But “Turks:”—in this one word is included all and every answer to questions on the condition of the people. We shrug up our shoulders, and say “Turks.” Whoever has lived some time amongst them must, from the clearest conviction, confess the perfect incapacity of these Turks for advancing and civilizing the countries under their government, and their indifference to the interests, nay, even their premeditated murder of the nations infested by them. The complete depravity of the Asiatic world, even in the lifeless and powerless form of a mass dissolved in corrupt fermentation, always effervesces strongly into cruelty with the wide-spread barbarians of the East, and displays itself in bestial vices, to the disgrace of mankind and scorn of the sacred bond of nations. A truly savage nature is theirs, which, from Montenegro to the east and south, repels all western civilization, and would seek a kind of national fame by ridiculous reactions against it, as a hated and even despised foreign state of manners and life, in order to cover their nakedness and infamy, and to cloak their empty ostentation. But the Turk of Egypt is the outcast of his countryman in Turkey itself. Egypt, for example, is so decried in Albania, on account of its corruption, that the Arnaut returning from thence seldom obtains a _wife_, even if he have his girdle full of red gold. The smallest portion of the white Mohammedan population, called Turks without distinction in Egypt and Ethiopia, belongs to the Albanian nation, which, on the whole, provides the Egyptian army with its best if not also with its cleverest men. This army is a mixture of heterogeneous materials, having only their religion in common, and the same slavish treatment and prospect of booty for their bond of union. If the Turk has no remains left of his ancient aptitude for conquests but the thirst of power which has accompanied his victories; a haughty contempt of the rest of the world; the belief, spread throughout the East, that European princes hold their crowns from the Sultan by feudal tenure; and a boundless presumption, which of itself would seem sufficient to destroy his dominion for ever, yet the Sultan still remains the Padishah of God’s ancient grace to his people.