XXVI LIFE OF DR. ROLLESTON. 



Dec. 22, 1877, to his friend the Russian archaeologist, Baron de 

 Bogushevski, describes the change of political ideas which 

 experience of the East brought about in his mind : ' Well, 

 Plevna has not delighted you more than it has me ; I have read 

 all the accounts which I have been able to read with as much 

 pleasure as I ever read any account of any English victory. It 

 is a most grievous thing for any wholesome mind to regard 

 with sympathy incarnate cruelty and lust, which sympathy with 

 Turkey represents ; and it is a very painful thing for any 

 patriotic mind to know that a party sympathising with such 

 lower forms of life as Turkey and her social institutions and 

 traditions can be found among his own countrymen. But I 

 ought to say that I was once nearly as great a savage as these 

 my countrymen are now. I was a " Civil Doctor," ?. e. a Doctor 

 sent out to the General Hospitals, as you have been told, during 

 the Crimean war-time, and I recollect an older and a wiser man 

 saying to me, that it was wholly wrong of us English to be 

 fighting for the Turks, Christians as we were, against you. At 

 that time, it was early in my experience of Turkey, I was quite 

 surprised and shocked at this view, which however I came to 

 see was right, after seeing more of the filthy barbarians than 

 I had then done. I was set to write a Report which was printed, 

 though not published, by our War Office, upon the whole of 

 what I had seen during the whole time I was in Government 

 pay, and in that what I thought and said of the Turks was 

 much what I should say now after visiting Turkey again in 

 1 87 1. Most Englishmen however, as a rule, know nothing 

 whatever of the Turks, their principal ideas being drawn from 

 the pictures they see on pickle-pots of a fellow in a turban and 

 loose breeches swallowing a fish whole! Indeed they are in 

 much the same Stygian darkness that I was in myself till 

 I saw them for myself. I am sending you through your agents 

 a number of the " Contemporary Review," in which there is an 

 article by my great idol, Goldwin Smith, on our state of 

 mind as to this business, and you will see that the same men 

 who were on the side of slavery and brutishness, and the lower 



