Your favourite Ammalát, my dearest Maria, will soon be quite Russianized. The Tartar Beks, in general, think the first step of civilization consists in the use of the unlawful wine and pork. I, on the contrary, have begun by re-educating the mind of Ammalát. I show him, I prove to him, what is bad in the customs of his nation, and what is good in those of ours; I explain to him universal and eternal truths. I read with him, I accustom him to write, and I remark with pleasure that he takes the deepest interest in composition. I may say, indeed, that he is passionately fond of it; for with him every wish, every desire, every caprice, is a passion--an ardent and impatient passion. It is difficult for a European to imagine, and still more difficult to understand, the inflammability of the unruly, or rather unbridled, passions of an Asiatic, with whom the will alone has been, since childhood, the only limit to his desires. Our passions are like domestic animals; or, if they are wild beasts, they are tamed, and taught to dance upon the rope of the "conveniences," with a ring through their nostrils and their claws cut: in the East they are free as the lion and the tiger. It is curious to observe, on the countenance of Ammalát, the blush with which his features are covered at the least contradiction; the fire with which he is filled at any dispute; but as soon as he finds that he is in the wrong, he turns pale, and seems ready to weep. "I am in the wrong," says he; "pardon me: takhsirumdam ghitch, (blot out my fault;) forget that I am wrong, and that you have pardoned me." He has a good heart, but a heart always ready to be set on fire, either by a ray of the sun or by a spark of hell. Nature has gifted him with all that is necessary to render him a man, as well in his moral as physical constitution; but national prejudices, and the want of education, have done all that is possible to disfigure and to corrupt these natural qualities. His mind is a mixture of all sorts of inconsistencies, of the most absurd ideas, and of the soundest thoughts: sometimes he seizes instantly abstract propositions when they are presented to him in a simple form, and again he will obstinately oppose the plainest and most evident truths: because the former are quite new to him, and the latter are obscured by previous prejudices and impressions. I begin to fancy that it is easier to build a new edifice than to reconstruct an old one.