won’t say anything to fear, for all have cause for that.  Hence the high respectability and gentility of the merchants, who are the most independent of the Government.  The English would be a little surprised at Arab judgments of them; they admire our veracity and honesty, and like us on the whole, but they blame the men for their conduct to women.  They are shocked at the way Englishmen talk about Hareem among themselves, and think the English hard and unkind to their wives, and to women in general.  English Hareemat is generally highly approved, and an Arab thinks himself a happy man if he can marry an English girl.  I have had an offer for Sally from the chief man here for his son, proposing to allow her a free exercise of her religion and customs as a matter of course.  I think the influence of foreigners is much more real and much more useful on the Arabs than on the Turks, though the latter show it more in dress, etc.  But all the engineers and physicians are Arabs, and very good ones, too.  Not a Turk has learnt anything practical, and the dragomans and servants employed by the English have learnt a strong appreciation of the value of a character for honesty, deserved or no; but many do deserve it.  Compared to the couriers and laquais de place of Europe, these men stand very high.  Omar has just run in to say a boat is going, so good-bye, and God bless you.

March 22, 1864:  Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon.  LUXOR, March 22, 1864.

Dearest Alick,

I am glad my letters amuse you.  Sometimes I think they must breathe the unutterable dulness of Eastern life:  not that it is dull to me, a curious spectator, but how the men with nothing to do can endure it is a wonder.  I went yesterday to call on a Turk at Karnac; he is a gentlemanly man, the son of a former Moudir, who was murdered, I believe, for his cruelty and extortion.  He has 1,000 feddans (acres, or a little more) of land, and lives in a mud house, larger but no better than any fellahs, with two wives and the brother of one of them.  He leaves the farm to his fellaheen altogether, I fancy.  There was one book, a Turkish one; I could not read the title-page, and he did not tell me what it was.  In short, there was no means of killing time but the narghile, no horse, no gun, nothing, and yet they did not seem bored.  The two women are always clamorous for my visits, and very noisy and school-girlish, but apparently excellent friends and very good-natured.  The gentleman gave me a kufyeh (thick head kerchief for the sun), so I took the ladies a bit of silk I happened to have.  You never heard anything like his raptures over Maurice’s portrait, ’Mashallah, Mashallah, Wallahy zay el ward’ (It is the will of God, and by God he is like a rose).  But I can’t ‘cotton to’ the Turks.  I always feel that they secretly dislike us European