Constantinople

I have never forgotten" nor do successive experiences seem to dull the sharpness of the impression" that abysmal drop from the general European level of spruceness and solidity. Yet Stamboul, if you belong to the same race of men as I, has a way of rehabilitating herself your eyes, perhaps even of making you adopt her point of view. Not that I shall try to gloss over her case. Stamboul is not for the race of men that must have trimness, smoothness, regularity, and modern conveniences, and the latest amusements. She has ambitions in that direction. I may live to see her attain them.

I have already lived to see half of the Stamboul I once knew burn to the ground and the other half experiment in Haussmannising. But there is stil enough of the old Stamboul left to leaven the new. It is very bumpy to drive over. It is ill-painted and out of repair.

If literature could be governed by law "which, very happily, to the despair of grammarians, it can not" there should be an act prohibiting any one, on pain of death, ever to quote again or adapt to private use Charles Lamb and his two races of men. No one is better aware of the necessity of such a law than the present scribe.