undying gratitude for the smallest act of kindness, his reverence for the dead, his cordial hospitality, and his gentleness toward animals; then his attitude in regard to the equality of all classes of society is admirable, and there is no denying that there is a sort of severe moderation in his character, which crops out in innumerable proverbs full of wisdom and sagacity; a certain patriarchal simplicity, a dreamy love of solitude, and a vague melancholy which tend to rid the soul of vulgarity and vice. All these qualities float, as it were, on the surface as long as the tranquillity of his ordinary life remains undisturbed, but below them sleep his violent Asiatic nature, his fanaticism, his warlike ardor, and barbarous ferocity, ready to blaze forth and transform him into another being. Thus the saying that the Turk is the most amiable of men except when he cuts off people’s heads is really quite correct. The Tartar, chained and sleeping, is in him still, and his natural vigor too, rather preserved than otherwise by the slothful ease of his habit of life, which only makes demands upon it at some great crisis. He has preserved his physical courage intact, not having loosened its springs by the cultivation of the intellect, which raises the value of human life and makes men less willing to throw it away, as it offers them more to live for. In him the sentiment both of religion and warfare finds a field unspoiled by doubts or the spirit of rebellion or clashing beliefs; it is a soil which can be instantly set fire to--a man cut out of a single block, who needs but a touch to unsheathe his sword and strike out in all directions, while upon its blade is inscribed the name of but one God and one sovereign. Social life has worked but very little change in him from the ancient inhabitant of the steppe and hut: in the city he still leads, in spirit, much the same sort of life as he formerly led among his tribe--surrounded, that is, by people, but alone with his thoughts. And there is really no social life among the Turks. The existence of the two sexes suggests the idea of two rivers which run parallel to one another, their waters never mingling except here and there in some subterranean passage-way. The men meet together, but there is no actual intimacy between them; they approach, but obtain no hold on one another, each one preferring what a great poet has called the _vegetazione sorda delle idee_ to the expansion of himself. Our conversations, rapid, varied, playful, instructive, or humorous, our demand for the interchange of ideas, for human intercourse, for the spur to our intellects and warmth for our hearts which are obtained by association with others, are hardly known among them. Their discourse is all of earthly things, comprehending only the material necessities of life; love is excluded from it, literature is the privilege of the few, science is a myth, politics but little more than a question