Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/390

378 people out of absolute savagery who, as a whole, are provincial, and who, although they let in the plague, have managed to quarantine civilization, that people is the Turks. True they do not chase greased pig, or slide down hill; but neither do they trot horses, go to the theatre, or sit under the lyceum lecturer. And see what the Princess Belgiojoso, familiar with the courts and the most cultivated society of Western Europe, says of the rustic and provincial people of this half-civilized, provincial nation. "In order to comprehend the Turk's gentleness and calmness, it is necessary to observe the peasantry of Ottoman origin, either in the fields, at the fairs or markets, or on the sills of their coffee-houses. No one is noisy, nobody carries his pleasantry, jokes or gibes so far as to wound, or even to fatigue, his companions; nobody indulges in those coarse, blasphemous expressions which the people of other countries are prone to." Elsewhere she says, "In the Orient the tradition of feminine weakness is not regarded as a myth; the respect due, from the feeble to the strong, still receives serious consideration The law surrenders, and custom consigns her, defenceless, to the caprice of her lord and master; man's goodness of heart, his tenderness, his natural generosity, it is which here assures to woman an almost absolute freedom from responsibility. The Turkish peasant cherishes his companion as a parent and as a lover." She asks, "Is it to education that they owe this delicate reserve, these manners at once so simple and so noble? No; they are natural characteristics." But these characteristics, although natural, are not ineradicable, for the same authority tells us that even among the Turks, successful trade, intercourse with other nationalities, and, to use the words of "The Nation," "a tendency to become urban instead of rustic," deteriorates the man, impairs his manners, and lowers his moral tone. With his provincialism he loses his simple and noble bearing and the unselfishness of his nature, or, at least, of his behavior. "In proportion," she says, "as we recede from the classes in which the primitive character is preserved, as we penetrate the circle of the bourgeoisie, or enter still higher regions, vice appears It is especially among the middle classes of Turkish society, in the region of servile imitations provoked by the example of the nobility that this baneful influence is most easily judged by its results." We might almost suppose that in the last sentence the writer had in mind many of our rich people who have enjoyed the elevating influences of European travel, and even of having been presented at the Court of the Tuileries, to their own great joy, and the inexpressible pride and satisfaction of the American Minister. But do we mean that it would be well for us to cast off civilization and pass into the condition of Ottoman peasants? We need hardly say that it is only to take the wind of that sarcasm out of our critic's sails that we ask such a question." We quote this noble and intelligent lady's testimony, which could be supported by that of other travellers, as to the Ottoman peasantry, and supplemented by like observation upon the rural population of other countries—of Spain, for instance—only to show, as it shows conclusively, that increase of wealth, freedom of intercourse, the change from provincialism to urbanity, intellectual culture, general smartness, and even theatres, trotting horses, pianofortes, and lyceum lectures, are not singly, or in combination, the essential conditions, or even the fostering influences, of good manners in their highest sense. It has been just seen that in Turkey all these advantages are at least the concomitants of a deterioration in manners and in character, ac-