yet so much over-ruled by moral causes, that they alone form the line of demarcation between the different inhabitants of this great empire. The austerity of the Mahometan religion gives to its votaries a certain moroseness of character, which, towards the person of a different persuasion, is heightened into superciliousness. The gravity of deportment, which such a religion necessarily generates, is left without its proper corrective, the gayety inspired by the presence and conversation of women. The Turk is usually placid, hypochondriac, and unimpassioned; but, when the customary sedateness of his temper is ruffled, his passions, unsoftened in their expression by the influence of female manners, are furious and uncontroulable. The individual seems possessed with all the ungovernable fury of a multitude; and all ties, all attachments, all natural and moral obligations, are forgotten and trampled upon, till his rage is appeased or subsides. De Tott represents them as "seeking celebrity by murder, without having courage to commit it deliberately, and deriving from intoxication only sufficient resolution for such a crime." But intoxication itself is a vice so rare among the Turks, that it is evident De Tott must have drawn his general conclusion from some particular instance. It has been asserted, with more truth, by a more ancient author than De Tott, "that brawls and quarrels are rare among the Turks assassinations are unheard of; and though among men striving onward in the same career there must necessarily exist a spirit of envy and secret rancour, yet the base means of supplanting a rival candidate by slander and detraction are seldom resorted to." The point of honour so much insisted upon,

and so pernicious in its consequences, among Europeans, exerts a very feeble influence over the minds of the Turks. De Tott's observation applies rather to the Italians or the Greeks of the Ionian islands, than to the Turks, among whom it is certain that anger generally evaporates in terms of reproach. The practice of duelling is confined to the soldiers and galiongis (or marines), if a combat can deserve the name of duel, which for the most part is decided on the spot where the offence was given, and with such weapons as are nearest at hand, or the parties may happen to wear, whether knives, or swords, or pistols. The man of rank may insult his inferior by words or even blows; and as the one derives impunity from his situation, so the other feels no farther than the real, or physical, extent of the injury. An affront received from an equal is retorted without any variation of form, and is almost immediately forgotten, if the friends of the parties interfere and propose a reconciliation. There must indeed be some exceptions to this remark, though they occur so rarely, that I cannot recollect to have heard a single instance which can justify the general assertion of Sir James Porter," that they are vindictive beyond conception, perpetuating revenge through successive generations :" and indeed we may ap peal to the general experience of human nature, whether such a temper be not inconsistent with the constitutional apathy of the Turks; or whether the resentment, which bursts out in sudden fury, be not generally of very short duration. D'Ohsson indeed asserts, that individuals have exhibited such depra. vity of heart, as to cherish their projects of vengeance, and sacrifice with unrelenting barbarity the object of

their resentment after an interval of forty years. I cannot question a fact supported by such respectable testimony; neither can I consider it as an illustration of the national character, but rather as a departure from that conduct which the Mussulman law, and the manners of the Ottoman people, more naturally generate. If the circumstances of the case had been more fully explained, I have little doubt but we should discover, that this long continued anger of the Turk had been first excited by the insolence of a rayah, the creature or the favourite of a man in power. An affront of this nature is seldom forgotten, but is indeed as rarely given; for the rayah, however puffed up with arrogance towards his fellows, cautiously avoids the expression of superiority towards a Turk even in the humblest situation, as knowing, that in the ordinary course of events he inay be raised to posts of the highest dignity. But if we admit among the features of the national character an implacability of temper, we may oppose to it, and in instances more frequently exhibited, the moral quality of gratitude. A benefit conferred on a Turk is seldom forgotten the greater his elevation, the more does he feel and acknowledge the desire and the duty of repaying bencfits. "I have received kindness from him in the days of humiliation and distress: I have eaten his bread and his salt:" and the obligation, so simply, yet so energe. tically expressed, is sacred and never to be annulled.

"Drunkenness is condemned by the Mussulman law and the customs of the Ottoman nation. It is, however, considered but as a venial crime, and has been indulged in by some of their greatest sultans. Se lim the Second was so addicted to it,

that he even obtained the surname of Mest, or the Drunkard; but the Turkish historians observe, in extenuation of his excesses, that they never caused him to omit his daily prayers. Intemperance in wine had come to such an ungovernable excess among the Turks in the reign of Soliman the First, that that virtuous prince says D'Ohsson, was obliged to have recourse to the most rigo rous penalties to check the use of it. He carried his severity even so far, as to order melted lead to be poured down the throats of the obstinate transgressors of the precepts of the Koran. But, as a Turkish writer has well observed, "the religion of a nation is as the religion of a mo narch:" for Selim the Drunkard, the son and immediate successor of Soliman, seduced the nation by hu example into the most unblushing debauchery. "Let others put their trust in man," said the jovial sultan, "I throw myself into the arms of the Almighty, and resign myself to his immutable decrees. I think only of the pleasures of the day, and have no care for futurity." Murad the Fourth, seduced by the gayety and example of Becri Mustafa, not only drank wine in public, but allowed the free use of it to his sub jects, and even compelled the muffi and cazyaskers to drink with him.

"The practice of drinking wine is generally reprobated; but as drinking a large quantity entails no greater a curse than moderation, those who have once transgressed, proceed without further scruple to perfect ebriety. Busbequius saw an old man at Constantinople, who, when he took the glass in his hand, summoned his soul to take refuge in some corner of his body, or to quit it entirely, and thereby avoid par taking of his crime or being pollut ed. I myself have frequently ob

served an habitual drunkard carefully remove his mustaches from defilement, and, after a hearty draught, distort his face, as though he had been taking medicine. The prophet has declared, that the pens of the two recording angels are unemployed upon the actions of men in certain situations of life; of those who sleep, until they awake; of minors, until the full maturity of their reason; and of madmen, until they be restored to their senses. I conclude, rather indeed from the conduct of the Turks than from the glosses of the Mussulman doctors, that the drunkard, the voluntary madman, is also considered as not morally accountable for his conduct until his phrenzy be dissipated.

"Those who intoxicate themselves with opium are stigmatized with the appeilation of teriaki.The usual effects of that drug are that it exhilarates, lulls, and proportionably depresses, those who babituate themselves to it, and brings on decrepitude and ideotism. To some it is by habit rendered so necessary, that the fast of the month Ramazan, during which they are deprived of it in the day time, becomes a serious penance. I have been assured by a Turk, but I do not warrant his assertion, that in order to alleviate their sufferings, they swallow, besides their usual pill at the morning ezann, a certain number of pills wrapt up in certain folds of paper, which they calculate will resist the powers of the stomach for different lengths of time, and be dissolved in due rotation, so as to correspond with their usual allowance. Dr. Pouqueville cites a still more remarkable fact, which, although he omitted to confirm it by his own inquiries, he says cannot reasonably be questioned, since every body agrees in asserting its truth. M. M.Ruffin 1807.

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and Dantan (both dragomans attached to the service of the French legation, and both worthy members of the corps to which they belong), assured him, that in the year 1800, there existed in Constantinople, a Turk known to the whole town under the name of Suleyman yeyen, or Soliman the taker of corrosive sublimate. "This man,” says Dr. Pouqueville, was a rare instance of longevity. He was nearly an hundred years old when I was in Constantinople. In his early youth he had habituated himself to take opium, till at last, though he augmented his dose, it failed in producing its effect. He had heard of corrosive sublimate, and substituted the daily use of it to that of opium: his dose exceeded a drachm, and he had regularly taken it for upwards of thirty years." I am less acquainted than Dr. Pouqueville with the effects commonly produced by corrosive sublimate: but without indulging in scepticism as to the marvellous part of the story, I cannot persuade myself (unless it be an acknowledged quality of corrosive sublimate to exhilarate in the manner of opium) that even a Turk would gratuitously persist for thirty years, in the daily custom of swallowing a nauseous and poisonous draught.

"The custom of receiving and making presents is consecrated among the Oriental nations by immemorial practice, so that it seems to have acquired the force and inviolability of a law. "Whoever has dealings with the Turks," says Busbequius," must open his purse from the first moment of his passing their frontiers, and keep it in constant activity during his residence in their country. By no other means can the Turkish austerity be relaxed, or their aversion to foreigners removed. Without this charm it would be a vain attempt to sooth or M

to

to render them tractable. The stranger owes his safety among them only to the influence of money: without it he would experience as few comforts, as in travelling over solitudes condemned by nature to the extremes of heat or cold." Busbequius's judgment in this instance has submitted to the guidance of his rhetoric, and he has been hurried into exaggeration. Foreign ministers of the present day express less disapprobation of the gentle importunities of the Turks, and feel less regret at the necessity of keeping their coffers continually open; an Englishman can, indeed, scarcely read without blushing for the honour of his country, the long detail and wearisome repetition of presents recorded in Dr. Wittman's journal; of snuff boxes and pelisses, of shawls and gown pieces, of sheep and even of money, which, in some instances, appear to have been expected with a greater degree of confidence than is consistent with the nature of a free gift. Among the Turks, presents from a person of equal rank or fortune are considered to denote pure and disinterested affection: the great receive them from their inferiors as marks of homage and respect, and confer them in token of favour or beneficence. Their political institutions suppose the venality of every subdivision of government; and hence the national character for avarice. The subjection of the rayahs furnishes them with the means of satisfying this passion; hence they consider their influence, their authority, the powers of their mind, and the force of their arm, as proper objects of barter in affairs between or against infidels, without regarding the action in a moral point of view: and if Aristotle's judgmert could be so biassed by the corrupt institutions of Greece, as to conclude

from them, that nature had ordained the barbarians to be slaves, can we wonder that such shallow reasoners as the Turks should consider the abuse which they make of their power as sanctioned by the divine approbation, from the very circumstance of its existing; and should exercise it to their own advantage, whenever the weaknesses and vices, the follies and crimes, of the rayahs afford them the means of acquiring wealth? It is in these instances that they shew their hypocrisy, and will express all the benevolence of virtue, while acting only from sordid and selfish motives. In higber life and public stations, these vices attain a greater extension; and the crimes which flow from them some. times excite horror in indifferent auditors, but never produce remorse in the perpetrators.

"The pursuit of their own interest exerts their sagacity, and stimu lates their industry. But in general it may be observed, that the interest of the moment, and not the permanent good of themselves or of society, is the standard of their actions.

The ambitious man, cautious, cunning, and persevering, moves forward to the attainment (4 his object with undivided attention; and is not checked in his progress of pursuits, by the inferior considerations of consanguinity, friendship, or gratitude. Such, however, is the character of ambition in all countries; and it is not in Turkey alone, that power has been raised on the ruin of a patron or benefactor.

"The Turk, uncorrupted by public employments, considers sincerity as the basis of all virtue, and his word as sacred. But the Turkish courtier veils his purposes with the most impenetrable dissimulation ; and the keenest observation cannot detect the tumult of his mind, in

the