Memoirs of John Kitto

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: though not perhaps from the same class of persons, or on the same ground?, as in the time of Earl Cowper; and whilst you pity and lament the infatuation of the Turks, forget not that, nearer to you than Turkey, the human mind has its delusions to be pitied and lamented. If we consider a little how seldom,...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: though not perhaps from the same class of persons, or on the same ground?, as in the time of Earl Cowper; and whilst you pity and lament the infatuation of the Turks, forget not that, nearer to you than Turkey, the human mind has its delusions to be pitied and lamented. If we consider a little how seldom, even among men of education and information, enlarged views of general good have been entertained, we are much too sanguine if we expect the general mass to be informed by such views, though they have no doubt much improved in intelligence and information on preceding generations. But this mater has led me somewhat out of my way. It lay in my way, however, to hint a little to my friends in England, the propriety of keeping, for home use, a portion of the wonderment they are apt so liberally to bestow on the fatuity of the Turks. TO HIS MOTHER. Bagdad, May 9,1831. My Dearest Mother?I told you in a former letter that we were expecting the plague in this place. I have now to tell you that the plague has actually been here more than a month, and has destroyed, perhaps fifty thousand people, or two-thirds of all the inhabitants of the city. Yesterday, Mrs. Groves was taken ill, and her complaint now appears to be the plague. As no one can well calculate on escaping when the plague is in the house, I think it expedient to write you a few lines, that you may receive them in case of my death. I do not at present, thank God, feel any anxiety about the open prospect of death, which lies before me, or, if I have any, it is less on my account than on yours. This letter will not come unless I die. In that case, I shall have directed Mr. Groves to send you the money I may then be possessed of, and also to sell as many of my books and othei things as he can, sending you the pr...