A very seasonable reprint is Turkey, being Sketches from Life,
by the Roving Englishman. (Routledge.)—The papers of which the volume is in part composed were published in Household Words, and were re- printed with additions about twenty-three years ago. We may quote one passage (we could quote a hundred) to show what the Turks were some fifty years ago, and how finely they illustrate the phrase, " the unchaneing East :"—" The Turks, who had a pleasant wit, were wont to call their military operations in Greece ' Christian-hunting.' The Sultan, however (Mabmoud H.), was still more emphatic ; he told the Capitan Pasha to 'calcine the island of Hydra, and bring him the dust.' The population of the island of Chios was 94,000 before it roused the wrath of the Tarks,—it was reduced to 900 afterwards; everybody else had been butchered or sold, with the exception of a very few who were hopeless fugitives." It is the West that changes. The
massacre of Chios sealed the fate of Turkish rule in Greece, so vehement was the passion of wrath it roused in Christendom. The Turks might repeat it now with impunity. Lord Beaconsfield would make a little joke about their promptitude. The Tory and psendo-Liberal Press would first disbelieve, then apologise for, and finally justify, the "example." And the fine gentlemen of the clubs would vote it a " bore," not being interested in any massacres but those at Hurlingham and the pheasant-coverts.
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