likewise; and yet, my dear sir, there are SOME things worth
remembering even in this brief letter: that woman in the brougham
is an idea of significance: that comparison of the Seraglio to
Vauxhall in the daytime is a true and real one; from both of which
your own great soul and ingenious philosophic spirit may draw
conclusions, that I myself have modestly forborne to press. You
are too clever to require a moral to be tacked to all the fables
you read, as is done for children in the spelling-books; else I
would tell you that the government of the Ottoman Porte seems to be
as rotten, as wrinkled, and as feeble as the old eunuch I saw
crawling about it in the sun; that when the lady drove up in a
brougham to Sultan Achmet, I felt that the schoolmaster was really
abroad; and that the crescent will go out before that luminary, as
meekly as the moon does before the sun.



CHAPTER VIII: RHODES



The sailing of a vessel direct for Jaffa brought a great number of
passengers together, and our decks were covered with Christian,
Jew, and Heathen. In the cabin we were Poles and Russians,
Frenchmen, Germans, Spaniards, and Greeks; on the deck were
squatted several little colonies of people of different race and
persuasion. There was a Greek Papa, a noble figure with a flowing
and venerable white beard, who had been living on bread-and-water
for I don't know how many years, in order to save a little money to
make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. There were several families of