The Lebanon (Volume 2) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1860. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XXI. AGONY OF TEN YEARS. When first taken ill, the tumult of an official residence being too much for me, I was removed in a sedan chair to a residence without the walls, in the house of the engineer of the Constantinople steamer, where, as I was not excluded from receiving guests, sufficient knowledge of the culinary art was attained, to enable them afterwards to convert the place into a hotel; and there I found it more convenient to alight during my excursions. I was thus thrown into intercourse with various European travellers. The experience has not been without its use in bracing me to my task. The.utter deadness in reference to all that is going on as business in the world; the vacuity of idle talk; the misery of the general propositions which forms their conversation; the hopelessness of conveying to them, even if they desired it, the faintest idea of the country they have come to visit, or what is going on in it, impress me as I never have felt before with the utter powerlessness of European society, to recover auy command over its own fate. The difference with the people of this country, can only be felt in passing immediately from the one to the other. Troubles and convulsions, not speculative and theoretic, have their attractions. There is that contempt of death, that love of life, that affection for friends, and that hatred for foes, which we call up only from antiquity, and personate only on the stage. I have already more than once drawn the contrast between the working classes of the two regions. How I have understated the case Infidelity--not that of the New Testament, wickedness--but the verbal profession of the disbelief of the soul, proselytism, political speculation, drunkenness and prostitution, are unknown. The man who propos...