The natives preferred the French uniform to ours. In their sight there can be no more effeminate object than a warrior in a shell jacket, with closely- shaven chin and lip and cropped whiskers. He looks, in fact, like one of their dancing troops, and cuts a sorry figure beside a great Gaul in his blazing red pantaloons and padded frock, epaulettes, beard d'Afrique, and well- twisted moustache. The pashas think much of our men, but they are not struck with our officers. The French made an impression quite the reverse. The Turks could see nothing in the men, except that they thought the Zouaves and Chasseurs Indigenes dashing-looking fellows; but they considered their officers superior to ours in all but exact discipline. One day, as a man of the 4Jth was standing quietly before the door of the English Consulate, with a horse belonging to an officer of his regiment, some drunken French soldiers came reeling up the street; one of them kicked the horse, and caused it to rear violently; and,
not content with doing so, struck it on the head as he passed. Several French officers witnessed this scene, and one of them exclaimed, " Why did not yon cut the brigand over the head with your whip when he struck the horse? " The Englishman was not a master of languages, and did not understand the question. When it was explained to him, he said with the most sovereign contempt, " Lord forbid I'd touch sich a poor drunken little baste of a crayture as that!"
The Turkish Commission had a troublesome time of it. All kinds of impossible requisitions were made to them every moment. Osman Bey, Eman Bey, and Kabouli EfFendi, formed the martyred triumvirate, who were kept in a state of unnatural activity and excitement by the constant demands of the officers of the allied armies for all conceivable stores, luxuries, and necessaries for the troops, as well as for other things over which they had no control. One man had a complaint against an unknown Frenchman for beating his servant — another wanted them to get lodgings for him — a third wished them to send a cavass with self and friends on a shooting excursion — in fact, very unreasonable and absurd requests were made to these poor gentlemen, who could scarcely get through their legitimate work, in spite of the aid of numberless pipes and cups of coffee. One of the medical officers went to make a requisition for hospital accommodation, and got through the business very well. When it was. over, the President descended from the divan. In the height of his delusions respecting Oriental magnificence and splendour, led away by reminiscences of " Tales of the Genii " and the " Arabian Nights," the reader must not imagine that this divan was covered with cloth of gold, or glittering with precious stones. It was clad in a garb of honest Manchester print, with those remarkable birds of prey or pleasure, in green and yellow plumage, depicted thereupon, familiar to us from our earliest days. The council chamber was a room of lath and plaster, with whitewashed walls; its sole furniture a carpet in the centre, the raised platform or divan round its sides, and a few chairs for the Franks. The President advanced gravely to the great Hakim, and through the interpreter made him acquainted with particulars of a toothache, for which he desired a remedy. The doctor insinuated that His Highness must have had a cold in the head, from which the symptoms had arisen, and the diagnosis was thought so wonderful it was communicated to the other members of the Council, and produced a marked sensation. When he had ordered a simple prescription he was consulted by the other members in turn: one had a sore chin, the other had weak eyes; and the knowledge evinced by the doctor of these complaints excited great admiration and confidence, so that he departed, after giving some simple prescriptions, amid marks of much esteem and respect.
Djemel Pasha, who commanded the pashalic of the Dardanelles, was a very enlightened Turk, and possessed a fund of information and a grasp of intellect not at all common among his countrymen, even in the most exalted stations. He was busily engaged on a work on the constitution of Turkey, in which he proposed to
CRIMEA.