Two centuries more wear away, and we come at last to its culminating hour. In this long interval the Ottoman Turks under Bajazet and Amurath have torn away all the outlying provinces of the empire till nothing remains but the capital.

From Trebizond to the Adriatic, from Iconium and Nice to the Danube and the steeps of Belgrade, the horsetail standard- the chosen symbol of Turkish supremacy is everywhere displayed. The record of these conquests is a record of violence, plunder, massacre and blood.

At Nicopolis a hundred thousand soldiers of the west, who had boasted that if the sky should fall they could uphold it on their lances, were overthrown with fearful carnage. And at the fatal battle of Warna ten thousand Christians met their death. And these are but samples of countless fields of blood through which the savage Turk had marched to conquest. And now the hour of doom has come for the great metropolis itself.

Those massive walls, the monument of the genius of the great Constantine, which have shielded for more than a thousand years the feeble Cæsars of the East, are girt with a host of two hundred and fifty-eight thousand Turks under the command of Mahomet II., surnamed "The Great Destroyer." A glance tells us that the siege is well advanced. We see the trenches and the embankments, the mounds and the towers. We see the fascines ready for the ditch, and the ladders prepared for scaling the wall. We see the waving standards of that mighty circle of warriors ready to mount the breach, and the white sails of the three hundred and twenty ships that block up the harbor. But now for the first time in the history of sieges the battering-ram is nowhere seen, but from fourteen distant points explosions like bursts of

thunder rend the air, and great globes of stone of six hundred pounds weight are rained down upon the falling walls; and as the cavalry dash up toward the ramparts, the very horses seem to vomit fire and smoke, and to hurl swift death among the besieged.

A new era has dawned in military science. The invention of gunpowder has revolutionized the art of war, and the crafty Turks are the first to make good use of it. And scarcely has the sun risen on the 29th of May, 1453, when the signal is given, and with a mighty shout that vast army, as if animated by a single soul, surges like a rising flood over the whole circuit of those thirteen miles of walls, and with an uproar and a crash that might well have resounded through Europe, the eastern bulwark of Christendom fell, and the city of Constantine became the capital of the Turkish Sultans.

And from the 18th of January, 1057, when Togrul Beg marched forth from Bagdad on his career of conquest, to May 20th, 1453, when the siege reached its height, are three hundred and ninety-six years and one hundred and twenty-one days, or exactly a prophetic year, and month and day and hour.

So marvellously verified are the words of the prophet: "AND THE SIXTH ANGEL SOUNDED, AND I HEARD A VOICE FROM THE HORNS OF THE GOLDEN ALTAR WHICH IS BEFORE GOD, ONE SAYING TO THE SIXTH ANGEL WHICH HAD THE TRUMPET, LOOSE THE FOUR ANGELS WHICH ARE BOUND AT THE GREAT RIVER EUPHRATES. AND THE FOUR ANGELS WEre loosed, WHICH HAD BEEN PREPARED FOR THE HOUR AND DAY AND MONTH AND YEAR, THAT THEY SHOULD KILL THE THIRD PART OF MEN. AND THE NUMBER OF THE ARMIES OF THE HORSEMEN

WAS TWICE TEN THOUSAND TIMES TEN THOUSAND: I HEARD THE NUM

BER OF THEM.

AND THUS I SAW THE HORSES IN THE VISION, AND

THEM THAT SAT ON THEM, HAVING BREASTPLATES AS OF FIRE and of
HYACINTH AND OF BRIMSTONE: AND THE HEADS OF THE HORSES ARE
AS THE HEADS OF LIONS; AND OUT OF THEIR MOUTHS PROCEEDETH
FIRE AND SMOKE AND BRIMSTONE.
BY THESE THREE PLAGUES WAS

THE THIRD PART OF MEN KILLED, BY THE FIRE AND THE SMOKE AND
THE BRIMSTONE, WHICH PROCEEDED OUT OF THEIR MOUTHS.
FOR THE
POWER OF THE HORSES IS IN THEIR MOUTH, AND IN THEIR TAILS: FOR
THEIR TAILS ARE LIKE UNTO SERPENTS, AND HAVE HEADS; AND WITH
THEM THEY DO HURT. AND THE REST OF MANKIND, WHICH WERE
NOT KILLED WITH THESE PLAGUES, REPENTED NOT OF THE WORKS OF
THEIR HANDS, THAT THEY SHOULD NOT WORSHIP DEVILS, AND THE
IDOLS OF GOLD), AND OF SILVER, AND OF BRASS, AND OF STONE, AND OF
WOOD; WHICH CAN NEITHER SEE, NOR HEAR, NOR WALK: AND THEY
REPENTED NOT OF THEIR MURDERS, NOR OF THEIR SORCERIES, NOR OF
THEIR FORNICATIONS, NOR OF THEIR THEFTS."

And therefore severer judgments under the seventh trumpet are still to come.

"Chained to God's throne a volume lies

With all the fates of men,

With every angel's form and size,
Drawn by the eternal pen.

His Providence unfolds the book,
And makes his counsels shine;
Each opening leaf and every stroke
Fulfills some deep design.

IN the

N the year 1513 A. D., sixty years after the fall of the Eastern Empire, a scene of historic interest was witnessed at Rome. The great square of St. Peter's, and the road that leads over the bridge of St. Angelo, are occupied by a vast uncounted multitude of eager spectators. Along that street, escorted by a cavalcade of horsemen, moves a procession whose imposing splendor is seldom excelled.

The nobles, the gentry, the dignitaries of the city are there. The senators are there. Princes and barons, and distinguished visitors from the cities and provinces of Italy, march in the column. Ambassadors from Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, and many another kingdom and principality, add to the array the dig nity of their presence. There are hundreds of ecclesiastics, abbots and bishops and archbishops and patriarchs, with their capes and stoles and hoods and coronets. The cardinals are there, with jewelled mitres and shining robes, waving in the air their silken banners. And then at length, surrounded with a body-guard of soldiers, like an eastern despot, appears the man in whose honor all that mighty pageant has been set in order.