Dervish Pashà is a little man of a shrewd countenance, and though affable in his demeanour, not without a lurking cunning in his small grey eyes beneath his affected cheerfulness. It is indeed a melancholy stoicism that supports Turks like himself of ability and education. The fact is, that whatever his private opinion as to the issue of the present contest in the Herzegovina, Dervish Pashà is conscious that he is fighting for a lost cause. Like many other of the highest Turkish officials, he feels, and has confessed it to his friends, that whether the crash come to-day or to-morrow, the Ottoman Empire in Europe is irrevocably doomed. He is as well aware as any European that among the governing race of Turkey public honesty is as dead as private morality, that corruption has closed the door to progress, and that patriotism has almost ceased to exist; nor is he insensible that the master whom he serves is the source and seminary of these evils, and that nothing is to be hoped from the secluded youth and corrupt morals of him whom the Sultan would impose as his successor. The Vali, in spite of the characteristic indifference of an Osmanlì to the sufferings of rayahs, has not been without ambition of improving the material condition of his Vilayet; but he has seen himself thwarted from above by the corruption of Stamboul, and below by the impenetrable ignorance of his own officials. ‘What is the use?’ he would complain to consular sympathizers when desirous of introducing this or that reform. ‘What is the use of giving such orders to the Mutasarìf or Kaïmakàm? they cannot understand them, and if they did they could not carry them out; the people would laugh at their reforms or throw them off!’