"If those who are resident among us," observes the editor of the "New York Herald," "cannot, after the lapse of years, always succeed in identifying themselves with our ideas, it is not to be expected that writers at a distance, should be able to form a fair estimate of American society from such imperfect evidences as they have before them. We have seen how few foreign tourists have penetrated below the surface of things in their analysis of our social and political life." If these strictures of the "Herald" are just and true with reference to American and European countries in general, where there is such similarity, how much more applicable to our Oriental clime; for, considering the peculiar form of government, and construction of society in Turkey, based, as they are, upon the Koran, traditional customs, and Oriental conventionalities, hitherto so inaccessible as well as incomprehensible to strangers, it is, indeed, no matter of wonder that such heterogeneous portraits of Eastern men and manners have been promulgated to the world by travellers and bibliomanists. Language is the great vehicle of ideas, the bond of man with man, the "open sesame" to the spirit of every community--the record of the past, the exponent of the present, and the foreteller of the future. But how few, even of modern savans, have acquired a knowledge of the Oriental dialects, which are never used in Europe, and only called into exercise by researches into ancient chronicles. Even many who have long resided in the East, and whose daily and hourly contact with the inhabitants would seem to demand a mutual understanding, have lived and died in a stoical adherence to their own mother tongues. A French merchant, Mons. B., who had enjoyed the advantages of commerce in the East for twenty-five years, may be quoted as an example. Either considering his own superior civilization compromised by such a condescension to barbarism, or unable to train his exclusively French organs to any other guise of speech, Mons. B.'s ideas and expressions were always in his mother tongue. When, therefore, on a certain occasion, his Turkish porter excited his displeasure, he poured out his indignation in pure Gallic, which lost much of its intended effect upon his employé, who could not imagine the cause of his master's agitation and vehemence, and ventured to ask an explanation of a bystander. "What?" said the irritated Frenchman, "does the stupid fellow mean to say that having been with me for the past five-and-twenty years, he does not yet understand French?" "Mashallah!" responded the astonished Turk, "My master, who has been here so long a time, why can he not scold me in Turkish?" Emergencies are constantly occurring, and as interpreters cannot be omnipresent, ridiculous misunderstandings are often the results.