ARUNDELL'S ASIA MINOR.
ASIA MirsoR is fruitful in reminiscences and ruins. A delight- ful climate, a good soil, and an excellent position, early pointed it out to the Greeks as an advantageous spot to settle in; and they colonized with a completeness and comprehensiveness of plan which has never Since been equalled, but which the founders of Southern Australia intend to emulate. The wisdom of their plans was shown in the results. The colonies very shortly surpassed their mother countries, in civilization, luxury, wealth, and the arts which more directly minister to our sensual enjoyments,— if they degenerated from their originals in love of freedom, and the practice of letters, policy, and arms. The Persian, the Antigo- nian, and the Roman rule, might destroy their spirit and their institutions; but it seems to have left untouched their industry, their commerce, their handicraft skill, and that mechanical taste which, once thoroughly imbued in a people, survives ages after the spirit which created the examples that formed it has passed away. Christianity, and the enormous wealth amassed by individuals under the Empire, added new classes of buildings to the Asiatic cities, in sacred edifices, and in those public erec- tions, such as aqueducts, whose magnitude seems to have been beyond the means or above the style of the Greeks. But a change was rapidly approaching. In the successive wars which had here- tofore overrun her territory, the disputants were worldly men war- ring for earthly objects. She was now to experience the tender mercies of the Faithful and the Stints. By a remarkable coinci- dence, one of the richest and most populous districts was the earliest selected for religious wars. The Cross and the Crescent strove for mastery on her richly-cultivated fields, and before her splendid and densely-inhabited cities. The Greek and the Saracen, Turk, Tartar, Saxon, Frank, and Northman, devastated her earth to delight heaven ; and when the vanquished at last departed, they left the vanquishers almost a desert, which added but little real strength to the empire or wealth to the treasury. Her ruins are mere bones, often not complete enough to enable the urban- geologist to decide upon the city's name. Her inhabitants are few and scattered : the permanent improvements of the soil have vanished : roads and bridges, whose remains, in less persecuted lands, continue till a greater civilization removes them, are de- stroyed, save where the road cut on the face of the mountain is in- destructible,—the cost of its execution and its present unfre- quented state offering the best commentary on the condition of the country, and presenting to the startled traveller a speaking memento of cornier prosperity and present d. solution. Mr. ARUNDu L!. was well placed for thoroughly and leisurely examining the country, so interesting to the scholar, _;ire anti- quarian, and the Christian. For twelve years he acted as British chaplain at Smyrna. His local and official situation gave him facilities of travelling; and these he made use of, fre- quently in occasional trips, at times in more lengthened jour- nies. The results of some of these were given to the public seve- ral years since, in his account of A Visit to the &reit Churches. The greater part of the present volumes is occupied with an ac- count of a six weeks' antiquarian tour in search of the sites of cities, especially of such as were rendered celebrated by the pre- sence and acts of the Apostles. In this attempt, Mr. ARTJNDELL deems himself eminently successful. The ground he took was untrodden. Besides the clear or the " probable " vestiges of cities of lesser fume, he discovered Apollonia and Antioch of Pisidia; and he would have gone " in pursuit of Perga, Lystra, and Derbe," had not the advance of IBRAHIM PACHA warned him to consult his safety. A long appendix is occupied by a publication of a short trip undertaken with the professional views of establishing schools and distributing tracts, and a brief sketch of Smyrna. In speaking of the country as interesting, the expression should be limited to the classes above enumerated. To the popular reader, it has none of the celebrity which lofty deeds, or intellectual ex- ertions still loftier, throw over the cities and the plains of Greece : it can excite nono of those associations which are conjured up by the arms, the policy, and the extensive empire of Rome. Nor arc the existing remains apparently of that completeness which would excite interest by their forms alone. In Asia Minor, the sojourner may be said to trample upon the fragments of cities: but frag- ments—broken columns, traces of walls, and sometimes merely piles of stones—are nearly all that remain. Descriptions and con- jectures, half-obliterated inscriptions, and even happy and un- doubted discoveries, bare not much interest to the general reader, when they relate to places whose names he has forgotten, or con- cerning which he can remember no striking ideas. Matters of this kind are read with interest by the antiquarian and the geo- grapher. Individual character, sketches of manners, and graphic descriptions of scenery, would have been more acceptable to the million. But these scarcely seem to have entered into Mr. ARUN- DELL'S plan : the few which are given, though rather slight, make us regret that we had not more. The writer is a Conservative : whatever is is right. The Sultan is the State. IBRAHIM, or rather his father, is a Reformer: and the " redresser of the people's wrongs" (sic in orig.) is clumsily aimed at in sundry pointless jokes and vapid witticisms. The established religion is Mahometism. The Turk is therefore very much better than the Greek ; and his creed, we are led to conclude, as good in its soul-healing effects as any other, excepting always that of the EstablishedChnrch of England and Ireland. The Turk, however, is improving ; or he has been misrepresented by former writers. We learn from numberless indirect passages, that he
mingles with Greeks and other Rayahs on equal terms and without offensive displays of intolerant bigotry. Some of this may perhaps be attributed to the class amongst which our worthy clergyman tra- velled. They were mostly peasants and mountaineers; they were far removed from the corrupting influences of the very high and the very low of cities—from the house-top and the cesspool :
they were very poor. Hard labour for daily bread is a great sub- duer of controversy upon questions which are to be settled in an- other world. In the interior, Mr. ARUINDELL, like several other travellers, found the Mahometan women unveiled, and not debarred from speaking to strangers. The refinements of the seraglio were beyond their means. Even Turkish jealousy is an affair of the pocket.
Upon one matter our author is eloquent in praise of the Turks —their hospitality : not the cold charity of giving assistance to get rid of importunity, or to remove an unpleasant object from our sight or thoughts, but a systematic regard for the wants of all. Caravanseras are frequent all over the East; but in Asia Minor an improvement appears to be made even upon them. The meanest village can vie with our proudest towns in one sense—its traveller's room: only the accommodations are more scanty, and the company less select. Here we have a description of several.
" We halted at the conic of the Aga; but instead of being allowed the honour of lodging under his roof, he sent a inan to conduct its to a maison, or rather chanabre cle charity, called an oda; a word which literally means only cham her, bur, par excellence, the dumber, or, as implied, the stranger's chamber. 'Ile proprietor hospitable brought us a forest of wood ; and a host of Turks fa. voured us with their society ; among them the son of the Aga, with his brace of greyhounds in body clothes. "The oda was, in effect, the coffee-room, or casino of the village, and the centre of attraction for every village politician. Saime of our guests would readily have saved us the trouble of carrying our brandy bottles further ; and it required all the farce of argument we were possessed of to prove that they contained me- dicine essentially' important to our health, and that we had no intention of draw- ing the cork till compelled by illness." " We were installed again in an excellent oda, mist hospitably and gratui- tously entertained ; the good Turks, full of kind attentions, giving us much in- formation in return fur a cup of coffee, and affording me an opportunity of dis- playing medical talent.
" It was not till the present journey, that I was aware of the precise nature of these mks, and of their universality throughout Asia Minor. They are not en- dowed or supported by the Government, but are entirely private charities. One at least is to be found in every village throughout the country, and often several in a small village. The original founder charges his estate, be it great or little, with the perpetual maintenance of the oda ; and it seems in most cases to be the
tenure by which the estate is hell. or is this confined to the wealthy; it as frequently happens that even a poor man, whose little spot ofground is barely stitheient, after paying the Aga's derimes, See. to find bread for his children, charges them to keep a chamber (perhaps the whole house has only two) as an oda for the stranger. No questions are asked of this stranger, whether he be a disciple of the Prophet, a Christian, or aJew—it is enough that he is a stranger
and needs the rights of hospitality-. Ile is provided gratuitously with food and fuel and lodging, and even the libarality is extended to his beast.
" We abuse the Turk, and call him a barb; Tian; but where is the country in civilized Europe, that a poor, distressed traveller, faint and sinking under his privations, and without a farthing to procure a bit of bread, or a shed to shelter him from the winter's storm—where is that country ? let the abusers of the un- civilized Turk answer the question,—where is that country, in which such a poor wretch will find, from village to village, a warm-hearted reception, lodging, village
and food ? * " We were marched about from house to house and street to street till it was dark, and were almost in despair of finding a conac, when we were agreeably surprised at being installed in the oda of the Mollah himself, the best house in the place. " A magnificent fire blazed on the hearth ; our mattresses were spread, the palank eased of its paplornas, the contents of the canteen displayed, and all pre- parations made for doing honour to the expected dinner, when two other travel- ling gentlemen were introduced, who were to be our companions at board and bed.
" They were gaunt, bony, six-feet gentlemen, by occupation beggars, and
literally heaps of filth and rags. Kyriacos was commissioned to request them civilly to walk out again, and when they showed no disposition to do so, to in- sist on our having the apartment to ourselves. All the answer they deigned to give was, to open their bundles of rags and prepare for conacking. Kyriacos was despatched to complain to the Oda Bashi, but we could get no redress. 4 In the sight of God,' said the Mullah, 'all men are equal. and the beggar in his rags is as much entitled to the hospitality of our oda as the rich man in his benish of Samure.'
" While we felt the justice of this reply, and assented to this evangelical de- finition of what charity should be, we still were uneasy at passing the night in such company. We tried another mode, and it was successful: a few piastres readily persuaded the traveliing gentlemen to leave us in quiet posses- sion of the apartment; and they found almost as good a one close by, where they were as well entertained as ourselves."
Hospitality of this kind is one of the virtues which civilization banishes; and lamentations on its decline are common—but are they well founded ? Are the semi-savage nations, with whom hos- pitality is a private and frequently a public duty, so much better than us cold-hearted Sybarites, who let strangers put up at inns? These questions, we think, may safely be answered in the nega- tive. Charity is recommended by the Testament as well as the Koran; but the funds which in Asia are directed to one object, and that in obedience perhaps to public opinion, and certainly to public wants, are in Europe diverted to many objects, but still obeying these two principles. In the East, men bequeath their superfluous wealth, or what they choose to think so, to build a public-house. In the West, they endow colleges, hospitals, schools, or churches; the endowments varying with the spirit of the age. First, masses and monasteries were the fashion ; then churches, which benefited the people with more certainty than the two first; next colleges, another step in advance; lastly, schools, hospitals, almshouses, and other objects of intended public advan- tage. In the amount of charitable benefactions, Europe would doubtless equal Asia : but in broad and all-embracing charity, the fanatic Mussulman would conquer the humble Christian, upon
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