Full text : The life of Richard Cobden

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1887. of the most chilly-hearte® From these causes I am afro
zi; <2. I have not done justice to the scene of the Bosphorus.
could not look upon the palaces, the kiosks, and woode”
houses which crowded the bunks of the beautiful channe
with the interest which they might have imparted, if I had
nob known the poverty, vice, and tyranny of their possessor
Must I confess it? I think the Hudson river a much mos
beautiful scene than the Bosphorus. But let the scenes b¢
ceversed—if the Bosphorus were in the United States, and
the Hudson in Turkey—and I should consider probably th
former incomparably the most beautiful; so much are We
the creatures of association.” *
Sinyrna, Feb. 247" 1837.— In the steamer which brought
me from Constantinople to this place, we had a great number
of passengers, chiefly Turks: there were a few Persian®
They all rested on deck during the whole time. For theif
souvenience little raised platforms were placed along each
side of the steamer, to prevent the wet, if any rain fell

* In the pamphlet on England, Ireland, and America, Cobden had alresd?
indulged a joyous vision of what Constantinople might become under th
genius of a free government :—* Constantinople, outrivalling New York
may be painted, with a million of free citizens, as the foons of all the trade
of Bastern Europe. Let us conjure up the thousands of miles of railroads
sarrying to the very extremities of this empire—not the sanguinary satrap
out the merchandise and the busy traders of a free state ; conveying —not
the firman of a ferocious Sultan, armed with death to the trembling slave
but the millions of newspapers and letters, which stimulate the enterprist
ind excite the patriotism of an enlightened people. Let us imagine the
3osphorus and the Sew of Marmors swarming with steamboats, connectit8
he European and Asiatic continents by hourly departures and arrivals;
ssuing from the Dardanelles, to reanimate once more with life and fertility
the hundred islands of the Archipelago; or conceive the rich shores of the
Black Sea in the power of the New Englander, and the Danube pouring
down its produce on the plains of Moldavia and Wallachia, now subject #0
the plongh of the hardy Kentuckian. Tet us picture the Carolinians, the
Virginians, and the Georgians transplanted to the coasts of Asia Minor, 818
behold its hundreds of cities again bursting from the tomb of ages, to recal
religion and civilization to the spot from whence they first issued fort
apon the world, Alas! thai thin should only be an illusion of the fanoy!”
            
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