caliph to retire from Bagdad, and establish his own residence and the
camp of his Barbarian favorites at Samara on the Tigris, about twelve
leagues above the city of Peace. His son Motawakkel was a jealous and
cruel tyrant: odious to his subjects, he cast himself on the fidelity
of the strangers, and these strangers, ambitious and apprehensive, were
tempted by the rich promise of a revolution. At the instigation, or at
least in the cause of his son, they burst into his apartment at the hour
of supper, and the caliph was cut into seven pieces by the same swords
which he had recently distributed among the guards of his life and
throne. To this throne, yet streaming with a father's blood, Montasser
was triumphantly led; but in a reign of six months, he found only the
pangs of a guilty conscience. If he wept at the sight of an old tapestry
which represented the crime and punishment of the son of Chosroes, if
his days were abridged by grief and remorse, we may allow some pity to
a parricide, who exclaimed, in the bitterness of death, that he had lost
both this world and the world to come. After this act of treason, the
ensigns of royalty, the garment and walking-staff of Mahomet, were given
and torn away by the foreign mercenaries, who in four years created,
deposed, and murdered, three commanders of the faithful. As often as
the Turks were inflamed by fear, or rage, or avarice, these caliphs were
dragged by the feet, exposed naked to the scorching sun, beaten with
iron clubs, and compelled to purchase, by the abdication of their
dignity, a short reprieve of inevitable fate. At length, however, the
fury of the tempest was spent or diverted: the Abbassides returned to
the less turbulent residence of Bagdad; the insolence of the Turks
was curbed with a firmer and more skilful hand, and their numbers were
divided and destroyed in foreign warfare. But the nations of the East
had been taught to trample on the successors of the prophet; and the
blessings of domestic peace were obtained by the relaxation of strength
and discipline. So uniform are the mischiefs of military despotism, that
I seem to repeat the story of the praetorians of Rome.

While the flame of enthusiasm was damped by the business, the pleasure,
and the knowledge, of the age, it burnt with concentrated heat in the
breasts of the chosen few, the congenial spirits, who were ambitious of
reigning either in this world or in the next. How carefully soever the
book of pr