g any political prophecy; I do but mean to set down some
characteristics in their existing state (if I have any right to fancy,
that in any true measure we at the distance of some thousand miles know
it), which naturally suggest to us to pursue their prospective history
in one direction, not in another.

Now it seems safe to say, in the first place, that some time or other
the Ottomans will come to an end. All human power has its termination
sooner or later; states rise to fall; and, secure as they may be now, so
one day they will be in peril and in course of overthrow. Nineveh, Tyre,
Babylon, Persia, Egypt, and Greece, each has had its day; and this was
so clear to mankind 2,000 years ago, that the conqueror of Carthage
wept, as he gazed upon its flames, for he saw in them the conflagration
of her rival, his own Rome. "_Fuit Ilium._" The Saracens, the Moguls,
have had their day; those European states, so great three centuries ago,
Spain and Poland, Venice and Genoa, are now either extinct or in
decrepitude. What is the lot of all states, is still more strikingly
fulfilled in the case of empires; kingdoms indeed are of slow growth,
but empires commonly are but sudden manifestations of power, which are
as short-lived as they are sudden. Even the Roman empire, which is an
exception, did not last beyond five hundred years; the Saracenic three
hundred; the Spanish three hundred; the Russian has lasted about a
hundred and fifty, that is, since the Czar Peter; the British not a
hundred; the Ottoman has reached four or five. If there be an empire
which does not at all feel the pressure of this natural law, but lasts
continuously, repairs its losses, renews its vigour, and with every
successive age emulates its antecedent fame, such a power must be more
than human, and has no place in our present inquiry. We are concerned,
not with any supernatural power, to which is promised perpetuity, but
with the Ottoman empire, famous in history, vigorous in constitution,
but, after all, human, and nothing more. There is, then, neither risk
nor merit in prophesying the eventual fall of the Osmanlis, as of the
Seljukians, as of the Gaznevides before them; the only wonder is that
they actually have lasted as much as four hundred years.

Such will be the issue and the sum of their whole history; but, certain
as this is, and confidently as it may be pronounced, nothing else can be
prudently asserted about their future. Times and moments are in