The world was no longer a chaos of conflicting forces. The earth had its stated times, governed by the all-ruling sun. Now, too, the horde had a permanent existence. Its old men could remember the story of its wanderings and the deeds of its mighty ones, and would tell them to the young when the day was over. Poetry, narrative, and history had begun. Leisure brought the use of fresh implements. Metals were found and worked. The loom was invented ; the wheeled car came into use; the art of the smith, the joiner, and the boat-builder. New arts required a subdivision of labour, and. division of labour required orderly rule.

Society had begun. A greater step was yet at hand. Around some sacred mountain or grave, in some more favoured spot, where the horde would longest halt or oftenest return, some greater care to clear the ground, to protect the pasture, and to tend’ the plants was shown ; some patches of soil were scratched to grow some useful grains, some wild corn ears were cultivated into wheat, the earth began to be tilled. Man passed into the third great stage of material, existence, and agriculture began.

Error in educating a young man

It was a clear case of error in educating a young man out of his station in life. But the philosophers who rebuke such proceedings omit to suggest how a young man is to rise out of a submerged mass if when he has risen he may not find himself above the station in life wherein he was born. I counselled the uncle to have patience, put small jobs of clerk’s work in the way of the young man, and then, after a few months, the uncle met me one day smiling. His nephew had got a position as assistant superintendent of a mine somewhere in the interior of Asia Minor.

And the young man? Look at him to-day—a man trusted by the mining company, handling accounts with accuracy, and correspondence without limitation of language, looked up to by the whole district as a living personification of manly, clean living. You must agree that when a school can take an individual from a mass of Asiatic villagers and make a true man of him in seven years, the men who have taught that boy have done a work of which to be proud, for they see the fruit of their self-denying labour to a degree seldom permitted to those who work for the good of others. This is not a single case.

Professor Ramsey of St. Andrews, Scotland, who has travelled much in Asia Minor says: * “I have come in contact with men educated in Robert College in widely separated parts of the country, men of divers races and different forms of religion—Greek, Armenian and Protest-ant—and have everywhere been struck with the marvellous way in which a certain uniform type, direct, simple, honest in tone, has been impressed upon them. Some had more of it, some had less, but all had it in a certain degree, and it is diametrically opposite to the type produced by growth under the ordinary conditions of Turkish life.”

Woman’s Board of Missions of Boston

The American College for Girls at Scutari is connected with the Woman’s Board of Missions of Boston. It does for young women what Robert College is doing for young men. One of those truths which the American missions in Turkey set out to prove is the thesis that woman has a mind and can use it for the good of her race if men do not thrust her into marriage when she is still a baby. Proof of this thesis is worked out in the Girls’ College in a way that once seen can never be forgotten. Many a woman of Constantinople looking at the intelligent, mature, and Impressions of Turkey.

Capable young women who graduate at this College, at once to become centres of power in the community, sighs over her own lost opportunity, for she is a grandmother at thirty-two. To have begun to teach the people that there is such a thing as respect for woman because of intellectual power, is to have secured an advance in the Christianity of the country which amply justifies all that it has cost private tours balkan.

In emphasizing the importance of the moral training given in these colleges we would not obscure the fact that the permanent fruitfulness and usefulness of graduates must depend upon the degree to which they have changed the centre of gravity of their lives—upon the change of nature wrought by the spirit of God. Where the teachers are themselves full of the Holy Ghost, and where they are able to distinguish between the work of training men to live in Jesus Christ and the work of training adherents to a sect, they impress the spiritual nature of their pupils of whatever sect.

The pupils of such teachers become in some degree centres of spiritual reformation wherever they may be. To have found a means, while imparting the highest scientific training, of making the tree good that its fruit may be good, is the discovery which makes these colleges and others like them in other parts of Turkey centres of hope for the future.

The curious opposition so often

On Eastern people is limited by the curious opposition so often noted between the man of the East and the man of the West in method of action.

The Western man deferentially takes off his hat on entering a house, hut he carefully keeps his lower members covered. When he writes he lays his paper upon the table, and moves his pen from left to right. If he saws a board he has his saw arranged to cut upon the downward stroke so that his whole force may tell. The Eastern man wears his hat into the house, although a king be within, but he takes off his shoes, leaving his feet, perhaps bare and exposed to view. When he writes, he takes up the paper from the table (if he has one) while doing so, and moves his pen from right to left. If he has to saw a board or a log of wood, he makes his saw cut on the up stroke alone. These common instances of a general tendency of Orientals to do exactly the opposite of what Occidentals would do under the same circumstances, have an importance deeper than their picturesqueness when on exhibition.

They are surface indications of a reversal in the point from which life is viewed. When the Oriental wears his hat into the house, it is because he feels that his shaven head would make him grotesque if exhibited to others. The idea that leads him to take off his shoes is that presently he is going to sit down on the floor, and he does not wish to soil his clothes when he does so. If he has no table at which to write it is because he would be obliged to move in order to use it, if he had one. To write where he is requires that he shall rest the paper on the palm of his hand; and this again makes it necessary for him to move his pen from right to left. If he has his saw made so that it does its work when drawn back instead of when it is pushed forward, it is because he prefers to sit while sawing, in order to avoid too severe exertion daily tours istanbul.

Continent of Asia labour

In Western lands it is quite possible that a man will work without the need to work; because idleness is burdensome and ruinous. But in Asia this idea is quite incomprehensible. A carpenter from the vicinity of Constantinople, who was earning about eighty cents a day at his trade, heard that in the United States carpenters get two or three dollars a day. So he packed his kit and hastened to that favoured country. After a time his friend’s wrote to ask if the increased pay was a fact. “ Yes,” he wrote back, “ I do get two dollars a day. But so would I have had two dollars a day at home, if I had been willing to work there as hard as they work me in this terrible country.” Throughout the continent of Asia labour is incompatible with personal dignity. Those favoured from on high will be freed from the need for it. Those who have to work are the “ herd ”—the people made for such degradation. Not to work; to be supported by the labour of others; to be waited on by servants; to grow fat through stagnation of the capillaries is an ideal of existence so generally held in the East, that it might almost be styled the Asiatic scheme of complete happiness. It was an Asiatic to whom God once said “ Thou fool.” The hope of that man still lives among the millions of Asia. It is the hope to be able to say “ Soul take thine ease, for thou hast much goods laid up for many years.”

The man of the West glories in examining, testing, discovering unknown facts. In Asia, the experimental stage of existence ended before any Western nation had come out of its caves or imagined dress goods better than skins. The Fathers have examined everything and they have fixed the best in their saws and proverbs and rules. The old Hebrew preacher expressed the opinions of Asiatics when he said “ That which is hath been already, and that which is to be hath already been, and God seeketh again that which is passed away.” The hope of the West is in the aspiration of the individual. The purpose of the East is that the mass shall always repress and overwhelm the aspiring individual.

At the top of a Pera building

This day I was daguerreotyped by an artist who lived at the top of a Pera building, in a hothouse of glass, where it was scarcely possible to breathe. The portrait has been copied with tolerable accuracy, and it may explain how it was that so few of my friends recognized me on my return. But the comfort of a beard, when travelling, to the abolition of shaving tackle, may be readily conceived.

Demetri had ordered two porters to come to the hotel for our luggage, but six arrived instead, upon which a great battle was fought in the street, and the final couple — apparently having “fought the ties off” and remained the victors — carried our luggage down to the Golden Horn, on the 25th of September. The Ferdinando Pritno, one of the Austrian Lloyd’s boats, was getting her steam up, and at half past four she started, just as the “ husband’s boat” was leaving the bridge for Prinkipo, with the same class of passengers on board, quite ready to dress up again on the Sunday, and walk about as long as there were others to admire them, or fireworks to show off their fashionable toilets.

My eyes from Constantinople

I could not take my eyes from Constantinople as we left the port, and commenced ploughing our way towards the Sea of Marmora ; for now, in addition to the beauty of the view, there was some little association connected with almost every point of it on which the eye fell. There was the noble Genoese tower above Stampa’s shop, in which so many hours had been laughed away, and. behind that minaret was the window of our bed-room at the Hotel, in which private guide turkey, on evenings, so many jolly little meetings had been held. There were the hills over which we had such famous gallops, and enjoyed such good spirits; and there was the Bosphorus, and the site of the little cafe, in the extreme distance, where the pickles were served with the bottled beer. The Seraglio, as I looked at it, had lost all its mystery, when I thought of the French clocks, and gimcrack furniture, and English pictures that it contained; and the picturesque tumble-down houses of Galata, I knew, on the other side, were ship-chandlers’ shops, merchants’ counting-houses, ordinary steam-packet offices, and other material establishments. But still the view was as beautiful as ever, even with every vivid recollection of its internal dirt and dilapidation; and, loth to lose it, I kept my eyes fixed on the domes and minarets, the distant Bosphorus and the violet hills above it, until the twilight stole over them, and I could only think of Constantinople as a bright fleeting vision of the past.

I believe that my companion and myself were the only two cabin passengers, and we were in the fore part. But on the deck there were a great many Moslems — Turks and Circassians principally— on their way to Mecca, for their pilgrimage. Their encampment, if so I may call it, was a curious sight. One half, taken longitudinally, of the aft-deck was allotted to them. Of this, the stern portion was railed off into a species of pen, in which the women were placed, to the number of six or seven. They were shut up exactly like animals at a fair. Along the entire length of the aft-deck a spar was hung, over their heads; and when rain came on, they put canvas on this, and formed a species of tent. Under it each made his “divan”; for the quantity of carpets, dirty cushions, and mattresses they carry about with them, when travelling, is incredible. They had also their cooking utensils, and the filth they prepared, from time to time, is equally matter of difficult belief.

All my readers know that the Bosphorus

THE BOSPHORUS

All my readers know that the Bosphorus is the broad stream of sea-water which connects the Euxine with the Sea of Marmora, falling into the latter between Stamboul and Scutari. It is joined at this point by the “ Sweet waters of Europe,” which flow into the upper end of the Golden Horn, as the Liane may be said to do into the Port of Boulogne, to use a familiar example. There is, however, no tide. It is of great importance to the beauties of Constantinople and its neighborhood that the water is always at the same height.

The length of the Bosphorus is, at a rough guess, about twenty miles. Its course is very winding; its shores are irregular and hilly, broken by small valleys or chines; its banks are covered with picturesque villages, and indeed nearly all along the water’s edge the line of pretty dwellings is unbroken. It divides Europe from Asia, and is the great channel of communication between all the ports of the Black- Sea and the Mediterranean.

On my first disengaged day, I arranged with a friend to make a little voyage up this beautiful stream, in a caique. Ho was residing at Pera, and made a bargain with two fellows to take us for the day for forty-five piastres, (about ten shillings.) We took a large basket of food — principally consisting of hard eggs, bread, and pale ale — and started from the Tophane landing-place about nine A. M.

The morning was threatening, and it soon began to rain in torrents; so drenching our poor boatmen, in their flimsy white jackets and drawers, that we pulled up at a little cluster of houses, where there was a Greek cafe, (properly inscribed, that there might be no mistake about it,) and waited until the storm was over. The room was crowded with Greeks, drinking, smoking, and playing cards; and, in an adjoining room, as many more were absorbed in a game of billiards, played with small ninepins on the cloth. The master had not much to offer beyond some muddy coffee, and execrably bad brandy; but he pointed with great pride to a shelf of English pickles, and bottled beer, which, he appeared to have some vague notion, were always taken together. There was also a picture of Queen Victoria, which had been presented gratis, with some newspaper — hung up, I suppose, in compliment to the Anglo-Ionian subjects who used the house. The noise and confusion, were bewildering, and the intentions of llussia the sole subject of conversation. In about half an hour the weather held up, and when we embarked again the scene was most lovely. The greater part of the noble Turkish fleet was lying at anchor in the middle of the stream.

Many ships were sailing down from the Euxinc ports, on the sterns of some of which it was pleasant to read the Polly of Sunderland, or the Two Sisters of London : all the caiques had come out of their nooks and corners again, and the roofs of the houses, wet with rain, glistened in the sunlight as though they had been silver. I earn conceive nothing so exciting as the approach to Constantinople must be, by the Bosphorus, to those travellers who have come down the Danube. The banks display every variety of water scenery. Now the handsome villas and palaces remind one of the edges of an Italian lake, Como or Orta, for instance; the next turn of the stream brings you to rocky eminences, with such ruins on them as you might see on the llhine or Mo.-elle; and, a little further on, gentle hills, covered with hanging woods, rise from the stream, as they might do anywhere between Maidenhead Bridge and Marlow.

Village called Arnaudhoi

Our men rowed very well, and we soon came to a village called Arnaudhoi, where the current is very rapid, and at times dangerous, the banks forming the outer curve of a sharp sweep in the 6tream. The boatmen here shipped their oars, for persons were in waiting to tow the caiques round the bend, it being impossible to row against the current. They were here always, for the purpose, taking the boats in turn, and they received a few paras for their trouble. Further on, the same thing was repeated, and, indeed, at every sudden turn, some poor fellows were waiting to track us daily ephesus tours.

The houses continued uninterruptedly along the shore, and they were nearly all built after the same style, and of wood. Here and there a new edifice was being raised upon a European model, but it did not appear to be so much in keeping with the scene, as the green, and dove, and clay-colored houses of the Turks. There is a lightness about these little buildings which is very pretty and effective. They look, from a short distance, as if made of cardboard, and one cannot help thinking that a single candle within would illuminate their entire form, like the cottages the Italians carry about on their heads in our streets. There are very many palaces amongst them, belonging to the Sultan and the great people of his court; and on the summits of some of the mountains are royal kiosks, wherever a beautiful view is to be commanded.

In the absence of all artistic impressions, the Turks are great admirers of Nature. Fields and forests, blue water and skies, sunny air and bright flower-gardens, are the great sources of their happiness. The state of idle, listless dreaming, into which the contemplation of these objects throws them, they call Kef. We have no word that answers to this; busy, anxious England has not allowed one to be invented. But it is a very pleasant repose — one that teems with images far more real and beautiful than the deadly opium or hasheesh can call up ; and so, these little kiosks, dedicated to the idlest inactivity of mind and body, are perched about the hills of the Bosphorus, and there the Turk dreams away bis leisure time, drinking in the bright and lovely prospects around him, with only the bubbling of the narghile to assist rather than intrude upon his unstrained contemplations.

Mademoiselle Virginie

The progress of the next day presented little variety. “We still had nothing but blue sky and sea to look upon, when we sought distraction beyond the bulwarks of the steamer. Mademoiselle Virginie was studying navigation with the Commissaire, in his cabin; she was there nearly all day. Pauline was incessantly employed upon a piece of crochet-work, which lasted all the journey, and got very, dirty towards the end of it —being one of those fearfully uncomfortable things called anti-macassars, which hang on the backs of chairs, to make your hair rough and tumble over your head. About four o’clock is the afternoon we caught sight of Greece — high up over the larboard bow; and at dinner-time a pretty stiff breeze came on, and the boat began to ride, which had the admirable effect of keeping the foreigners rather more quiet at table; indeed, one or two left it. At dusk, we passed Cerigo, one of our English possessions — a melancholy, reddish-rock island. It was difficult to conceive a more dreary time than the officer must have had of it who was stationed there with his handful of troops. I longed to have seen some small boat, by which I could have sent him a bundle of Galignanis, and a few numbers of Punch, that we had on board.

The opera airs bringing up thoughts of Grisi

Then the little concert on deck began again — the opera airs bringing up thoughts of Grisi, and Covent Garden, and the London season, here, out and away, at one of the gates of the Archipelago; and then, at nine o’clock, we all began to think of retiring rose festival tour. I did not try the berths again; but the Maltese lent me a coat, and lying down on this, with my knapsack, as before, for a pillow, I was soon comfortably curled up with my own thoughts. I was, however, obliged to silence two runaway patriots from some of the Italian States, who had been arguing loudly for an hour upon the 2 affairs of Rome, without any chance, of approaching a conclusion. When this was done, and the usual quantity of fowls had been killed, as on the preceding night, everything became quiet, and I was soon wandering in the world of dreams.

Some dashing European milliners

The brilliancy of the fine ladies and gentlemen who walked up and down to be looked at, was beyond all conception; but the most curious feature of all this was, that in their overpowering costumes, there was no particular fashion prevalent. Everything had evidently been made from a book, or imported from some dashing European milliners, but at all sorts of periods; so that there were long and short petticoats, and wide and narrow bonnets, and polkas and mantillas, and summer fly-away scarfs over winter dresses, all jumbled up together to create a sensation and outshine the neighbours. There were few fezzes to be seen now. The wearers had exchanged them for glossy silk hats; and they all wore gloves of dazzling hues city tours istanbul.

But the children were the most marvellous of all; and one family looked as if they were preparing for an exhibition of ground and lofty tumbling, so brilliantly outre were their costumes. Two of the little boys were attired in crimson satin trousers, spangled, and the third had a perfect Highland dress, which was the great hit of all. With a bit of carpet for the latter to dance, and the others to posture upon, the business would have been complete. The men were all gents—as thorough-bred as might have been selected from the combined forces of Rosherville, Epsom, and the public ball-rooms of London. Some, for display, paid for the blue candles to be fired by day-light: others marched up and down, several abreast; and all evidently had the notion that, got up so remarkably well, they were “ doing it! ” Amidst the throng, cajidjees (waiters) darted about with little morsels of incandescent wood to light the narghiles with: boys sold walnuts, ready peeled and kept in glass jars of water: and sweetmeat men plied their trade. Those ladies who had servants made them walk behind them; and those who had not, sneered at the others. All this went on for two or three hours. There was not one trace of oriental life in the entire scene. The gravity of the Levantine had entirely disappeared; and a restless fevered wish to cut out the others was the leading attribute of every character there assembled.

We sat here until dusk, when it got cold, and the gay crowd disappeared. Most of the men were on board the return steamer the next morning, but their appearance was not so grand as on the preceding evening. They looked very dirty, and they made their breakfast from a cigarette. But I dare say they were all at Prinkipo again the next week, as brilliant as ever: and so on, until the cold weather drove them in like fine caterpillars to hybernate, until the first warmth of the present spring shall bring them out again, more wonderful than ever.

The Narghile.

BAZAARS GENERALLY A CAMEL RIDE A BOAT BUILDER

Whenever I had a leisure day at Constantinople, I always spent it in and about the bazaars; finding no amusement anywhere else equal to this.

These bazaars possess one great advantage over our establishments so named in England. You can stop and look at the wares, without the stall keeper darting upon you immediately, and asking you what you want, which is bad policy, for it always drives people immediately away; whereas, if left to themselves, they might possibly select something.