effective military organization which has ever been known—one which, from that time down to our own century, was the terror of Europe and of Asia.

He conceived the idea of exterminating Christianity by means of Christians.

The plan was, every year to enroll 1,000 Christian boys taken from the Christian families captured in war. Only the finest were selected. They must be very young, so that they would have no ties to remember, no human sympathies to enfeeble them.

These boys were placed under a rigid military training, with rich rewards and indulgences for zeal and aptitude, and terrible disgrace and punishment for the reverse.

They were familiarized with awful atrocities, their sensibilities destroyed, and at the same time intelligence rendered acute by severe intellectual training.

In this way was developed the strongest, the fiercest military corps, the most terrible instrument for the use of despotic power, ever created by subtle craft or employed by fanaticism.

They were called the Janizaries. And the very name struck a terror which almost conquered in advance.

When Orkhan led his first 1,000 boys to a dervish priest to bless them, he flung the sleeve of his robe over the head of one of them, and asked that the great God of Mahomet would make "their arrows keen, and their swords deadly."

Thereafter, the dervish cap which they wore had always a long sleeve-like pendant behind. And the prayer of the dervish was certainly answered.

One thousand boys recruited these ranks every year; and as the years rolled into centuries, the organization became a more and more terrible instrument of vengeance in the hands of the Sultan, whose body-guard it formed.

The line of Sultans following Othman was characterized by intellectual force of a high order. There was a swelling and irresistible tide of conquest which moved not only toward Europe, but into Asia. One tribe after another was absorbed, until all the strongholds of the old Saracen Empire were in the hands of the Sultans, who replaced the Caliphs; and like them were not alone temporal rulers, but the representatives of Mahomet himself.

Composed in this way of a great heterogeneous mass of races, hostile to each other, and to the Turk, the Ottoman Empire had but one element common to all. That was its religion. The Sultan stood to them in the place of the Prophet—hence they dared not defy nor resist his will. And it is this power of religious fanaticism which not alone created the Empire, but has held it together long after its vital forces have departed.

In the year 1453 the dream of Othman was realized. The long-hoped-for and long-dreaded event had come. Constantinople was in the hands of the Turks!

No event since the Christian era had been more momentous, more fraught with good and with evil.

The Ottoman Power had secured the most beautiful, the most coveted, and the most impregnable position in Europe.

But Europe was strangely enriched by the result. Driven out of its old home, Greek culture took refuge in other places, and what had been the exclusive possession of a few became the heritage of a continent.

Literature, fine arts, and music were revolutionized under the influence of Greek scholars who were refugees flying from the Turks. The period now set in which is known as the Renaissance. That is, art and intellectual life were born into a new and higher form by the introduction of Greek ideals.

The Sultan's palace, court, and the ceremonial attending him had now become like a fairy-tale in its splendor. He was approached as if he were a god. Men prostrated themselves in his presence, and spoke in whispers.

No man's head was more insecure on his shoulders than his Grand Vizier's. A mistake, a failure, and off it went!

Quick to discern ability, no sooner did a Sultan see a man who he thought could serve him—however low his station—than he clutched the unfortunate subject and placed him in high and responsible position.

In vain did the wretched man protest his unfitness for such an honor.

The Grand Vizier was next in authority to the Sultan himself, and was treated like a king. But a favorite form of curse was, "May you be Grand Vizier to the Sultan!"

When great European Ambassadors were presented to the Sultan at Constantinople, each one was taken separately, and, with a courtier holding him by the arm on each side, he was led like a prisoner into the great presence in awful silence.

There was the Sultan cross-legged on his divan, his turban and his robes blazing with jewels. He did not deign to speak nor even to look at the Ambassador, gazing away fixedly and with stony indifference as he was presented.

One of the first acts of a new Sultan was to kill all of his brothers, if he had any, or any one else who could possibly conspire to get his throne.

It was an effectual way of destroying conspiracies in the germ, as we do disease, and was a custom much honored.

An amiable English historian describes one of the Sultans as being an exalted character, pure, upright, and virtuous. He regrets that this admirable man did blind his only son and have three brothers bowstringed (strangled). But it was "the only blemish on his character"! Happy Turkey, to have such an historian!

When "Suleyman the Magnificent" was Sultan in 1550, the Ottoman Empire had reached its zenith. Its eastern frontier was in the heart of Asia, it held Egypt and the Northern Coast of Africa, and its European frontier reached that of Austria and Russia. It included, with the exception of Rome, every city famous in biblical or classical history.

Europe was dismayed at this advancing and irresistible power.

But there is a moment in the history of empires when they reach a climax. Then comes a decline,—a time when conquest ceases, and they are content to defend what they already possess; and finally are glad if they be permitted to exist at all!

Such a moment of climax arrived to the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century. The three centuries which have followed have been a gradual and sure decline.

The growth of a New Power beyond the Black Sea,—of Russia,—and brilliant combinations by leaders in Hungary, Poland, and Austria, arrested the fatal advance. Then came the struggle to keep instead of to acquire. Hungary and Poland were torn from her, and the dismemberment had begun.

With these losses came loss of prestige at home, and revolts and internal disorders. The Janizaries could no longer be trusted. They were open to bribes, intriguing, and a source of danger rather than strength; and finally a reforming Sultan touched a mine of gunpowder which led under their barracks, and they were exterminated, the bowstring and sword finishing the few which had escaped.

At this very time (1826) the Greek peninsula had just wrung her freedom from Turkey and was electing her new king.

Servia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Bulgaria (1876), one after another revolted, and was made autonomous, or self-governing, by the Powers of Europe. Thus was formed a group of states known as the Balkans, which made a bulwark of neutral territory between Europe and the dissolving and decaying Empire.

In 1850 Nicholas, the Czar of Russia, determined to take the Christians in Turkey under his own protection. This gave to Russia a virtual Protectorate over the Turkish dominions, and excited the jealousy of England and France.

Affecting to think it was an unfair advantage, and an infringement upon the rights of Turkey, those two countries united in a great war upon Russia. This was known as the Crimean War, which ended disastrously for Russia and placed the persecuted Christians under the combined protection of Europe.

England and France have made little use since of a right which they purchased with thousands of precious lives!

The present