DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9697#0056
xl
INTRODUCTION.
selves, after honourably providing pensions for their
officials, and handing over a substantial balance to
the treasury.
During its life of 244 years the Levant Company
had had a most exemplary and noble career, bene-
ficial not only to its members, but to the English
nation, building up for her her commerce, and mak-
ing her name respected in the East. It would take
a volume to enumerate the deeds of their great men,
and how they have not only contributed to our
commercial success, but have embellished our litera-
ture with admirable studies both of the past and of
the present. Sir Paul Ricaut and Sir James Porter
wrote admirable works on the policy and govern-
ment of the Turkish people. Montague, Covel, and
Pococke gave some of the earliest accounts of the
people of the East in our tongue.
Under the influence of the Company, considerable
attention was paid to archaeology : Spon and Wheeler,
Chishull, Shaw, and last, but not least, Lord Elgin,
who rescued the marbles of the Parthenon from
being damaged in the bombardment of 1827. The
Company's doctors used to make a special study of
the plague. Russell on the Plague was quite the
standard work of its time, and Dr. Maclean also
made a special study of that dread disease; and to
the efforts of these men we may almost say that we
owe the gradual diminution and eventual eradication
of the malady.
The rescuing of slaves from corsairs, the libera-
tion of oppressed Christians, whether they happened
INTRODUCTION.
selves, after honourably providing pensions for their
officials, and handing over a substantial balance to
the treasury.
During its life of 244 years the Levant Company
had had a most exemplary and noble career, bene-
ficial not only to its members, but to the English
nation, building up for her her commerce, and mak-
ing her name respected in the East. It would take
a volume to enumerate the deeds of their great men,
and how they have not only contributed to our
commercial success, but have embellished our litera-
ture with admirable studies both of the past and of
the present. Sir Paul Ricaut and Sir James Porter
wrote admirable works on the policy and govern-
ment of the Turkish people. Montague, Covel, and
Pococke gave some of the earliest accounts of the
people of the East in our tongue.
Under the influence of the Company, considerable
attention was paid to archaeology : Spon and Wheeler,
Chishull, Shaw, and last, but not least, Lord Elgin,
who rescued the marbles of the Parthenon from
being damaged in the bombardment of 1827. The
Company's doctors used to make a special study of
the plague. Russell on the Plague was quite the
standard work of its time, and Dr. Maclean also
made a special study of that dread disease; and to
the efforts of these men we may almost say that we
owe the gradual diminution and eventual eradication
of the malady.
The rescuing of slaves from corsairs, the libera-
tion of oppressed Christians, whether they happened