That the great question of Eastern policy is a weighty and an important one, every thinking person must concede at once; but whether its final settlement will be advantageously accelerated by individual jealousies and individual hatreds is assuredly more problematical. “He who is not for me is against me,” is the motto of every European resident in Turkey; for each, however incompetent he may be to judge of so intricate and comprehensive a subject, is nevertheless a loud and uncompromising politician. And, if the temporary sojourner in the East be resolved to belong to no _clique_, to pledge himself to no party, and to pursue a straight and independent path, as he would do in Europe, without lending himself to the views of either, he is certain to be suspected by both. These are the briars which beset the wayside of the stranger in Turkey. He has not only to contend with the unaccustomed language and manners of the natives—to fling from him his European prejudices—and to learn to look candidly and dispassionately on a state of society, differing so widely from that which he has left—but when the wearied spirit would fain fall back, and repose itself for a while among more familiar and congenial habits, it has previously to undergo an ordeal as unexpected as it is irritating; and from which it requires no inconsiderable portion of moral courage to escape unshackled. Such are the adventitious and unnecessary difficulties that have been gratuitously prepared for the Eastern traveller, and superadded to the natural impediments of the locality; and of these he has infinitely more reason to complain, than of the unavoidable obstacles which meet him at every step in his commerce with the natives. That the Turks as a people, and particularly the Turkish females, are shy of making the acquaintance of strangers, is most true; their habits and feelings do not lend themselves readily to a familiar intercourse with Europeans; nor are they induced to make any extraordinary effort to overcome the prejudice with which they ever look upon a Frank, when they remember how absurdly and even cruelly they have been misrepresented by many a passing traveller, possessed neither of the time nor the opportunity to form a more efficient judgment.