It was once the most potent government of the old world, succeeding both to the sway of the Saracens, and to the mighty Roman empire, after its seat had been transferred from the west to Constantinople, the most easterly point at the south side of the European continent. For centuries it stood successfully in arms against all the powers of Europe and Asia. No other empire, now existing, has continued so long powerful and with such wide-spread dominion. The growth of British power is of modern date, and its supremacy, as yet, of comparatively brief duration. Great Britain has been repeatedly conquered, and been the theatre of civil wars and revolutions. France has experienced the same fate in a greater degree. Both these countries, now the most powerful in western Europe, were of comparatively small account when the Turkish empire was at its zenith. One of them seems to have culminated, and the destiny of the other depends, perhaps, on the life of a single great man. The glory of Venice, so dazzling in the middle ages, has passed away, and Spain, who, in her most palmy days, could never cope with Turkey, has sunk far lower in the scale of nations than the Ottomans. Austria, now tottering to her fall, has only risen to empire by the conquests of the Turks, crippling the Hungarians and placing them in her power. For centuries that brave nation, bordering Turkey on its eastern frontier, had to stand the shock of the Turkish wave which, but for the resistance of the Magyars, would have swept over western Europe. In the day that the Hungarian power was finally cloven down by Solyman the Great, in the disastrous battle of Mohatz, with which ended the government of the native princes, the fatal sway of the Hapsburgs commenced, rising by degrees into an empire which consists of materials as heterogeneous as those of the Turkish empire itself, and is held together only by military force, wielded by the arm of despotism, once strong, but growing weaker and weaker every hour. It was the peculiar misfortune of Hungary to be placed as a barrier between the Turks and the rest of Europe; for upon herwas visited the reprisals of the Ottomans for the crusades of other Christian powers. After her subjugation by the Turks, she became too weak for independence, and the Hapsburgs so gained, by her annexation with Austria, that they were afterwards able to wage most damaging wars against the house of Othman, which, in conjunction with the aggressions of Russia, then beginning to emerge from barbarism,

and to play a weighty role in the European drama, tended to weaken the Turkish empire, and to precipitate its decline. In the same way the wars between Poland and Turkey, in which the illustrious Sobieski played so brilliant a part, paved the way for the downfall and parting of Sarmatia, and the aggrandizement and growth of Russia, which absorbed the largest portion of that. ancient kingdom, and was thus enabled to encroach upon the Turkish empire and to menace all Europe.

Turkey stands upon three continents; the most important portion of it lies in Asia, but the empire comprises large portions of Europe and Africa. Previous to the revolt of the Greeks, forty years ago, European Turkey formed nearly the fourth part of the Ottoman dominions, and among European states was the sixth in rank with regard to territory, and the ninth in respect of population, containing about 186,000 square miles, and a population of about eleven millions. Those parts of Greece which succeeded in: throwing off the Turkish yoke, include the Morea, Livadia, and. the Cyclades-an extent of territory about as large as Portugal,. or Denmark, with Holstein, and which contained a population of 1,350,000, before the commencement of their revolution. The loss of these countries reduces the empire in Europe about one-seventh and the population one-eighth. The finest countries of the old world-Thrace, Greece, Asia Minor, Colchis, Armenia, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt, together with the islands of the Archipelago and spicy Arabia, whose commerce connects Asia and Africa with Europe, and unites the East with the West, have been ruled for five hundred years by, the Ottomans. They are the only barbarians who have reduced civilized nations to their yoke with· out mingling with them-without adopting their language, their religion, their sciences, their arts, and their manners. They have remained strangers in the midst of Europe, and for four centuries. occupied the classic soil of Athens, Sparta, Corinth and Thebes, upon which, 2,500 years ago, was maintained the independence of Europe, and where flourished civil freedom and the refinements of polished life.

The whole population is nearly as large as that of Austria, and is larger than the population of Great Britain and Ireland, or of the United States, and the soil is capable of maintaining four times the amount. In point of religion, the Mahometans number as three to two against all others in the empire; in point of race,.

the Turks number more than one-third of the population. In Africa, the population is not one-ninth of the whole, while in Asia and Europe it is nearly equally divided; but Asia is the principal seat of the Mahometans and Turks.

The Osmanli Toorkees, like the Magyar Toorkees, or Hungarians, differ from the other Toorkee tribes by their lofty stature, their European heads and features, their abundant beards, and fair complexions, derived from their original Caucasian extraction of Yuchi race, or from an early intermixture with it, and with the numerous captives they were for ages incorporating from Kashmere, Affghanistan, Persia, Syria, Natolia, Armenia, Greece, and eastern Europe. The Osmanli Turks form but a small proportion of the population of Turkey. They are the descendants of a people who still inhabit the shores of the Caspian, the banks of the Oxus, and the steppes of Upper Asia, in the region of Mount Altai. They are a fine looking race of men, seldom below the middle size, with lofty foreheads, dark eyes, finely chiseled features, and limbs cast in the Grecian mould. The full form of their limbs may, perhaps, in some measure, be attributed to their loose mode of clothing themselves, leaving the body free from those ligatures which prevail among their western neighbors; but the handsome appearance and personal elegance of the Osmanli are chiefly owing to the mixture of the blood of the best Caucasian races in his veins. The conquering tribes have invariably come from the north or the high regions of the east. Like rolling waves, they have incessantly poured upon the west and south for ages, driving intermediate nations before them, or breaking through discomfited tribes, which, in order to escape, made the most destructive inroads themselves. Six centuries ago, the Osmanli branch of the Turks migrated into Asia Minor, under the father of Othman, or Osman, from whom they are called Ottomans, and by themselves Osmanlis. The name Turk they reject as implying barbarism. Long before this period the Turks had extensively spread over Lower Asia, and, according to the high authority of Dr. Latham, that race had supplied all the great Asiatic conquerors, from the parts north of the Oxus, with the exceptions of Zenghis Khan and his descendants, and the Mantchoo conquerors of China. Quitting their primitive abodes on the upper steppes of the Asiatic continent, tribe after tribe of that martial family of nations had poured down upon the rich lands of the southern and western

regions, when the power of the early Mohammedan Caliph had decayed like that of the Greek emperors. One branch of the Turks, called the Seljukian, from their traditionary patriarch Seljuk Khan, had acquired and consolidated a mighty empire, more than two centuries before the name of the Ottomans was heard. The Seljukian Turks had been once masters of nearly all Asia Minor, of Syria, Mesapotamia, Armenia, part of Persia and western Turkastan ; and their great Sultans, Toghrul, Beg, and others, are among the most renowned conquerors described in Oriental and Byzantine history. But by the middle of the thir. teenth century of the Christian era, when the Ottomans appeared, the Mongols had rent away the southern and eastern territory of the Seljukian Sultan. In the centre and south of Asia Minor, other independent Seljukian chiefs ruled various principalities, and the Greek emperors of Constantinople had recovered a con siderable portion of the old Roman provinces in the north and east of that peninsula. The Ottomans, therefore, were a welcome ac cession of strength. Never, since the Turks penetrated into Europe, have they bowed the neck to the foe, though frequently defeated in battle. Their empire is still unbroken, and may yet survive those despotisms who regard it as sick unto death, and in anticipation of its fall, are hovering around it like the eagle, the vulture, and the raven, over their prey. The dynasty of the house of Othman is the oldest in Europe, in a direct line, and whether it be referred to "the divine right of kings," or to that might which has hitherto made right among nations—the sword-or to the true source of legitimate power, the will of the people, the claim of the Ottoman emperor to rule is second to that of no crowned head in Europe or Asia. He is the lineal descendant of Othman; nor is the race extinct in him, nor heirs wanting to its ancient throne.

In Europe, less than three millions of Turks rule over four times their number of subjects. The brave and haughty who govern, but do not cultivate the land, are like the ruling race in the old Roman empire, the Magyar race in Hungary, the German race in Austria, the Normans in England, and the ruling race in China, where the Mongols and the Mantchoos, in graduated proportions, are the masters, and nearly form the whole military force of the empire, consisting entirely of cavalry, probably less than 250,000 strong, covering the inert mass of 300,000,000 sub

jects, with the aid of 800,000 policemen, denominated infantry, and an enormous crowd of civilians and satellites, all intended for internal rule, and incapable of external vigor. Thus have the Ottomans been the ruling race and the military force of the Turkish empire. The Janisaries may appear to have formed an exception; but they really did not, for they were a machine in the hands of the Ottoman power, and when that power found them dangerous, it annihilated them at one fell stroke. It created and it destroyed. It infused its own spirit, courage, and energy into these kidnapped, enslaved children of the effeminate and degenerate Greeks, and made them the terror of Asia and Europe, showing that the degeneracy of a race does not consist in the deterioration of its blood, but arises from the adverse circumstances by which it is surrounded, and that it is capable of regeneration and pristine heroism, when it is again brought under conditions equally favorable to those by which it won imperishable renown. Constantinople has exercised a more important influence on the destinies of mankind than any other in existence in modern times. It broke in pieces the Roman empire, and was the principal cause of the fall of its western division; for after the charms of the Bosphorus had rendered its shores the head of empire, the forces of the west were no longer able to resist the barbarian invaders. It supported the empire of the East for a thousand years after Rome had yielded to the assault of Alaric, and it preserved the seeds of ancient genius till the mind of Europe was prepared for their reception. It diverted the Latin Crusaders from Palestine, and caused the downfall of the empire of the east by the arms of the Franks; and it attracted, afterwards, the Osmanlis from the centre of Asia, and brought about their lasting settlement in the finest provinces [of Europe. It has since been the object of ceaseless ambition and strife to the principal European powers. A kingdom in itself, it is more coveted than many realms. Austria and Russia have alternately united and contended for the prize. It broke up the alliance of Erfurth, and brought Napoleon to Moscow and to St. Helena. In these latter days it has dissolved all former alliances, created new ones, and united the forces of England and France on the Bosphorus to prevent the seizure of this matchless and unique city by the arms of the Czar. But though the natural strength and incomparable local advantages of Constantinople have enabled the empire, of which it formed the