Journal of a Residence at Bagdad / During the Years 1830 and 1831

Transcriber’s Notes:
1) Mousul/Mosul, piastre/piaster, Shiraz/Sheeraz, Itch-Meeazin/Ech-Miazin/Etchmiazin, each used on numerous occasions;
2) Arnaouts/Arnaoots, Dr. Beagrie/Dr. Beagry, Beirout/Bayrout/Beyraut(x2), Saltett/Sallett, Shanakirke/Shammakirke, Trebizond/Trebisand - once each.
All left as in original text.
LONDON: DENNETT, PRINTER, LEATHER LANE.
LONDON: JAMES NISBET, BERNERS STREET. M DCCC XXXII.
This little work needs nothing from us to recommend it to attention. In its incidents it presents more that is keenly interesting, both to the natural and to the spiritual feelings, than it would have been easy to combine in the boldest fiction. And then it is not fiction. The manner in which the story is told leaves realities unencumbered, to produce their own impression. It might gratify the imagination, and even aid in enlarging our practical views, to consider such scenes as possible, and to fancy in what spirit a Christian might meet them; but it extends our experience, and invigorates our faith, to know that, having actually taken place, it is thus that they have been met.
To those who are looking for the glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ, this volume will exhibit indications of the advancement of the world towards the state in which he shall find it at his coming. The diffusion in the east of European notions and practices; the desire on the part of the rulers to possess themselves of the advantages of western intellect and skill; and on the side of the governed, the conviction of the comparative security and comfort of English domination; the vastly increased intercourse between those nations and the west, and the proposals for still further accelerating and facilitating that intercourse: all these things mark the rapid tendency, of which we have so many other signs, towards the production of one common mind throughout the human race, to issue in that combination for a common resistance of God, which, as of old, when the people were one, and had all one language, and it seemed that nothing could be restrained from them which they had imagined to do,—shall cause the Lord to come down and confound their purpose. Already has this unity of views and aims, with marvellous rapidity, prevailed in the European and American world; the press, the steam-engine by land and water, the multiplication of societies and unions, portend an advancement in it, to which nothing can set limits but the intervention of God: and now it appears that the mountain-fixedness of Asiatic prejudice and institution shall suddenly be dissolved, and absorbed into the general vortex.