Londoner is no longer a spittoon for true believers: and now that
dark Hassan sits in his divan and drinks champagne, and Selim has a
French watch, and Zuleika perhaps takes Morison's pills, Byronism
becomes absurd instead of sublime, and is only a foolish expression
of Cockney wonder. They still occasionally beat a man for going
into a mosque, but this is almost the only sign of ferocious
vitality left in the Turk of the Mediterranean coast, and strangers
may enter scores of mosques without molestation. The paddle-wheel
is the great conqueror. Wherever the captain cries "Stop her!"
Civilisation stops, and lands in the ship's boat, and makes a
permanent acquaintance with the savages on shore. Whole hosts of
crusaders have passed and died, and butchered here in vain. But to
manufacture European iron into pikes and helmets was a waste of
metal: in the shape of piston-rods and furnace-pokers it is
irresistible; and I think an allegory might be made showing how
much stronger commerce is than chivalry, and finishing with a grand
image of Mahomet's crescent being extinguished in Fulton's boiler.

This I thought was the moral of the day's sights and adventures.
We pulled off to the steamer in the afternoon--the Inbat blowing
fresh, and setting all the craft in the gulf dancing over its blue
waters. We were presently under way again, the captain ordering
his engines to work only at half power, so that a French steamer
which was quitting Smyrna at the same time might come up with us,
and fancy she could beat their irresistible, "Tagus." Vain hope!
Just as the Frenchman neared us, the "Tagus" shot out like an
arrow, and the discomfited Frenchman went behind. Though we all
relished the joke exceedingly, there was a French gentleman on
board who did not seem to be by any means tickled with it; but he
had received papers at Smyrna, containing news of Marshal Bugeaud's