Armenians, and threw the Turks into the hands of the Greeks and Europeans. It is hardly probable that they can ever recover their former importance under Turkish rule. Another means adopted by the Government to raise money was the old expedient of debasing the coinage, which was perhaps quite as honest as the modern plan of issuing paper-money and then repudiating it. The Turkish piastre is said to have been originally the same as the Spanish, worth four shillings and sixpence. In the time of Mahmoud II. it was worth fourpence, and the silver piastre is now worth twopence, while the copper piastre is worth only a farthing and a half. The comparative cost of living in Constantinople in 1827 and 1879 may be seen from the following Table, the prices being reduced to English money : 1879. 1s. 6d. 4d. 1s. 4d. ... Ad. l. 6d. ... 4d. 4d. ... 58. Od. 6d. ... 2d. 5s. Od. Wine, the oke Game was also very abundant and very cheap in 1827. This Table tends to prove that, so far as Constantinople is concerned, the old system of "voluntary contributions" and confiscations was much. more favourable to production than the present ill-conceived system of taxation. My impression is that the same was true in other parts of the Empire. Prices were unusually high in 1827, on account of the war and the general confusion in the Empire, and the increase in fifty years can only be explained by the destructive system of taxation adopted by the Government, which falls almost exclusively upon the agriculturist. The price of bread is the same, but Constantinople now depends upon Russia for its wheat, and the price depends upon the harvests in other countries. Everything produced here has increased in price enormously, and the result is that bread is now almost the sole food of the poor. Fifty years ago for one oke of bread a man might have one oke of meat, or eight okes of fruit or two okes of wine. Now he can obtain only about onefifth of an oke of meat, or one oke of fruit, or two-thirds of an oke of wine, and this in spite of the improved communications by steamer and railway with other parts of the Empire. Then the Bosphorus was lined with vineyards, and it was profitable to cultivate them, to exchange eight okes of grapes or two okes of wine for one of bread. Now it is unprofitable to raise grapes at eight times the former price, and the vineyards have almost all disappeared. They have been destroyed by unwise and vexatious taxation. The condition of the rich, especially of the rich Turkish Pachas, has greatly improved; but it may well be doubted whether the poor, those who had nothing to fear from the jealousy of the Turks or the confiscations of the Sultan, can live as well now as they could fifty years ago. The poor Mussulmans have certainly gained nothing, and the Turkish population of Constantinople was probably never in so wretched a condition as it is now. With the Christian poor it is different. In many respects their condition has greatly improved. Then they had no rights which a Turk was bound to respect. They were sometimes shot down in their vineyards, like dogs, by passing Mussulmans who wished to try their guns. Their children were kidnapped with impunity. They were forced to wear a peculiar dress, which marked them everywhere as an inferior race. They were insulted and abused in the streets, and trembled at the sight of a Turk. They find it harder now to get food, but they can eat it in peace. The poor Turks have gained no such advantages. They are no freer than they were then, and have not the satisfaction which they then had of domineering over a subject race. The Christians are still treated as inferiors and suffer under many disabilities, but in Constantinople their lives, their families, and their property are comparatively secure, and they are seldom maltreated because they are Christians. They no longer fear to look a Turk in the face. The change for them is certainly a happy one, and it is not strange that the Turks who remember the old times feel that the power of Islam is waning, and that reform has gone quite far enough. It is this old Turkish spirit which inspires the present Government to choose the most inopportune moment to proclaim to the world its determination to repress all free thought among Mohammedans. A Turkish Khodja has just been condemned to death for assisting an English missionary to translate the English Prayer Book and some Tracts into Turkish. This is not done secretly. The Turkish papers have discussed the case, and one of the most liberal of them speaks of his offence as follows:-" The abject author of this act of profanation has been drawn into his sin by Satan and by his own evil heart, and has thus dared to commit a sacrilege, by which he is condemned to the curse of God and to eternal torture. We demand that the miserable creature may receive an overwhelming punishment, so that he may, by his example, deter others from selling their religion for a few pence." This is an act of intolerance and barbarity worthy of the bloody days of Mahmoud II., and is far less excusable than it would have been then. It remains to be seen whether it will be approved by those Powers who maintain the Turkish Empire. In one respect Constantinople has undoubtedly suffered by the changes of the last fifty years. It is no longer the picturesque Oriental city that it was then. Its natural beauties remain, but in everything else it has become less interesting as it has become more European. The steamers, whose smoke clouds the clear air of the Bosphorus and blackens the white palaces, are no doubt very convenient; but they are a sad contrast to the tens of thousands of gay caiques which used to give life to the transparent waters of the strait. Ugly north-country colliers are no doubt profitable to their owners, but there is very little interest in watching their passage in comparison with the wonderful displays which were formerly seen when, after a long north wind, a southerly gale would take hundreds of vessels, under full sail, through the Bosphorus in a single day. I have counted over three hundred in sight at once. The square walls and narrow eaves of modern Turkish houses may be more European, but they do not compare favourably with the light Moorish architecture and gilded arabesques of the olden time. German ready-made clothing may be very cheap, and the European style of dress may be adapted to active pursuits; but it is not likely to rouse the enthusiasm of a lover of the picturesque who remembers the gorgeous costumes of fifty years ago, when the streets of Constantinople were crowded with gay and fantastic dresses, as in a perpetual carnival, and each rank, profession, and creed had its own peculiar costume. Even the Sultan is now no longer worth looking at, with his little red fez in place of the magnificent turban with plume and diamonds, and his tight black coat in place of his flowing sable robe, his attendants covered with tawdry brass in place of the gorgeous robes of the olden time. The pachas are pachas no longer in appearance: you may see them running for steamers, or sitting on crowded benches on the deck reading their daily papers. What a contrast to the stately pacha of seven tails, who lived fifty years ago, whose very title was picturesque, who could not read at all, and if he had ever heard of a newspaper looked upon it as a device of Satan; but who never ran for anything, and who never wore a red cap or a black coat. A graceful caique, with many oarsmen, awaited his convenience; richly caparisoned Arab horses. stood at his door; when he appeared-with slow and dignified stepwith turban, robes of silk, and Cashmere or diamond girdle-his slaves kissing the ground at his feet, his pipe-bearers and guards behind him— he was an ornament to the city, and perhaps quite as great an ornament to the State as his successor, without any tails to his title, who reads newspapers and wears black clothes, but who has no fear of being bowstrung and thrown into the Bosphorus if he betrays the interests of the State for a consideration, or plunders the people for his own profit. Even the bazaars are no longer Oriental, although the buildings remain. They are little more than storehouses for the Manchester goods which have destroyed native manufactures. The only relics of the olden time. are the Turkish women; but even they have become less picturesque. They are not so attractive, when crowded like sheep into the stern of a Bosphorus steamer, as they were when they rode in lofty arabas drawn by white oxen; and their dress is gradually changing in spite of the frequent decrees of the Sheik-ul-Islam, who declared two years ago in one of these that the disasters of the war were due, among other things specified, to the fact that the women wore French boots in place of heelless yellow slippers. Constantinople has lost all the peculiar charm of an Oriental city without having as yet attained the regularity, cleanliness, and elegance of a European capital; just as the Government has ceased to be an Oriental despotism, careless of human life and indi vidual rights, without having as yet learned the principles of European civilization; just as the individual Turk has ceased to be a fanatical Mussulman, with the peculiar virtues which once belonged to his religion, without having as yet acquired anything but the vices of European society. If we seek the cause of these changes which fifty years have wrought in life in Constantinople, they may be summed up as the result of the constantly increasing influence of the European Powers at Constantinople and the corresponding decay of the Ottoman Empire. Sultan Mahmoud II. was one of the greatest as well as one of the most unfor tunate of the sovereigns of Turkey; but he was a Sultan of the old school, whose many attempts at reform had no other object than to revive the power of Islam and restore his Empire to its former rank. He did not wish to Europeanize his people, as Peter the Great did, but simply to adopt such improvements, especially in the organization of his army, as would enable him the better to maintain himself against his European enemies. But, unhappily, he had to contend against Moslem as well as Christian foes, and to save himself from the former he had to call in the aid of the latter. His dynasty was saved by the interven tion of Europe; but when Sultan Abd-ul-Medjid ascended the throne at the death of his father it was by the favour and under the protection of Europe, and from that day Turkey ceased to be the old Empire of the Ottoman Turks. Mahmoud was the last of the Sultans. Nothing remained to his successors but the shadow of a great name. Europe is undoubtedly responsible for the evils which have befallen the Empire since that day. She has neither allowed the Turks to rule in their own way, with fire and sword, as their ancestors did, nor forced them to emancipate the Christians and establish a civil government in place of their religious despotism. She has sought to maintain the Empire, but to maintain it as a weak and decaying Empire. Austria and Russia, and at times other Powers, have sought to hasten the process of disintegration, and the limits of the Empire have been gradually narrowed until they now approach the capital itself. The Turks are abused for their stupidity, as if it were all their fault; and no doubt they have done and are doing many unwise things; but after all they are not to be too harshly condemned. They have probably done what seemed to them wise and politic, and they have often outwitted the keenest statesmen ; but they have been doomed by Europe to struggle against the inevitable. Turkey can never again be what she was fifty years ago, and as a Mohammedan despotism, ruled by Turks alone, she can never become a great or even a civilized Power and command the respect of Europe. She must soon disappear. But with the full emancipation of the Christians, the abolition of the present system of religious government, and the support of Western Europe, she might settle the Eastern Question for herself, win the loyal support of her own subjects and the respect of the world. AN EASTERN STATESMAN. MIRACLES, PRAYER, AND LAW. IN N the following remarks I assume the existence of God, All-knowing and All-powerful; and of a spirit in men which is not matter. I do not say that either is demonstrated or can be demonstrated, still less do I presume to define either, but I address only those who already assent to both. On Many, however, of those who give such assent are troubled about the ways of God and the nature of man's relation to Him. On the one hand is the Bible, which declares that all things on earth as well as in heaven are regulated by Divine will at every moment, which records frequent miracles, and which bids men ask from Him whatsoever they would, in absolute confidence that they shall have their desires. the other hand stands the Book of Nature, as Divine as that of Revelation, being in fact another revelation of God, which tells of an unchanging sequence of events, of laws incapable of modification by isolated acts of will, laws which, indeed, if subject to such modification, would fall into disorder. Which of these revelations shall they believe? Or can they be reconciled so that both are credible? The tendency of recent belief in those who have studied the Book of Nature, and perhaps most decidedly in those who have only turned some of its pages, is that the two revelations are irreconcilable. The immutability of Nature's laws is to them a gospel taught by every stone, by every plant, by every animated being. All that they have learnt to know of matter rests on the assurance that its properties are absolutely fixed. The progress of science, of art, of civilization, of the human race, depends on the fact that what has been found to be true will be always true, that there is an ordered sequence of events which may be trusted to be invariable, to which we must conform our lives if we would be happy, and which, if we cross it in ignorance or defiance, |