From that day he applied himself to improving the efficiency of his army, paying attention not only to the discipline, but also to the education, of the soldier. The Mussulman, good and meek-hearted by nature, never ferocious but in individual cases, was raised by him to the self-consciousness of human dignity, by regulations, ordinances, and laws, calculated to make him cognisant of the rights, and conversant with the duties that belong to every one, in every state of life. Self-esteem--a feeling that, being once awakened from a long lethargy, soon endears itself to every man--discipline, and Omer’s benevolent disposition even towards the lowest of his soldiers, caused him to be loved by them more as a father than as a general. After Mahmud’s decease, his expeditions continued under the new Sultan. In Albania, in Bosnia once more, in Syria, in the Kurdistan, among the wild tribes of the Ravendus, Romelia, in the Moldo-Wallachian Principalities, and in Montenegro, he was distinguished in both a military and civil capacity. Having adopted Turkey as a second country, he loved and loves her, not as a warrior merely, but as the member of a family which powerful enemies are attempting to disorganize and destroy. Before fighting, he always tried to conciliate; compelled to employ force, he never abused victory, to assuage either the resentment or the cupidity of his troops. In a work so difficult as the regeneration of an entire nation, he had many fellow-laborers. Amongst them the first undoubtedly was an eminent man, whose talents as a diplomatist London and Paris have had occasion to notice, and whom they have since been able to appreciate as a statesman: we mean Reschid Pacha. We call him a companion, and not the chief of the enterprise; for Reschid Pacha, indeed, tried to transplant European civilization to the empire, though by measures which would have had no immediate utility without the activity of Omer Pacha. In the midst of many labors, he ran through all the degrees of the army, till he obtained the rank of the highest in the Ottoman service. Invested with the great decoration of the Nichani-Iftikhar by Sultan Mahmud; with that of the Mejidiè[4] by Sultan Abdul Medjid; and, lastly, presented at Shumla with a sword of honor, he could not avoid making bitter enemies. Old Turkey was continually watching him with envious rancor; but he shrewdly flattered its apostles when he thought it proper for his purpose; overpowered them with generosity, when an exchange of hostilities would have injured his cause; and openly set them at defiance when dissembling would have been weakness, and silence an act of cowardice.