ccession
described as an element of the political life of the Osmanlis--on the
other as an appointment over which they have no power; and obviously it
is from its very nature independent of them. It is a form of life
external to the community it vivifies.

Probably it was the wonderful continuity of so many great Sultans in
their early ages, which wrought in their minds the idea of a divine
mission as the attribute of the dynasty; and its acquisition of the
Caliphate would fix it indelibly within them. And here again, we have
another special instrument of their imperial greatness, but still an
external one. I have already had occasion to observe, that barbarians
make conquests by means of great men, in whom they, as it were, live;
ten successive monarchs, of extraordinary vigour and talent, carried on
the Ottomans to empire. Will any one show that those monarchs can be
fairly called specimens of the nation, any more than Zingis was the
specimen of the Tartars? Have they not rather acted as the _Deus e
machina_, carrying on the drama, which has languished or stopped, since
the time when they ceased to animate it? Contrast the Ottoman history in
this respect with the rise of the Anglo-Indian Empire, or with the
military successes of Great Britain under the Regency; or again with the
literary eminence of England under Charles the Second or even Anne,
which owed little to those monarchs. Kings indeed at various periods
have been most effective patrons of art and science; but the question
is, not whether English or French literature has ever been indebted to
royal encouragement, but whether the Ottomans can do anything at all, as
a nation, without it.

Indeed, I should like it investigated what internal history the Ottomans
have at all; what inward development of any kind they have made since
they crossed Mount Olympus and planted themselves in Broussa; how they
have changed shape and feature, even in lesser matters, since they were
a state, or how they are a year older than when they first came into
being. We see among them no representative of Confucius, Chi-hoagti, and
the sect of Ta-osse; no magi; no Pisistratus and Harmodius; no Socrates
and Alcibiades; no patricians and plebeians; no Caesar; no invasion or
adoption of foreign mysteries; no mythical impersonation of an Ali; no
Suffeeism; no Guelphs and Gibellines; nothing really on the type of
Catholic religious orders; no Luther; nothing, in short, which, for good
or