Let it not be believed for an instant that the Turks, had they been left to the free exercise of their own good sense and reflection, are so obtuse as not to have made the discovery that the progress of the pupils was necessarily retarded by the inexperience and incompetency of the preceptors. He who judges thus hastily will wrong them. Already had the suspicion sprung up in their minds—already did those on whom the authority for so doing more particularly devolved suggest the expediency of procuring, from Europe, men of talent, science, and judgment, capable of sustaining the credit of the Establishment. But the project was crushed in the bud; negatived on its first suggestion; set aside by a single sentence; _that_ sentence which has become all-powerful in Constantinople—and thus the ruin of the Institution is already sealed by the incapacity of its professors, the prejudices of its enemies, and the lavish and deceitful encomiums of its false friends. Achmet Pasha has been told that never did establishment prosper like the Military College of Constantinople. A foreign minister has declared it perfect; and obsequious secretaries and _attachés_ have raised their hands and eyes in almost religious wonder. Compliments have been lavished on the meagre talents of the masters, and smiles have veiled their deficiencies. And thus, flattered into a belief of their own sufficiency on the one hand, and misled by misstatements on the other, the influential individuals connected with the unhappy College have abandoned it to the ruin which must ultimately, and at no distant period, overtake it; from the hopeless incapacity of a set of men, who, familiar with the name of every science under Heaven, are most of them profoundly ignorant of all save the first rudiments of each; and who are, consequently, ill calculated to work that great moral change so ardently desired by all the true friends of Turkey. I put forth this assertion boldly, because I have convinced myself of its justice; and if—after having stated the eagerness with which the students seek to acquire information, the care and cost that have been lavished on the College itself, and the zeal and untiring watchfulness of those to whose charge it has been intrusted—I am asked the simple question of wherefore this great National Institution is crippled in so senseless and ruinous a manner by the appointment of inefficient individuals to its most important and responsible posts, the answer is ready—It is the will of Russia! The growth of knowledge is the destruction of tyranny and oppression: it is the moral axe struck to the core of the wide-spreading Banian of usurpation and encroachment—it is the light of mind, dispelling the darkness of prejudice and falsehood.