Thomas Hughes

“ Steamboats, telegraphs, railways, have invaded Turkey already. The great tide of modern material civilisation is flooding in upon the East, with its restless, unmanageable eddies and waves, which have sapped, and are sapping, the foundations, and overwhelming the roof trees, of stronger political edifices than that of the Sublime Porte. If you Turks cannot control and manage the tide, it will very soon drown you. Now where are your men to do this? You have just now Fuad Pasha, and three or four other able men, and reasonably honest, who understand their time, and are guiding your affairs well. ”

“ In travelling there is only one pleasure which can be named with the start—that luxurious moment when one unstrings the bow, and leaving one’s common pursuits and everyday life, plunges into new scenes—and that is, the turning home. I had never been so far or so long away from England before, so that the sensation was proportionately keen as we settled into our places in the Pluto, one of the finest of the Austrian Lloyd boats, which was to take us to Trieste. And a glorious run we made of it. In the morning we were off the Lacedaemonian coast. ”

“ The great town felt as fresh and sweet as a country hillside. Not a soul in the streets but an occasional solitary policeman, and here and there a scavenger or two, plying their much-needed trade, for the wet mud lay inches deep. I was early at the station, where a sleepy clerk was just preparing to open the booking-offices, and a couple of porters were watering and sweeping the floor of the big hall. Soon my fellow-passengers began to arrive, labouring men for the most part, with here and there a clerk, or commercial traveller, muffled to the eyes. ”

“ To me, accustomed to the scrambling, and shouting, and hauling up above high-water mark, the running of naked-legged boys into the water, and the energetic doings of the crew when a fishing boat comes to land at home, there is something of the comically sublime in the contrast presented by these good Flemings. As one of the old brown tubs rolls towards the shore, looking as if she scarcely had made up her mind which end to send in first, you see a man quietly pitch a small anchor over the bows, and then down come the two sails. ”

“ Next to meeting an old friend by accident, there is nothing more pleasant than coming in long vacation on some flower or shrub which reminds one of former holiday ramblings. In the Tyrol the other day we came suddenly on a bank in the mountains gemmed over with the creamy white star of the daisy of Parnassus, and it accompanied us, to our great delight, for 200 miles or more, till we got fairly down into the plains again. The last time I had seen it was on Snowdon years ago. ”

“ No one can watch these grand fellows, the Dogger Bank fishermen, and not feel, a sort of blood-relationship to them, and the keenest sympathy with their heroic business on the great waters. So, thinks I, I’ll go down to the quay directly after breakfast, and see them all at their best, those hard-handed, big-bearded, soft-hearted sea-kings from all the East and South Coast towns of England, from Sunderland to Penzance. When they are such grand, silent, kindly creatures on every day in the week, even when the catch has been poor and light, what will they be to-day? ”

“ Then very many of the houses have court-yards, or small gardens, and you get the fresh foliage of orange-trees, and figs, and cypresses, as a further contrast, and for flooring and ceiling the blue of the Bosphorus water and of the cloudless Eastern sky. The moment you get into the wretched, narrow, unpaved streets, the charm goes; but while you keep to the great high street of the Bosphorus, I don’t believe there is any such treat in the world for the lover of colour. ”

“ Our first stop at a Bulgarian village—or town, perhaps, I should call it, for it boasted a tumble-down fort, with some rude earthworks, and half a dozen minarets shot up from amongst its houses and vineyards—may be reckoned amongst the chief of these. What can be more utterly new to an Englishman than to come upon a crowd of poor men, who have their daily bread to earn, half of whom are quietly asleep, and the rest squatting or standing about, without offering, or thinking of offering, to help when there is work to be done under their noses? ”

“ Gladstone only once, for an hour or two, to receive the freedom of Dublin. But why had the Queen made her favourite home in Scotland, and left poor Ireland out in the cold? Why did the English flock to Scotch rivers and moors and golf-links in crowds every autumn when only a stray sportsman or tourist found his way to Killarney or Connemara or Donegal? It was all owing to the Wizard of the North, who had made Scotland enchanted ground.
Without ignoring other and deeper causes, I think one cannot but feel what a difference it would have made if Sir Walter had been Irish. ”

“ The Rhine may, perhaps, fairly be compared with the Upper Danube, between Lintz and Vienna, even between Vienna and Pesth. There is no great disparity so far, either in the size of themselves or of the hills and plains through which they run. The traveller’s tastes, artistic and historical, decide his preference. The constant succession of ruined holds of the old oppressors of the earth which he meets on the Rhine, are wanting on the Danube. It is certainly a satisfaction to see such places thoroughly ruined—to triumph over departed scoundrelism wherever one comes on its relics. ”

“ The only difference seems to be that after a certain hour, if you choose to walk into a shop, you will probably find yourself in a family party. No one turns off the gas until he goes to bed, so as you loiter along you have the advantage of seeing everything that is going on, and the inhabitants have what they clearly hold to be an equivalent, the opportunity of looking at and talking about you. The master of the shop sits at his ease, sometimes reading his journal, sometimes still working at his trade in an easygoing way, as if it were a pleasure to him, and chatting away as he works. ”

“ But shade, shade—one longs for it, and there is none; and the glare and heat are almost too much, even at the beginning of October—in summer it must be unendurable. If the Athenians would only take one leaf out of the book of their old enemies, and stain and paint their houses as the Turks of the Bosphorus do! But though the houses are as ugly as those of a London suburb, and there are no tolerable public buildings except one church, the modern town is a very remarkable one, when one comes to remember that thirty years ago there were only ten or twelve hovels here. ”

“ He calls his garden a failure for the year. But as half an acre which was wild forest-land in May is covered with water-melons and cantalupes, as the tomatoes hang in huge bunches, rotting on the vines for want of mouths enough to eat them, as the Lima beans are yielding at the rate of 250 bushels an acre, and as cabbages, sweet potatoes, beets, and squash are in equally prodigal abundance, the prospect of making a good living is beyond all question, for all who will set to work with a will. ”

“ You, who have proved your readiness as a people to pour out ease, wealth, life itself, as water, that no shame or harm should come to your country’s flag or name, should be the last to wish the citizen of any other country to be false to his own. My respect and love for your nation and your institutions should be worth nothing to you, if I were not true to those of my own country, and did not love them better. ”

“ Why is it that in nine places out of ten on the Continent this is so, and that in England you shall never be able to find a watering-place which is not deformed more or less by poverty and thriftlessness? Right across the sea, there, on the Norfolk coast, lie Cromer and Sherringham. More daring sailors never manned lifeboat, more patient fishermen never dragged net, than the seafaring folk of those charming villages. They are courteous, simple, outspoken folk, too, singularly attractive in their looks and ways. ”

“ I might multiply instances of Turkish honesty if it were of any use, but have been unable to collect a single instance of the like virtue on the part of Greeks or Armenians. Every man’s word seems against them, though their sharpness in trade and cleverness and activity in other ways are admitted on all hands. I found that every one whose judgment I could at all depend on, however much he might dislike the Turks, preferred them to any other of the people of the country whenever there was any question of trust. ”

“ Turning up the Bosphorus you soon lose sight of the Golden Horn, and the old rickety bridge which spans it from Stamboul to Galata. You pull away at first under the European shore, past the magnificent palace of the present Sultan, gleaming white in the sun; and then come other huge piles, some tumbling to pieces, some used as barracks, and private houses of all sizes and colours, in their little gardens, and warehouses, coffee-shops, cemeteries, fruit-markets and mosques. Not a yard of the bank but is occupied with buildings, and the houses are piled far up the hillside behind. ”

“ The Missouri is a doleful stream, shallow, with huge sandbanks in the middle, and great swamps at the side, but striking green bluffs rising above on the east bank under which we went; and behind them I saw the sun rise in great beauty. We just crossed the river to Omaha to say we had been in Missouri and seen the terminus of the Union-Pacific Railway, and a fine go-ahead place it is, like Dubuque, only twice as big and finely situate on hills above the Missouri River. ”

“ The sea is kept out by an ancient and dilapidated-looking dyke, some fifty feet high, on the slopes of which flourishes a strong, reedy sort of grass, planted in tufts at regular intervals, to hold the loose soil together. The fine sand drifts up the dyke and blows over it, lying just like snow, so that if you half-close your eyes and look at it from fifty yards’ distance, you may fancy yourself on a glacier in the Oberland. Blankenberghe is an ancient fishing village, lying just under the dyke, between eight and nine miles from Ostend. ”

“ There is no place on earth, from the back-slums of great cities to the mountain-peak or mid-ocean, to which early morns and evening twilights do not bring daily, or almost daily, some touch of the beauty of light-pictures which sun and moon and stars paint for us so patiently, whether we heed them or no; but to get them in their full perfection, one should be able to look at them in the light, dry, warm air of such places as these volcanic highlands of Auvergne. ”

“ The ebb-tide was sweeping down from the north, and, meeting the gale right off the harbour’s mouth, made a battling and raging sea which brought one’s heart into one’s mouth to look at. The weather was quite bright, and though the wind was so strong that I held my hat on with difficulty, the northern pier was crowded, as the whole force of the sea was spent against the southern pier, over which it was leaping every moment. We were in comparative shelter, and could watch, Without being drenched with spray, the approach of one of the fishing smacks of the port, which was coming home. ”

“ Never shall behold the light.
But much as I prize Rolandseck for its memories of chivalric constancy and tenderness, Mayence is my favourite place on the Rhine, as the birthplace of Gutenburg, the adopted home, and centre of the work of our great countryman, St. Boniface, and the most fully peopled and stirring town of modern Rhineland. We had only an hour to spend there, so I sallied at once into the town to search for Gutenburg’s house—the third time I have started on the same errand, and with the same result. ”

“ It is a glad land, above all that I have ever seen—a land in which a psalm of joy and thankfulness seems to be rising to heaven from every mountain top and valley, and, mingled with and beneath it, the solemn low note of a people “breathing thoughtful breath”—an accompaniment without which there is no true joy possible in our world, without which all attempt at it rings in the startled ear like the laugh of a madman. ”

“ It is a lively little harbour enough. Three men-of-war, English, French, and Greek, were lying there when we entered, and an Austrian Lloyd steamer and a dozen or two merchantmen. We were surrounded by dozens of boats, the boatmen dressed in the white cotton petticoats and long red fezzes, not mere scull-caps like those of the Turks—a picturesque dress enough, but not to be named for convenience or beauty with that of the Bosphorus boatmen. ”

“ The valley, which runs up into the Welsh hills to the west, is here narrow, with a bright trout-stream dancing along between emerald meadows out into the great Cheshire plain, over which, in the distance, rise the cathedral towers and the castle and spires of Chester. One can fancy the hungry eyes with which many a Welshman has looked over that splendid countryside from this perch on the hillside when Hugh Lupus and his successors were keeping the border, with short shrift for cattle-lifters. ”

“ I have taken in three or four American papers for years, and in your debates in Congress, in your newspapers, in every utterance of your public men, I have never heard or read anything but savage abuse of our aristocracy. They don’t reply to your insults, but they don’t forget them, so when you got into such hard lines they went in heartily for your enemies. Well, you say the South were England’s real enemies for the last forty years. True, but aristocracy did not care for that, democracy was represented by you, and that was what they went against. ”