Note 296 — Chapter III
Reading edition
In 1772 Burke had said that he did not wish well to Turkey, for any people but the Turks, situated as they are, would have been cultivated in three hundred years; yet they grow more gross in the very native soil of civility and refinement. But he did not expect to live to see the Turkish barbarian civilised by the Russian.—Corr. i. p. 402.