Honestly speaking, I have found among these people some very noble-minded friends who, from purely humane motives, interested themselves in me, and whose kind treatment I shall not forget as long as I live. Amongst these I would especially mention Lord Strangford, already referred to, a man of brilliant scientific talents, and possessing a quite extraordinary knowledge of geography, history, and the languages of the Moslem East. He had lived for many years on the banks of the Bosphorus as Secretary to the Embassy, and was not only thoroughly acquainted with Osmanli, Persian, and Hindustani, but also with the Chagataic language, then absolutely unknown in Europe. He could recite long passages from the poems of Newai. He was as much at home in the works of Sadi, Firdusi, and Baki as in Milton and Shakespeare, and well informed as regards the ethnography and politics of the Balkan peoples, and the various tribes of Central Asia and India. Lord Strangford, indeed, was to me a living wonder, and when he shook his long-bearded, bony head in speaking of Asia and criticising the politics of Lord Palmerston, I should have liked to note down every word he said, for he was a veritable mine of Oriental knowledge. It is very strange that this man was not used as English Ambassador at one of the Oriental courts, and it has often been laid to Lord Palmerston's charge that he, the illustrious Premier, was not well disposed towards his Irish countryman, who sometimes expressed his resentment of the slight in the columns of the _Pall Mall Gazette_, the _Saturday_, or the _Quarterly Review_. As far as I am concerned Lord Strangford was always a most kind and considerate patron, one of the best and most unselfish friends I had in England, and his early death was a great grief to me. He died of brain fever, and, as Lady Strangford afterwards wrote to me, holding in his hand the volume of my Chagataic Grammar which I had dedicated to him.