204 BOAKD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



yet so bold in its utterance ! Its very strength lies in its 

 simplicity ; and the millions who have lived and died in the 

 profession of its faith, have carried its tenets triumphantly 

 from the shores of the Atlantic to the great wall of China 

 and the heart of further India. 



Reminiscences of the East : of the land of the fig-tree and 

 olive, the vine and the pomegranate, the myrtle and rose, 

 the musk and the ottar of Araby the Blest, and the delicious 

 notes of nightingales warbling as though intoxicated with 

 their own sweet song. What images rise up before me and 

 return to my memory ! Out of all this luxuriance, what 

 shall I select as my theme ? 



Shall I tell you of that wondrous city, " alone of all the 

 cities of the world, standing on two continents," massed on 

 its seven hills, and rising tier on tier of swelling domes and 

 burnished minarets, each one a center of refulgent light, yet 

 so toned down and softened under the light of a sky known 

 in no other clime than in the East, so circled round by masses 

 of dark verdure which cluster round the sacred edifices, that 

 the eye finds no inharmonious point, but wanders with re- 

 curring delight over the whole? 



Or shall I tell you of the great war between the crescent 

 and the cross, when, lying almost within sound of the great 

 guns whose iron hail was crashing upon the doomed city of 

 Sevastopol, we watched the transports sailing by, carrying 

 reinforcements to the allied troops or bringing to the city 

 the thousands of unhappy wretches, gashed and maimed, 

 battered out of the semblance of humanity, or who, stricken 

 down by the insidious attack of disease, had been brought 

 there to linger awhile and die? 



Or, once more, shall I tell you of the land itself, its 

 products and resources, the people and their ways, their 

 lives and occupations, their various methods of gaining their 

 daily bread ? 



It has seemed to me that perhaps this last was the more 

 appropriate. And yet I almost despair of giving you an 

 adequate idea of a country and a people 'where everything is 

 done in a manner so exactly opposite to our own. The 

 distinction they make between the religious and the moral 

 character is very singular. With us there can be no religion 



