taken by the Turks to keep their collections undefiled by 

 the languages of unbelievers, he might have searched the 

 lumber-rooms instead of the library of the Seraglio, and 

 turned to better account the permission he obtained to 

 penetrate so far within the interior. 



There is but one mode of rescuing from destruction 

 those literary treasures of antiquity, and that is, by money ; 

 a Turk will do anything for money, and the Grand Signior 

 is the most needy of the Turks. It was generally thought 

 that no Frank could view the interior of Saint Sophia 

 without a firman, until Dr. Clarke discovered that it might 

 be seen at any time for six piastres; and Grelot (thanks 

 to his liberal bribes) was allowed to measure the sacred 

 edifice, and to finish accurate drawings of its internal 

 decorations. There is an additional circumstance respect- 

 ing the libraries of Constantinople, to which we would call 

 the attention of our readers; only three of all those collec- 

 tions existed prior to the last century, the rest having been 

 formed within that period by the Sultans or grandees who 

 imitated their zeal; the literature and language of the 

 Turks, nevertheless, seem to have derived no benefit from 

 those aids, but to have gone on gradually declining. The 

 importance of this observation will be manifest, when we 

 come to consider the various attempts which have been 

 made to reanimate the nation, and the uniform failure of 

 them. 



The Turks are a people extremely peculiar in all their 

 usages; what may be considered their ancestral customs 

 bear, as the Abbate Hager has fully shown, a close resem- 

 blance to those of the Chinese. In sentiments and deport- 

 ment they differ widely from all surrounding nations, 

 Persian as well as European, and these original dissimili- 

 tudes have been turned by superstition into principles of 

 repulsion. Education being wholly in the hands of the 

 Ulemas, is doled out in a manner conformable to the in- 

 terests of that crafty body, and does not produce the same 

 humanizing effects which usually accompany the free 

 diffusion of knowledge. Thus ignorance and pride, a 

 bigoted adherence to established usages, and hatred of 

 strangers, stop up the ordinary channels of improvement, 



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