the Holy Land, and took Jerusalem. He is said to have
travelled round his vast dominions twelve times. So potent was he, that
he actually gave away kingdoms, and had for feudatories great princes.
He gave to his cousin his territories in Asia Minor, and planted him
over against Constantinople, as an earnest of future conquests; and he
may be said to have finally allotted to the Turcomans the fair regions
of Western Asia, over which they roam to this day.

All human greatness has its term; the more brilliant was this great
Sultan's rise, the more sudden was his extinction; and the earlier he
came to his power, the earlier did he lose it He had reigned twenty
years, and was but thirty-seven years old, when he was lifted up with
pride and came to his end. He disgraced and abandoned to an assassin his
faithful vizir, at the age of ninety-three, who for thirty years had
been the servant and benefactor of the house of Seljuk. After obtaining
from the Caliph the peculiar and almost incommunicable title of "the
commander of the faithful," unsatisfied still, he wished to fix his own
throne in Bagdad, and to deprive his impotent superior of his few
remaining honours. He demanded the hand of the daughter of the Greek
Emperor, a Christian, in marriage. A few days, and he was no more; he
had gone out hunting, and returned indisposed; a vein was opened, and
the blood would not flow. A burning fever took him off, only eighteen
days after the murder of his vizir, and less than ten before the day
when the Caliph was to have been removed from Bagdad.

8.

Such is human greatness at the best, even were it ever so innocent; but
as to this poor Sultan, there is another aspect even of his glorious
deeds. If I have seemed here or elsewhere in these Lectures to speak of
him or his with interest or admiration, only take me, Gentlemen, as
giving the external view of the Turkish history, and that as
introductory to the determination of its true significance. Historians
and poets may celebrate the exploits of Malek; but what were they in the
sight of Him who has said that whoso shall strike against His
corner-stone shall be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall, shall be
ground to powder? Looking at this Sultan's deeds as mere exhibitions of
human power, they were brilliant and marvellous; but there was another
judgment of them formed in the West, and other feelings than admiration
roused by them in the faith and the chivalry of Christendom.