As for clothes, I might have anything in his own wardrobe. Without more ado I took a greatcoat belonging to his lordship, which I still possess as a reminiscence of one of the greatest men England ever sent to represent her. Thus accoutred I went on board, Mr Sarel following much in the same style of attire. When on board, Captain Loring kindly offered any part of his outfit for my use, but no number of reefs would bring them to a suitable shape on my then slender form; and Colonel Neale’s short hose were so stumpy and baggy as to make me look like a Blue-coat boy under the trailing garment of Lord Stratford: so I declined all these proffered masqueradings, and got on my Tartar post-boy charger on my way to Schumla, bundled up in such rolls of hay round my legs and arms as to make my little nag more inclined to eat than to carry me. Poor Sarel was in a still worse plight than myself. I at all events had been well hardened in the saddle, while he had only been accustomed to the soft chairs at the Embassy, and soon sat on the leather of his seat as though it had been the pigskin of the tenderest sucking-pig in Bulgaria. Thus we proceeded in a rather undignified fashion up the Deona Valley, through Peveda and Batschesci to Schumla. There I saw Omar Pasha, and after two or three interviews, cemented an intimacy with him that the efforts of none could afterwards break until he left this world. Omar had all the talents in him of which great men are made, but he had also the dominant failing of the weakest--namely, that of an unbeliever. It was at Schumla that I had the first opportunity of seeing the sterling worth and the vices of the Turkish army, of which Omar was so fitting a commander and representative chief. Here I saw men who lately, panic-stricken, had run away from a few harmless Russian scouts _on the other side of the Danube_, now patiently dragging, with frost-bitten feet and hands, big siege-guns on sledges through snow as a mere matter of ordinary duty. Tall, sturdy, smiling countenances, with death’s cold hand already upon them. But I shall not enlarge on these scenes for the present. I visited Schumla in question, and returned in the good ship Valorous to Constantinople. This city, which an Englishman gave his name to (for Constantine the Great was not only British-born, but his mother, the great St Helena, was the daughter of a remarkable king of Essex), was to me a place of wonder: my eyes were more occupied in feasting on its marvels, than my thoughts in working out its future. The men of the Embassy were as remarkable as their chief--the Smythes, the Allisons, the Brodies, and the Pisanis, were a bright nucleus of men any nation might be proud of. Neither were the representatives of the real antagonists, Russia and France, much below them--the Aussicks, the Menschikoffs, were no ordinary men. My mission being ended I returned to England, and on arrival found that my report had created more anxiety than satisfaction.