way system through the extension of the Lemberg Czernowitz line to Jassy, and thence to Giurgevo, for which concessions. have been granted, will very probably lead to a line being constructed from Varna to Constantinople, which would give us a new mail route to India, and be of vast importance to Turkey. The Economist of October 31 points out that projects like the Euphrates Valley Railway will now begin to look more hopeful, and that even Syria and Persia will become drawn into the vortex of European commerce. To be able to go in two years from this time, in something like eighty hours to Odessa in Russia, or Galatz in Moldavia, or Varna in Turkey, is something to look forward to.

GREECE. The following, which I take from a letter of the Athens correspondent of the Times, which appeared on December 7, 1867, shows that even bolder projects have entered some busy brains. Fancy taking a through ticket from Charing Cross to the city of the Violet Crown!

"An interesting extract from a new edition of his Journey from Belgrade to Salonica has been printed apart by M. von Hahn, the Austrian consul at Syra. It examines the practicability and the advantages of continuing a railway from Salonica to the Piræus. M. von Hahn is well known in the learned world by his comprehensive work on Albania, which is the best authority on that strange country, its strange inhabitants and strange language. The journey from Belgrade is full of interesting information, but I believe it has not been translated either in England or France. Consul von Hahn was the first who proved that all our maps are wrong in making the Balkan Mountains join the great dorsal range that in Turkey corresponds to the Apennines. He found a level country between these two chains of mountains, and he demonstrated, that the construction of a railway would encounter no great difficulties, by purchasing a carriage and horses at Belgrade, and driving them over the existing roads all the way to Salonica, without

breaking his own neck, or laming his horses. The distance from Salonica to Alexandria, is 670 nautical miles, from Brindisi to Alexandria 835, and from Marseilles to Alexandria, 1425. The advantages of a railway to Salonica are evident, and the obstacles are only political. Money has lately felt no attraction towards Austria and Turkey, unless when under the influence of what used to be called usury. Things may soon be changed by a liberal policy at Vienna and rapid agricultural progress in Hungary. A line of railway from the Danube to Salonica would pass through the most industrious population in European Turkey, and would be the most immediately useful to northern Europe, perhaps even including England, of any of the lines lately proposed in the Sultan's dominions."

It is very unfortunate that the comparative tranquillity of the Greeks during the present year has interrupted, I trust only for a time, that series of extremely interesting letters from Athens, which occupied so prominent a place in the Times last year. It would be inhuman, I suppose, to desire that there should be a chronic revolution somewhere in the Egean, in order that we might have a constant supply of such letters. I will not deny, however, that I have been sometimes tempted to wish it.1

1

The state of things in Greece remains substantially where the year 1867 left it. "The great idea," that is, the re-conquest of Constantinople, appears to be no nearer to realization. Nor do any signs appear of the nation buckling seriously to what ought to be its task--the task, namely, of making the most of its resources in a common-place moral kind of way. One can well understand that a nation which can look back upon such a past, separated though it be from its great past by wave on wave of almost annihilating conquest, should cherish vague dreams of territorial extension, and hunger fiercely, not only for Crete, but for Thessaly and Epirus. It may be that the energy

1 While these sheets are passing through the press the letters have recommenced.

of the desire may accomplish its object, for he is a bold man who will say what will and what will not happen in southeastern Europe. Meantime I wish the news-dealers at Athens would be more scrupulous in their assertions. Scrupulosity, however, was not one of the virtues of their illustrious ancestors; and, perhaps, that excellent Hellene did not miscalculate, who, on being asked, "Why on earth do your countrymen circulate such fictions? They don't gain anything by them," answered, "I beg your pardon, they gain at least five per cent."

ASIA AND AFRICA.

ASIATIC TURKEY.-If, crossing the broad ocean-river which separates Europe from Asia, we turn our faces towards the east, we shall still travel for many and many a league over the territory of the Sultan. Indeed, the Asiatic dominions of that potentate are very much wider than those which he possesses in Europe. Geographers reckon the European possessions of the Sultan, including Roumania, Servia, and Montenegro at 204,215 English square miles, whereas his territories in Asia cover 668,580 English square miles, are, that is to say, more than twenty-one times the size of Scotland.

Just at present these countries have comparatively little political interest for us, and need not detain us long; although at any moment some commotion at Jerusalem, some squabble on the Russian or Persian frontier, some new outbreak of fanaticism and race-hatred in the Lebanon, may transfer to Asiatic soil that interest which a section of the public now bestows upon Crete.

The most bitter enemies of Turkish domination in Europe are content to leave Western Asia in the hands of its present rulers, and sometimes, I think, in their zeal for cutting by war a knot, which time alone can unravel, forget what might be the result to Christians in the neighbouring continent of pressing too hard on Mussulmans on the western side of the Hellespont. Mr. Sandison, our consul at Brussa, makes, in a report to Lord Lyons, dated Brussa, April 18th, 1867, the following

very judicious remarks upon this subject:--" A Turkish functionary of some rank from Constantinople, lately speaking to me on the subject, observed, If things come to that pass that we are to be attacked with the design of driving us out of Europe, we shall certainly make a hard fight for it, and may be beforehand with our domestic enemies among the Christians.' The same feeling pervades, no doubt, the mass of his people, though some of them avow a desire for any change of masters in the hope it may better their condition.

"But before the idea can be realized of transferring the seat of Turkish dominion to the Asiatic side of the Bosporus, there is peril of scenes of bloodshed taking place, such as the world has rarely witnessed. Nor would this peril be confined to the European side, but when religions and national enmities are inflamed to the utmost, combined with the passion for vengeance, it might fall alike on the Christian races interspersed in Asia Minor. The sound of the human voice can be heard from the opposite shores of the Bosporus, and the passage across the narrow strait need only occupy a few minutes. Numbers of Christians, including Europeans, are also settled along the eastern shore, and their position would become serious were the two shores to be placed under different rule. Or how far inland, or where in Asia, could be drawn a separating boundary line?"

The answers given to the queries addressed to our consuls, with respect to the treatment of Christians in Asiatic Turkey, show, as might be expected in a country which is politically so loosely hung, the most various and conflicting results. For example, Mr. Cumberbatch writes from Smyrna as follows:"To conclude my observations, I must add, that I consider the stipulations referred to, have been carried out to a certain extent in the large towns, but that in the districts the Hatti-Scheriff and Hatti-Humayoun have remained a dead letter.

'I must also add, my Lord, that the Turkish population is infinitely more harshly used than the Christians as regards exactions."

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