es, Mede, Bactrian, Parthian, and
Scythian, changing into Turk and Tartar, we need take no heed until
they invade us in our own historic territory.

19. Using therefore the terms 'Gothic' and 'Classic' for broad
distinction of the northern and central zones of this our own territory,
we may conveniently also use the word 'Arab'[27] for the whole southern
zone. The influence of Egypt vanishes soon after the fourth century,
while that of Arabia, powerful from the beginning, rises in the sixth
into an empire whose end we have not seen. And you may most rightly
conceive the religious principle which is the base of that empire, by
remembering, that while the Jews forfeited their prophetic power by
taking up the profession of usury over the whole earth, the Arabs
returned to the simplicity of prophecy in its beginning by the well of
Hagar, and are not opponents to Christianity; but only to the faults or
follies of Christians. They keep still their faith in the one God who
spoke to Abraham their father; and are His children in that simplicity,
far more truly than the nominal Christians who lived, and live, only to
dispute in vociferous council, or in frantic schism, the relations of
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

[Footnote 27: Gibbon's fifty-sixth chapter begins with a sentence which
may be taken as the epitome of the entire history we have to
investigate: "The three great nations of the world, the Greeks, the
Saracens, and the Franks, encountered each other on the theatre of
Italy." I use the more general word, Goths, instead of Franks; and the
more accurate word, Arab, for Saracen; but otherwise, the reader will
observe that the division is the same as mine. Gibbon does not
recognize the Roman people as a nation--but only the Roman power as an
empire.]

20. Trusting my reader then in future to retain in his mind without
confusion the idea of the three zones, Gothic, Classic, and Arab, each
divided into four countries, clearly recognizable through all ages of
remote or recent history;--I must farther, at once, simplify for him the
idea of the Roman _Empire_ (see note to last paragraph,) in the manner
of its affecting them. Its nominal extent, temporary conquests, civil
dissensions, or internal vices, are scarcely of any historical moment at
all; the real Empire is effectual only as an exponent of just law,
military order, and mechanical art, to untrained races, and as a
translation of Greek thought into less dif