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
Jewish Rabbis, who celebrated their "feast of tabernacles" on
board; their chief men performing worship twice or thrice a day,
dressed in their pontifical habits, and bound with phylacteries:
and there were Turks, who had their own ceremonies and usages, and
wisely kept aloof from their neighbours of Israel.
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