The term Softa includes all the grades above mentioned, from the Imaum, or priest, to the Softa proper, or mere students of the Koran. They are usually distinguishable in Turkey by wearing a white turban around their fez, or skull cap. Sultan Abdul Medjid some years ago endeavored to induce his subjects to wear a European dress, and succeeded so far that almost without exception every one except the very lowest in the public service adopted it. But the Softas to a man retain the old-fashioned baggy, slouchy dress which Abdul Medjid wished to get rid of. Who can believe that through fear of the uprising of a few thousand Softas, the Sultan planned a fanatical uprising of the Kurds in distant Armenia. How could that benefit the Softas save as it were permitted them to beat, kill and plunder the Armenians in Stamboul? If the fear of the Softas prompted it, still what a heartless wretch to doom seventy-five thousand to death and hundreds of thousands to starvation and outrage when to admit the fleets of Europe would have protected him from any possible insurrection in Constantinople. The Turkish Government itself was directly and actively responsible for the outrages in Asia Minor; it not merely permitted, but actually ordered them. But there was in Constantinople itself a most serious conspiracy against the dynasty, which threatened to turn out the Sultan and revolutionize the whole form of government. As a sort of counter-irritant, which haply might cure this, the Government might have indeed resorted to any extravagance or conduct elsewhere. More than one monarch has begun a foreign war to quell disaffection at home. Why should not the Porte think a general harrying of the Armenians a ready way of allaying incipient disloyalty among the Faithful?