Men of letters there are at present none, and the highest of their sciences is the knowledge of grammar. When I lived in Damascus, some wit (the first thing of the kind known) uttered a pun or squib reflecting on the corpulency of the pasha, and he was banished for it! The old observation of the caliph, as he fired the Alexandrian library, holds true in the East still—"If the books agree with the Koran, they are useless; if they oppose it, they are pernicious; and in both cases they are unnecessary."
大马士革目前为止还没有出现学者，他们最高端的学科就是语法知识。我住在那儿的时候，有一个聪明的家伙（第一次听说这种事情）说了一句双关语来嘲讽一个大官的肥胖，之后他便因此而被流放！哈里发（伊斯兰教主）在放火烧掉亚历山大图书馆的时候说过一句至今止都被东方人认为是真理的话：和《古兰经》一致的书都是无用之书；和《古兰经》相悖的书都是有害之书；所以，我们有《古兰经》就够了。
"But has not Damascus one hundred thousand inhabitants?" says the traveller. "Where are their newspapers, spreading light and knowledge through a portion of the sixty millions who use the noble Arabic language? Take me to the office of some Oriental Sun, Times, Globe, or Morning Chronicle"
“可大马士革不是有十多万的民众吗？”一名游客问道。“他们的报纸呢，在六千万个使用高贵的阿拉伯语的部分人群中传播光明和知识的报纸呢？带我去《东方太阳报》、《时报》、《环球报》、或者《晨报》的办公室吧。”
There is no such thing. Even in Constantinople there is only one newspaper, and the one half of it is in Turkish, and the other in French! Tyranny and superstition, like two monstrous mill-stones, rest upon and compress the energies of the oriental nations; even Greece, the fountain of science and literary and mental activity, was for a time blotted from the rank of nations, and the inquisitive character of its people all but annihilated by the stern rule of the Turks…
这里没有这种办公室。就算在君士坦丁堡也就只有一家报纸，并且有一半的报纸用的是土耳其语，另一半则用的法语！专制和迷信就像两块巨石压制着东方国家的活力；甚至是希腊——科学、文学和精神活动迸发的源泉之地，也曾一度受到过此等国家的不良影响，导致希腊民众的探索精神在土耳其的统治下消失殆尽……
But there is another great difference between the general appearance of London and of Damascus, namely, in the eastern city you see not the bright, joyous countenance of woman—she is deeply veiled. In Egypt she is enveloped from head to foot in a dark, and in Syria in a white sheet, which effectually obliterates all traces of shape, absolutely equalizes to the eye all ranks, ages, and conditions, and suggests to the beholder the idea of a company of ghosts……
除此之外，伦敦和大马士革在整体上还有一个很大的不同之处，那就是，在东方城市里看不到妇女们脸上的轻快和欢笑——这些都被掩藏在了面纱之下——埃及的女人们从头到脚都用黑纱包裹，叙利亚的女人们则用的白布，这些白布彻底遮住了她们的身材，使得别人无法分辨她们的身份、年龄和条件，在旁人看来简直就是一群幽灵……
