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language, institutions, literature, and religion of the country. I was at all times extremely fond of philosophical speculation, and this led me to a study of German. My pursuits were so engrossing that I saw little of society, and the few friends I made were among a comparatively humble class. I remained in England ten years, traveling occasionally on the Continent, and visiting Turkey twice during that time. I then proceeded to America, where I passed a year, and thence went to India by way of Japan and China. In India I remained two years, resuming during this period an oriental garb, and living principally among my co-religionists. I chiefly occupied, however, in studying the religious movement among the Hindus known as the Bramo Somaj. From India I went to Ceylon, where I lived in great retirement, and became deeply immersed in the more occult knowledge of Buddhism. Indeed, these mystical studies so intensely interested me, that it was with difficulty, after a stay of three years, that I succeeded in tearing myself away from them. I then passed, by way of the Persian Gulf, into Persia, remained a year in Teheran, whence I went to Damascus, where I lived for five years, during which time I performed the Hadj, more out of curiosity than as an act of devotion. Five years ago I arrived here on my way to Constantinople, and was so attracted by the beauty of the spot and the repose which it seemed to offer me, that I determined to pitch my tent here for the remainder of my days, and to spend them in doing what I could to improve the lot of those amidst whom Providence had thrown me.

'I am aware that this record of my travels will be received with considerable surprise by those unacquainted with the habits of life of Turks gener

ally. I have given it, however, to account for the train of thought into which I have been led, and the conclusions at which I had arrived, and to explain the exceptional and isolated position in which I find myself among my own countrymen, who, as a rule, have no sympathy with the motives which have actuated me through life, or with their results. I have hitherto observed, therefore, a complete reticence in regard to both. Should, however, these pages fall under the eye any member of the Theosophical Society, either in America, Europe, or Asia, they will at once recognize the writer as one of their number, and will, I feel sure, respect that reserve as to my personality which I wish to maintain.

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'I have already said that in early life I became thoroughly dissatisfied with the religion in which I was born and brought up; and, determined to discard all early prejudices, I resolved to travel over the world, visiting the various centres of religious thought, with the view of making a comparative study of the value of its religions, and of arriving at some conclusion as to the one I ought myself to adopt. As, however, they each claimed to be derived from an inspired source, I very soon became overwhelmed with the presumption of the task which I had undertaken; for I was not conscious of the possession of any verifying faculty which would warrant my deciding between the claims of different revelations, or of judging of the merits of rival forms of inspiration. Nor did it seem possible to me that any evidence in favor of a revelation which was in all instances offered by human beings like myself, could be of such a nature that another human being should dare to assert that it could have none other than a divine origin; the more especially as the author of it was

live under the dim religious light of their respective revelations, the feeble rays of the latter become extinguished by the gross darkness of this AntiChristendom, and they lie crushed and mangled under the iron heel of its organized and sanctified selfishness. The real God of Anti-Christendom is Mammon: in Catholic Anti-Christendom, tempered by a lust of spiritual and temporal power; in Greek AntiChristendom, tempered by a lust of race aggrandisement; but in Protestant Anti-Christendom, reigning supreme. The cultivation of the selfish instinct has unnaturally developed the purely intellectual faculties at the expense of the moral; has stimulated competition; and has produced a combination of mechanical inventions, political institutions, and an individual force of character, against which socalled "heathen" nations, whose cupidities and covetous propensities lie comparatively dormant, are utterly unable to prevail.

'This overpowering love of "the root of all evil," with the mechanical inventions in the shape of railroads, telegraphs, ironclads, and other appliances which it has discovered for the accumulation of wealth, and for the destruction of those who impede its accumulation, constitutes what is called "Western civilization."

'Countries in which there are no gigantic swindling corporations, no financial crises by which millions are ruined, or Gatling guns by which they may be slain, are said to be in a state of barbarism. When the civilization of Anti-Christendom comes into contact with barbarism of this sort, instead of lifting it out of its moral error, which would be the case if it were true Christendom, it almost invariably shivers it to pieces. The consequence of the arrival of the so-called Christian in a heathen country is, not to bring

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immortal life, but physical and moral death. Either the native races die out before him as in the case of the Red Indian of America and the Australian and New Zealander- or they save themselves from physical decay by worshipping, with all the ardor of perverts to a new religion, at the shrine of Mammon - as in the case of Japan -and fortify themselves against dissolution by such a rapid development of the mental faculties and the avaricious instincts, as may enable them to cope successfully with the formidable invading influence of Anti-Christendom. The disastrous moral tendencies and disintegrating effects of inverted Christianity upon a race professing a religion which was far inferior in its origin and conception, but which has been practised by its professors with more fidelity and devotion, has been strikingly illustrated in the history of my own country. One of the most corrupt forms which Christianity has ever assumed, was to be found organized in the Byzantine empire at the time of its conquest by the Turks. Had the so-called Christian races which fell under their sway in Europe during their victorious progress westward been compelled, without exception, to adopt the faith of Islam, it is certain, to my mind, that their moral condition would have been immensely improved. Indeed, you who have traveled among the Moslem Slavs of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who are the descendants of converts to Islam at that epoch, will bear testimony to the fact that they contrast most favorably in true Christian virtues with the descendants of their countrymen who remained Christians; and I fearlessly appeal to the Austrian authorities now governing those provinces to bear me out in this assertion. Unfortunately, a sufficiently large nominally Christian population was allowed by the Turks

to remain in their newly-acquired possessions, to taint the conquering race itself. The vices of Byzantinism speedily made themselves felt in the body politic of Turkey. The subservient races, intensely superstitious in the form of their religious belief, which had been degraded into a passport system, by which the believer in the efficacy of certain dogmas and ceremonials might attain heaven irrespective of his moral character on earth, were unrestrained by religious principle from giving free rein to their natural propensities, which were dishonest and covetous in the extreme. They thus revenged themselves on their conquerors, by undermining them financially, politically, and morally; they insidiously plundered those who were too indifferent to wealth to learn how to preserve it, and infected others with the contagion of their own cupidity, until these became as vicious and corrupt in their means of acquiring riches as they were themselves. This process has been going on for the last five hundred years, until the very fanaticism of the race, which was its best protection against inverted Christianity, has begun to die out, and the governing class of Turks has with rare exceptions become as dishonest and degraded as the Ghiaours they despise. Still they would have been able, for many years yet to come, to hold their own in Europe, but for the enormously increased facilities for the accumulation of wealth, and therefore for the gratification of covetous propensities, created within the last halfcentury by the discoveries of steam and electricity. Not only was Turkey protected formerly from the sordid and contaminating influence of AntiChristendom by the difficulties of communication, but the mania of developing the resources of foreign of foreign countries for the purpose of appropri

ating the wealth which they might contain, became proportionately augmented with increased facilities of transportation; so that now the very habits of thought in regard to countries styled barbarous have become changed. As an example of this, I would again refer to my own country. I can remember the day when British tourists visited it with a view to the gratification of their æsthetic tastes. They delighted to contrast what they were then pleased to term "oriental civilization" with their own. Our very backwardness in the mechanical arts was an attraction to them. They went home delighted with the picturesqueness and the indolence of the East.

'Its bazaars, its costumes, its primitive old-world cachet, invested it in their eyes with an indescribable charm; and books were written which fascinated the Western reader with pictures of our manners and customs, because they were so different from those with which he was familiar. Now all this is changed; the modern traveler is in nine cases out of ten a railroad speculator, or a mining engineer, or a financial promoter, or a concession hunter, or perchance a would-be member of Parliament like yourself, coming to see how pecuniary or political capital can be made out of us, and how he can best exploiter the resources of the country to his own profit. This he calls "reforming" it. His idea is, not how to make the people morally better, but how best to develop their predatory instincts, and teach them to prey upon each other's pockets. For he knows that by encouraging a rivalry in the pursuits of wealth among a people comparatively unskilled in the art of money-grubbing, his superior talent and experience in that occupation will enable him to turn their efforts to his own advantage.

'He disguises from himself the im

morality of the proceeding by the reflection that the introduction of foreign capital will add to the wealth of the country, and increase the material well-being and happiness of the people. But apart from the fallacy that wealth and happiness are synonymous terms, reform of this kind rests on the assumption that natural temperament and religious tendencies of race will lend themselves to a keen commercial rivalry of this description; and if it does not, they, like the Australian and the Red Indian, must disappear before it. Already the process has begun in Europe. The Moslem is rapidly being reformed out of existence altogether. Between the upper and the nether millstone of Russian greed for territory and of British greed for money, and behind the mask of a prostituted Christianity, the Moslem in Europe has been ground to powder; hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children have either perished by violence or starvation, or, are driven from their homes, are now struggling to keep body and soul together as best they can in misery and desolation, crushed beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of "Progress"-their only crime, like that of the poor crossing sweeper, I think, in one of your own novels, that they did not "move on." This is called in modern parlance "the civilizing influence of Christianity." At this moment the Russians are pushing roads through their newlyacquired territory toward Kars. I am informed by an intelligent Moslem gentleman who has just arrived from that district, that the effect of their "civilizing" influence upon the inhabitants of the villages through which these roads pass, is to convert the women into prostitutes and the men into drunkards. No wonder the Mohammedan population is flocking in thousands across the frontier into

Turkish territory, abandoning their homes and landed possessions in order to escape the contamination of Anti-Christendom.

'In these days of steam and electricity, not only has the traveler no eye for the moral virtues of a people, but his æsthetic faculties have become blunted; he regards them only as money-making machines, and he esteems them just in the degree in which they excel in the art of wealthaccumulation. Blinded by a selfish utilitarianism, he can now see only barbarism in a country where the landscape is not obscured by the black smoke of factory-chimneys, and the ear deafened by the scream of the locomotive. For him, a people who cling to the manners and customs of a bygone epoch with which their own most glorious traditions are associated, have no charm. He sees in a race which still endeavors to follow the faith of their forefathers with simplicity and devotion, nothing but ignorant fanaticism, for he has long since substituted hypocrisy for sincerity in his own belief. He despises a peasantry whose instincts of submission and obedience induce them to suffer rather than rise in revolt against a government which oppresses them, because the head of it is invested in their eyes with a sacred character. He can no longer find anything to admire or to interest in the contrast between the East and West, but everything to condemn; and his only sympathy is with that section of the population in Turkey who, like him, devote themselves to the study of how much can be made, by fair means or foul, out of their Moslem neighbors.

'While I observe that this change has come over the Western traveler of late years—a change which I attribute to the mechanical appliances of the age a corresponding effect, ow