Among these Asiatics Mr. Buckle would have some difficulty in maintaining his favorite postulate, that tolerance is the result of progressive intelligence. It is also the result of courtesy, as we may occasionally see in well-bred persons of limited intellect. Such, undoubtedly, is the basis of that tolerance which no one who has had much personal intercourse with the Semitic races can have failed to experience. The days of the sword and fagot are past; but it was reserved for Christians to employ them in the name of religion _alone_. Local or political jealousies are at the bottom of those troubles which still occur from time to time in Turkey: the traveller hears no insulting epithet, and the green-turbaned Imam will receive him as kindly and courteously as the sceptical Bey educated in Paris. I have never been so aggressively assailed, on religious grounds, as at home,--never so coarsely and insultingly treated, on account of a _presumed_ difference of opinion, as by those who claim descent from the Cavaliers. The bitter fierceness of some of our leading reformers is overlooked by their followers, because it springs from "earnest conviction"; but in the Orient intensest faith coexists with the most gracious and gentle manners. Be not impatient, beloved reader; for this digression brings me naturally to the next thing we saw at Novgorod. As we issued from the bazaar, the sunlit minaret greeted us through whirling dust and rising vapor, and I fancied I could hear the muezzin's musical cry. It was about time for the _asser_ prayer. Droshkies were found, and we rode slowly through the long, low warehouses of "caravan tea" and Mongolian wool to the mound near the Tartar encampment. The mosque was a plain, white, octagonal building, conspicuous only through its position. The turbaned faithful were already gathering; and we entered, and walked up the steps among them, without encountering an unfriendly glance. At the door stood two Cossack soldiers, specially placed there to prevent the worshippers from being insulted by curious Christians. (Those who have witnessed the wanton profanation of mosques in India by the English officers will please notice this fact.) If we had not put off our shoes before entering the hall of worship, the Cossacks would have performed that operation for us.