Like Feth Ali Shah, and even more than he, Sultan Abdul Hamid hated all liberal forms of government. He never made a secret of this opinion, and during the many years of our acquaintance the Sultan repeatedly expressed his views on this matter frankly and without palliation. In one way, as already mentioned, it was my thorough Turkishness in language and behaviour--he always addressed me as Reshid Effendi and also treated me as such--which led him to make these confidences and to overcome his innate timidity and suspicion. Then, again, my relations with the successor to the English throne carried weight with him, and the invitation I had received from Queen Victoria induced him to see in me something more than an ordinary scholar and traveller; in fact, he looked upon me as a confidant of the English court and Government--two ideas which to him were inseparable--to whom he might freely and safely open his heart. "I am always surrounded by hypocrites and parasites," he said to me one day; "I am weary of these everlasting laudations and this endless sneaking. They all want to take advantage of me, all seek to gratify their private interests; and all that come to my ears are base lies and mean dissimulations. Believe me, the truth, be it ever so bitter, would please me better than all these empty compliments to which they feel bound to treat me. I want you to speak frankly and openly to me; you are my superior in years and experience; you are at home both in the East and in the West, and there is much I can learn from you." This candid speech, of a sort not very usual with Oriental potentates, naturally encouraged me still more, and during the hours spent in confidential _tête-à-tête_ with Sultan Abdul Hamid I could touch upon the tenderest and most delicate points of the home and foreign politics of his court and the characteristics of his dignitaries. The Sultan always surprised me with his sound remarks. He bitterly complained of the untrustworthiness of his first ministers, called them not very complimentary names, and from the confidences of this apparently mighty autocrat I caught a faint glimmer of his impotence and utter loneliness. Once when I called his attention to the ignoble conduct of his chief courtiers, he appeared to be specially excited, and cried, "Do you think I do not know every one of them, and am not aware of it all? Alas! I know but too well. But whence can I procure other and better people in a society which for centuries has wallowed in this pool of slander? Only time and culture can do salutary work here; nothing else can do it." And, indeed, contrary to all previously conceived notions, the Sultan had admitted into his immediate surroundings such young people as had distinguished themselves in the schools, and were in no way connected with the leading families. His object was to create a circle of his own round him, and like these confidants at home, he wanted me, abroad, to