It signifies not how irrelevant the duties of any situation may be to his previous habits and talent, no Turk would hesitate to accept it on that account, should the occasion of self-aggrandizement present itself; and he has two satisfactory reasons for acting thus—he must at least be as capable of fulfilling them as his predecessor, who was equally ill-fitted for the trust—and, should he refuse one good offer, he would probably never have a second. Thus reason the Osmanlis, and upon this conviction they act. Nor is Sultan Mahmoud one whit more difficult or quick-sighted on this point than his subjects; or more scrupulous as to the efficiency of those to whom he gives important appointments, than they are in accepting them; and a ludicrous example of this uncalculating facility occurred very lately, so perfectly in point that I cannot forbear to mention it. His Highness had a favourite physician, to whom he had entrusted the superintendence of a public establishment, and who died suddenly at Scutari. When informed of his death, the Sultan was visibly affected: and in the first moment of regret he inquired anxiously if the deceased had left any family. He was answered that he had an only son, a clerk in the Greek Chancellery, whose situation was far from a lucrative one; and he immediately desired that the youth, who had not yet attained his twentieth year, should be appointed on the instant to his father’s vacancy, and receive the same salary which had been enjoyed by his parent. He was obeyed; and the spruce clerk at once became metamorphosed into the solemn physician, or something as near like it as he could accomplish. By an arrangement not altogether so satisfactory, surgeons are supplied to the ships of war. When a medical man is required on board some vessel of the line, individuals appointed for the purpose walk into the first chemist’s shop they may happen to pass, seize the master, carry him off, hurry him first into a caïque, and thence to the ship; appoint him surgeon, enter him on the books, acquaint him with the amount of his pay; and, should he venture to remonstrate, give him a sound flogging. Nor are “the powers that be” at all more particular in their bearing towards the officers of the ships, whom they flog (the captains inclusive) whenever they chance to consider the operation desirable. On a late occasion, two of the frigates ran foul of each other in the Channel, upon which Tahir Pasha, the High Admiral, bestowed the bastinado so unsparingly upon their commanders, that the blood penetrated their garments; and they were subsequently flung into some den in the hold, and there left during three days, not only without attendance, but literally without food!