discontent with their own inferior method of life. They expect Asiatics, even if not converted by Europe, to enjoy its life as Americans do, or rather, to absorb its ideas as Greeks — who always seem slightly Asiatic to Englishmen, but who are au fond intensely European, though not Teutonic — usually do. The fact that there are Orientals who, having tried both, prefer their own method of life, with all its uncertainties and fears and defects of "civilization," puzzles them beyond measure, and is usually set down to the influence of polygamy, which exists, no doubt, but not to the degree commonly supposed. There is another influence which has, we believe, much more effect on Orientals in good position — and few others try Europe — and that is the absence of a certain form of social pressure necessitating an endless taking of trouble. Not only the mental atmosphere, but the social life of Europe are based upon the idea that a man who wishes for a pleasant life will show energy in its pursuit, will take endless small trouble, will not feel an exertion of mind or will, any more than the piston of a steam-engine feels rising or falling. That, however, is not the basis of society in Asia, where the root-idea is that those who have not to live by labor are to enjoy a certain exemption from worry, to do as they please, and not as other folks please, and while respecting certain immutable, but few and definite laws, such as that which from the Balkan to Pekin enforces, though in degrees of wide divergence, the seclusion of women, are to be released in great measure from the atmospheric pressure of opinion. The Oriental is, whatever his grade, to be in a way independent, released from small obligations, left "free" in a sense explained below. This idea, carried out as it is in daily life, produces many of the least intelligible phenomena of Asiatic society, — the democratic equality of all men, which is so singularly combined with readiness to endure and to inflict oppression; the absence of mauvaise honte, which is the secret of the much-admired "manner" of most Asiatics, and which is found, too, for the same reason, in some classes of Americans; and the sense of ease always perceptible in a better-class Oriental at home, and always puzzling to the European, who thinks he knows facts which should make his interlocutor uneasy. In the new and very charming book in which Mrs. Simpson has collected her father's conversations with great Frenchmen, there occurs a very striking and in its way attractive statement of the difference, so far as it affects the mere details of daily life. Mr. Senior, who, though at home regarded as a rather hard official — he was hard, too, intellectually, the quality peeping out perpetually in these conversations — was in society, and especially in foreign society, the most sympathetic of men, and could by some rare talent coax the most different of mankind into revealing their real opinions, had in 1860 a long talk with Vefyk Pasha, then minister at Paris, recently, we believe, the man who presided over the Ottoman Assembly. He said of Paris: —
- What I complain of is the mode of life. I am oppressed not by the official duties — they are easy, Turkey has few affairs — but by the social ones. I have had to write fifteen notes this morning, all about trifles. In Turkey life is sans gêne; if a man calls on you he does not leave a card; if he sends you a nosegay he does not expect a letter of thanks; if he invites you he does not require an answer. There are no engagements to be remembered and fulfilled a fortnight afterwards. When you wish to see a friend, you know that he dines at sunset; you get into your caique, and row down to him through the finest scenery in the world. You find him in his garden, smoke a chibouque, talk or remain silent as you like; dine, and return. If you wish to see a minister you go to his office; you are not interfered with, or even announced; you lift the curtain of his audience-room, sit by him on his divan, smoke your pipe, tell your story, get his answer, and have finished your business in the time which it takes here to make an appointment — in half the time that you waste here in an antechamber. There is no dressing for dinners or for evening parties; evening parties, indeed, do not exist. There are no letters to receive or to answer. There is no post-hour to be remembered and waited for, for there is no post. Life glides away without trouble. Here everything is troublesome. All enjoyment is destroyed by the forms and ceremonies and elaborate regulations which are intended, I suppose, to increase it or to protect it. My Liberal friends here complain of the want of political liberty. What I complain of is the want of social liberty; it is far the more important. Few people suffer from the despotism of a government, and those suffer only occasionally. But this social despotism, this despotism of salons, this code of arbitrary little règlements, observances, prohibitions, and exigencies, affects everybody, and every day, and every hour.
Mark the idea which underlies that complaint, and remember that it extends to every department of life, and you catch, as no book can teach you, one of the secrets of the Asiatic mode of living, and its charm for Asiatics. You are
