500 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880- 



siderable, and he was always ready to supplement it by 

 fresh inquiry. In other respects than these Ismail was 

 a most useful companion, identifying himself wholly 

 with my interests in a way that is quite extraordinary 

 in an Arab. He has, indeed, taken England as his ideal, 

 and is much more disposed to cleave to his English master 

 than to his own countrymen in the Hejaz. Up the 

 country, where people know little of the outer world, he 

 achieved an immense social success by his anecdotes of 

 the marvels of London, to which I listened with great 

 amusement from the curious effect which they produced 

 when translated into a form intelligible to his audience. 

 There was one favourite passage a description of the 

 great telegraph-room at St. Martin s-le-Grand. It was like 

 a scene from the Arabian Nights. Hundreds of maidens, 

 each fairer than the other, peopled this marvellous room. 

 Ismail moved through the enchanted scene in a sort of 

 transport, till at length his eyes fell on one more beautiful 

 than all the others the most perfect being he had ever 

 seen. Then his heart failed him, he refused to see more, 

 and hurried from the room. But Ismail s observations 

 of Western life had gone deeper than this, and taught 

 him the essential superiority of our institutions, which, 

 without understanding their details, he knew to secure 

 liberty and justice. To me, indeed, he is accustomed 

 to defend Arabic habits as fitter for the different con 

 ditions of the country, but at heart he is a bit of a philo 

 sopher, which in Islam is the same thing as a religious 

 and social free-thinker. He separates the essence of 

 religion from the forms of Mohammedanism, and has no 

 objections to worship with Christians. He longs, like 

 all thinking Moslems, for justice in the State, honesty 

 between man and man, and an end to the ceaseless 

 oppression of the poor by the rich. To the hatred of 

 the Turks which all Arabs feel, he adds a hearty contempt 

 for the class of Arabs who now hold the reins of power 

 in the Hejaz. I have almost been tempted to think him 



