But how was this to be
done? Methley was much too ill to be kept in his saddle, and wheel
carriages, as means of travelling, were unknown. There is,
however, such a thing as an "araba," a vehicle drawn by oxen, in
which the wives of a rich man are sometimes dragged four or five
miles over the grass by way of recreation. The carriage is rudely
framed, but you recognise in the simple grandeur of its design a
likeness to things majestic; in short, if your carpenter's son were
to make a "Lord Mayor's coach" for little Amy, he would build a
carriage very much in the style of a Turkish araba. No one had
ever heard of horses being used for drawing a carriage in this part
of the world, but necessity is the mother of innovation as well as
of invention. I was fully justified, I think, in arguing that
there were numerous instances of horses being used for that purpose
in our own country--that the laws of nature are uniform in their
operation over all the world (except Ireland)--that that which was
true in Piccadilly, must be true in Adrianople--that the matter
could not fairly be treated as an ecclesiastical question, for that
the circumstance of Methley's going on to Stamboul in an araba
drawn by horses, when calmly and dispassionately considered, would
appear to be perfectly consistent with the maintenance of the
Mahometan religion as by law established.
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