command of the conqueror, "the Metropolis of the Eastern Church was transformed into a mosque; the rich and portable instruments of superstition had been removed; the crosses were thrown down low; and the walls, which were covered with images and mosaics, were washed and purified, and restored to a state of naked simplicity. On the same day, or on the ensuing Friday, the muezzin, or crier, ascended the most lofty turret, and proclaimed the azan, or public invitation in the name of God and His Prophet, the Imam preached, and Muhammad II performed the namaz thanksgiving on the first altar, where the Christian mysteries had so lately been celebrated before the last of the Cæsars. From St Sophia he proceeded to the august but desolate mansion of one hundred successors of the great Constantine, but which, in a few hours, had been stripped of the pomp of royalty. A melancholy reflection on the vicissitudes of human greatness forced itself upon his mind, and he repeated an elegant distich of Persian poetry:

"Now the spider draws the curtain in the Cæsar's palace hall, And the owl proclaims the watch beneath Afrasiab's vaulted dome.""

After a short interval Muhammad conquered Wallachia and annexed Servia and Bosnia; but he was severely repulsed at Belgrade (A.D. 1456) owing chiefly to the heroism of Hunyady, nobly seconded by the valiant monk, St John Capistran. In Epirus, too, he failed to reduce to submission the well-known national hero Skanderbeg. Ottoman arms were thereupon pushed westward in the direction of Venice, while

the famous Rhodes became the scene of a prolonged but unsuccessful siege on the part of the Turks, whose failure in this direction was compensated by their success in storming the Castle of Otranto near Brindisi (A.D. 1480). In A.D. 1481 Muhammad issued orders to prepare a colossal expedition. Whither bound, and for what purpose, must ever remain undisclosed, for the death of the ambitious Muslim sovereign hid his purposes from view, and the capital of the Byzantine Empire which might have been the aim and object of these gigantic preparations remained secure from the foreign invader. Thus in A.D. 1481 ended the glorious reign of the glorious Muhammad II.

Now came a swing of the pendulum. The new Sultan, Bayazid II., a prince the exact antithesis of his father, was indolent, and utterly unfitted to fill a throne which demanded energy and vigour of mind, no less than of body. His long reign of thirty-one years was almost entirely consumed with family troubles and dissensions. It is only necessary on this occasion to allude to the extraordinary incidents which centre round the hapless Prince Jamshid, generally called and known to fame as "Prince Jem," a brother of the reigning monarch. It may well be supposed that, as this young man was possessed of great force of character, he might at any moment become a dangerous candidate for power, and possibly monarchy. So D'Aubusson, the Grand Master of Rhodes, conceived the strange idea of seizing Prince Jem, and incarcerating him in one of the dungeons of the Order, receiving from the Sultan a large hire for this villainy and rascality. Years rolled on and the

unprincipled head of the Christian brotherhood received during the time large sums of money from different directions, inasmuch as many in high places wished to obtain possession of the captive prince, and were willing to pay handsomely for a prize which could be turned to good account. At length, instigated by Charles VIII. of France, the Pope of Rome appeared on the scene, and in the most generous manner Innocent VIII. agreed to become the jailor of the unfortunate captive. On the death (A.D. 1492) of this benevolent occupant of the Pontifical chair, his successor, the celebrated Alexander Borgia, conceived a grand policy, and entered upon negotiations at Constantinople, the aim and object of which were that Prince Jem should be assassinated in return for the payment to the magnanimous captor of no less a sum than 300,000 ducats, which the successor of St Peter graciously consented to accept. How death came to the captive is not known for certain, but "the balance of probability, however," says Mr Stanley Lane-Poole in the volume "Turkey" which he contributed to the Story of Nations series (a work largely used in this brief summary of Ottoman history) "inclines towards poison, and Alexander Borgia has so many crimes on the place where his conscience should have been, that it can do him no harm to bear one murder more. The curious conclusion one draws from the whole melancholy tale is that there was not apparently a single honest prince in Christendom to take compassion upon the captive; nor one to reprobate the ungenerous and venal intrigues of the Grand Master, the Pope, and Charles VIII. Each contended with the other for the prize of perfidy and shame.

Bayazid may be excused for his desire to see his brother in safe keeping; but what can be said for the head of the Christian Church, and the leader of an Order of religious knights, who eagerly betrayed a helpless refugee for the sake of the infidel's gold. When we come to read of the heroism of the knights of Rhodes and Malta, it may be well to recall the history of Prince Jem, and to weigh well the chivalry that could fatten upon such treason."

In A.D. 1512 the feeble Bayazid was deposed by his son Selim I., known in after years as "Selim the Grim," who commenced his reign by cruelly butchering the numerous members of the royal family who were likely to prove dangerous. Not content with giving the order for their death, he himself watched the gruesome scene from an adjoining room. This inhuman tyrant soon found an opportunity for gratifying his thirst for blood on a more lavish scale than the murder of a handful of helpless youths and children. It happened in this wise. By a long series of conquests, Shah Ismail, the Safavi Monarch of Persia, had wrested province after province from the hands of the various petty chiefs who held possession of the territories under the sway of Hulaku Khan, and at a later date of Taimur, and had extended his dominions until they became conterminous in parts with the limits of the Ottoman Empire. The Persians were, as a nation, members of the unorthodox Shia sect of Muhammadans: this circumstance afforded the "orthodox" Selim a pretext for suddenly sweeping down upon the "heretics" of whom it is said no less than 40,000 were either massacred in cold blood or

imprisoned. War with the monarch of Persia ensued, and the victory of the Turks at Chaldiran (A.D. 1514) was followed by the annexation of the Persian provinces of Kurdistan and Diarbekir which thenceforth formed part of the Ottoman Empire. A series of successes against the Mamluk Sultans of Egypt (A.D. 1516-1517) gave to the Turks authority over Mecca and Madina, the sacred cities of Arabia. The prestige and importance thus gained were materially enhanced by the action of the last of the Abbaside Khalifs, who, in A.D. 1518, made over to the victorious monarch who sat upon the throne of majesty at Constantinople, the spiritual powers which attached to the Khalifat, and added to the coveted heritage, as outward and visible tokens, the standard and cloak of the Prophet of Arabia, Thenceforth, in spite of the objection-in theory fatal, but in practice more or less immaterial that the Sultan of Turkey is not descended from the Quraish tribe of Arabia, the Ottoman ruler has been the supreme head of Islam and Commander of the Faithful.

Selim the Grim died on 22nd September, A.D. 1520, after a brief but glorious reign of eight years, during which time the empire over which he ruled was enlarged by the inclusion of Egypt, Syria, and Arabia. Albeit a bloodthirsty and cruel tyrant he was admittedly a great sovereign. But his glory was eclipsed and the splendour of his reign dwarfed by the deeds of his son and successor Sulaiman, the Magnificent, who controlled the destinies of the Turkish Empire for the long period of forty-six years. Gracious in manner, firm in his administration, of