is a stream of perpetual amusement, often broadening into comedy, and sometimes bursting all bounds and breaking into a screaming farce.  The number and variety of races and languages afford infinite possibilities of misunderstanding and mistranslation (which it must be admitted are the basis of many good stories); the Orientalised European and the Europeanised Oriental are alike inexpressibly droll.  Their very crimes have an element of the burlesque, which seems to disarm censure and remove the whole transaction to a non-moral sphere where ordinary rules of right and wrong do not apply.  The Turk, if not precisely witty himself, is at least the cause of wit in others.  Extreme Asiatic dignity amidst ludicrously undignified European surroundings, a mixture of pomp and homeliness, power and childishness, give rise to humorous anecdotes of a peculiar and very characteristic flavour, examples of which may be found in several works besides Eothen, notably Robert Curzon’s Monasteries of the Levant.  Another excellent illustration is supplied by Vazoff’s Under the Yoke, a translation of which has been published in English.  It is an historical novel, written by a Bulgarian burning with indignation against the Ottoman rule.  Yet the Turkish Caimmakam, as drawn by a bitter enemy, is no bloody tyrant, but an exquisitely diverting old gentleman whose every appearance is hailed by the reader with impatient delight.  As the violence of the Turk, so also the dishonesty and corruption of the Rayah seem to lose their enormity when viewed in this gentle, humorous light.  The swindling is so palpable, and yet so gravely decorous in its external forms, that it ceases to shock; it is so universal that in the end no one seems to have suffered much wrong.  To vary the celebrated remark about the Scilly Islanders, one may say that these people gain a precarious livelihood by taking bribes from one another.  Again the elaborate and ceremonious phraseology essential to all literary composition in the East enables a writer to make intrinsically preposterous assertions with a gravity which renders criticism impossible.  What reply can be given to the officials who assert that Armenians commit suicide in order to throw suspicion on certain excellent Kurds residing in their neighbourhood? or who when called upon to explain why they have incarcerated a foreign traveller under circumstances of extreme indignity, blandly reply that “the said gentleman was indeed hospitably entertained in the Government buildings”?

This last instance shows that Oriental travelling must not be undertaken without due precautions.  A certain retinue, and sufficient influence to secure the courtesy of the authorities (which Kinglake evidently had), are essential.  With them the traveller acquires a feeling, often manifest in Eothen, that he is a sultan possessed of absolute authority over his surroundings.  There is just enough hardship to make comparative comfort seem luxury, just enough danger to make it pleasant, when all is over, to hear from what perils one has escaped.  Should, however, any reader be inclined to use Eothen as a practical manual, he must be cautious in following some of its precepts.  Kinglake constantly insists that intimidation, haughtiness, and defiance of all regulations are the only means of impressing Orientals; and chronicles with great satisfaction his own exploits in this line, concluding with “the Surprise of Satalieh.”  What he says is true enough as long as the Oriental believes that the traveller is a prince in his own country, and that any interference with his mad whims will bring severe punishment.  But unfortunately the secret is out.  Enlightened officials are well aware that many Englishmen are not cousins of the Queen, and have a shrewd suspicion that hindrances placed in the way of the prying European are not displeasing to the Imperial Government.  The “Lord of London,” who fifty years ago obtained a firman which made every provincial official bow before him, may now be kept waiting days or weeks for a travelling passport; and, unless he uses tact as well as bumptiousness, may find himself in a position to write to the Times about the interior of Turkish provincial prisons, and become the subject of a Blue Book.  Still even now, if travellers will be cautious and polite in dealing with people of whose language and customs they are profoundly ignorant, and not bluster unless they know very well what they are about (for I admit that bluster has its uses), they will find travelling more interesting, diverting, and enjoyable in the Levant than in any other part of the world.

I write these lines as I sit in the hall of the largest hotel in New York, a newly arrived stranger, somewhat dazed by the bustle and the glare.  The whole establishment is on a greater scale than anything else in the world—except its own bills.  Everything is made of gold and marble, including, I fancy, the food—at least this hypothesis plausibly reconciles the quality and texture of the viands with the value the vendors seem to attach to them.  Enormous lifts shoot their living freights up into spheres unseen, or engulf them in abysmal chasms.  All round people are ringing electric bells, telephoning, telegraphing, stenographing, polygraphing, and generally communicating their ideas about money to their fellow-creatures by any means rather than the voice which God put in the larynx for the purpose of quiet conversation.  On one side an operatic concert is being performed, on the other porters and luggage jostle a brilliant throng of fashionably dressed people.  It is as if someone had given an evening party at a railway station.  “Whirr! whirr! all by wheels! whizz! whizz! all by steam!” and electricity, as the immortal Pasha of Karagholookoldour would have said.  Now my mind (like the Pasha’s) comprehends locomotives, and I am an enthusiast for progress, but amidst all the whizz and whirr and ringing of electric bells, my memory turns somewhat regretfully to a hotel where I resided not long ago in the “Exalted Country”—that fine old Stamboul’s jargon is so much more soothing to the tongue than the strange abbreviations and initials they use over here—which was certainly more interesting, and not, I think, more uncomfortable than this Transatlantic Caravanserai.  Perhaps I shall write an introduction congenial to the Shade of Kinglake (if indeed the Shades are interested in new editions of their works) if instead of instituting a comparison between the Levant of to-day and of 1834, I recount a journey to the town of Karakeui in the year of grace 1898, and describe the local hotel.  Let not the reader in pursuit of that “sound learning” which Kinglake kept at arm’s length rashly identify Karakeui with the first town he finds on the map bearing that name.  The Turk has not a great variety of local designations.  When possible he adopts one from some other language, treating it with the scant courtesy which long-winded, infidel polysyllables deserve (e.g. Edirné, Fílibé, for Adrianople and Phílippopoli); but when forced to have recourse to his own invention he calls most places Karakeui (or Blacktown), except those which are dubbed Oldtown, Newtown, or Whitetown.

It has been justly said that the East begins on the other side of Vienna, but, out of deference to the susceptibilities of the Magyars, who consider themselves in the van of civilisation, the Orient Express affects to be extremely European during its transit through Hungary.  It bustles and shakes, and is very uncomfortable.  In Servia it is more at its