Domestic manners furnish a more minute, but not unimportant contrast. In receiving strangers at his house and when they leave it, the Oriental testifies no great emotion. The visitor is welcomed rather by actions than words. An Arab or Turk having once accorded protection, which he does with a kind of distance and hauteur, never afterwards withdraws it, and his word may be relied on. In visiting, as is well known, the common but absurd practice, which obtains among ourselves, of urging those to stay longer, of whose company one is already tired, is obviated by the simple use of a little scented wood in a censer.
In their communications every thing tends rather to tranquillize the mind, than to excite the passions. The quarrels of the mere mob, indeed, evaporate in idle vociferation; but among persons of any breeding, the voice is scarcely ever raised above its ordinary tone.
The greatest number of menials in a family (and in the East they are very numerous) occasions no confusion. All is conducted in silence and order. All such directions as are in the common routine of affairs, are given by signs, and are instantly understood; not from pride, or as implying the vast distance between master and servant, but principally to avoid all equivoque, when persons of various descriptions are present, and, by making secresy a uniform habit, to avoid all suspicion from the adoption of mystery in giving orders before company, when any thing is to be said which it is not intended that company should hear.
The ingenuity of man in contriving his own unhappiness, is in no part of the world more conspicuous than in Europe. Our mutual intercourse is so beset with forms, that it becomes doubtful whether it be a good or an evil; and the individual, not unfrequently, leaves a company dissatisfied that he ever entered into it. Hence a continued desire of changing place and forming new acquaintance.
Whenever a number of persons meet together, eating and drinking seem to be a necessary bond of union; and they often do not separate without that kind of festivity which impairs the health of each, and creates dissensions, as it were, by its mechanical operation. The sole benefit which results from the social meals of the Arabs, is to us entirely unknown.—No man thinks himself incapacitated from injuring his neighbour, in consequence of having divided with him a loaf of bread, and a little salt, at the convivial board.
In the East social intercourse is less artificial, and less hampered with rules. It is maintained with more complacency, and relinquished, not without hope of renewal. We too have now indeed abandoned a part of its more inconvenient formalities; but some of its oppressive and despotic laws continue unaltered. The exterior may be changed; but the substance is identical.
In the East, they who are guilty of excess in drinking bury their inebriation in the gloom of their closet. By this, present disturbance, and future ill example are equally obviated, whatever may be the ill consequence to the wretched victim of intemperance. Of excess in eating there are few examples; for their longest meals, even when a series of dishes is presented, as at the tables of a Pasha or a Bey, are terminated in a few minutes. The moderation and temperance of diet indeed throughout the East are matters of high praise; and, whether virtues of climate, habit, or reflection, merit imitation among ourselves. The reward is present, uninterrupted health and tranquillity of mind.
If the multitude of wants constitute human inquietude, it must be remembered how much of what to us is indispensable is, to them, as if it had never been.
With them society is rendered tranquil and easy by mutual forbearance; with us it is vexed with the necessity of mutual adulation.—In the one region each man sets a fashion to himself, in the other all the constituent parts are wearied with serving an idol that the collective body alone has set up. Each stands bareheaded from respect to the other, when both might remain covered without inconvenience to either.
Politeness is, with the one, an easy compliance, with which all are satisfied; with the other, it is a difficult effort, from the practice and the experience of which the parties mutually retire discontented.