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absurd, and so manifestly unsupported by facts, that it is difficult to understand their having been gravely put forth. The multitudes of perversions to Rome that have taken place, ever since the Puseyite movement commenced, offer convincing evidence of the Papistical nature and tendencies of this sect. But another strong proof is afforded by the intimate connexion that exists between the English Tractarians and the Scotch Episcopalians. So closely are they allied, that the Puseyites themselves give out that in the event of their defeat on the two appeals now pending-namely, Archdeacon Denison's case, and that of St. Paul's, Knightsbridgethey are prepared to separate in large numbers from the Church, and march over the border' to join their cannie northern friends." If any such idea has entered the minds of the leaders in question, we imagine that it will be quickly repressed by the members of the Scotch Episcopal Church. No one who looks at the two service books, and contrasts the Scotch Communion Office with our own, will hesitate to say that that Church is in reality a half-way house to Popery: but no one who knows anything of the feelings of the Scotch Episcopal clergy will for a moment suppose that they who maintain the unity of their doctrine with ours, will tolerate the idea of a secession, an open and public secession, from us to them. A few persons may probably seek employment in the Scotch Episcopal Church, but not many; for the simple reason that it is not to be found. And we already learn from the Tractarian papers what are to be the tactics of the party. They will keep their places and benefices, acquiesce tacitly in the Bath judgment, and go on preaching and teaching in contempt of it, just as they did before it was pronounced. If pressed on the subject, they will say that they do not recognise it as an expression of the Church's views, and they will trust to the many chances in their favour that they will not be proceeded against individually.

We trust that the sound portion of the Church will not rely too much on the effect of this judgment, but will insist on a revision of the Liturgy; and that with a view that there shall be no discordant elements in the documentary teaching of our Church.

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ART. II.-A History of the Ottoman Turks, from the beginning of their Empire to the present time. Chiefly founded on Von Hammer. By E. S. CREASY, M.A, Professor of History in University College, London. Two Vols. London: 1854-1856.

IT affords, perhaps, the fairest evidence of the ultimate triumph of good over evil, and of the final subordination of the passions of mankind to the irresistible scheme of benevolence which has guided the history of nations respectively, in the natural and in the political world; that as, in the one, the tempests which shipwreck individual life tend to the purification of the sea, so, in the other, the wars which not seldom desolate the fairest provinces of the earth, tend to the social development of the human race. For the gradual

intercommunication of the different races of the west, and for the civilisation which that intercommunication has in great degree created, we are essentially indebted to the traditionary hostilities of rival powers. The terrors of the Arabian conquests in the south of Europe, according to the deductions of Sismondi, left behind them the basis of the imagination and the learning which ultimately established the literature of Europe. The fearful carnage involved in the Holy Wars, according to the convictions of M. Guizot, introduced into Europe that community of sentiment, and that general intercourse, by which the arts and the learning of each nation became at length the arts and the learning of all. The civil wars of England-from the age of the Roses to her second Revolution-resulted in the subjugation of the conflicting elements of power into one homogeneous force. The apprehensions of the Turkish invasions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries exerted a similar influence on the larger theatre of European affairs. The wars of religion, while they momentarily discredited the axioms of the Christian faith, drew together the north, the centre, and the west, and finally asserted the intellectual liberties of mankind. And the memorable war of more than a quarter of a century's duration, which darkened the commencement of the present age, has been productive, not simply of a peace of unexampled duration, chequered only by a war of unexampled brevity, but of a community of feeling, incalculable in its influence on the prosperity, and of a definite character of international policy, inexhaustible in its provision for the security, of Europe.

Thus, in the results of the hostilities which have now

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saved the fair provinces of the Ottoman empire from the odious dominion of the North, we see the promises of a policy, not simply repressive of Muscovite barbarism, but progressive of Western civilisation. From whatever point of view we contemplate the question of the dominion of the house of Othman in the East, two distinct and independent interests arise for consideration-the position of the Turkish and of the Christian-of the dominant and of the subjectpopulation. The force of political opinion appears to be divided between the class of statesmen who regard the Ottoman rule as slowly and irrevocably declining before its own inherent defects and the rising power of Christian civilisation, and the class of statesmen who conceive the Turkish people to form an essentially improving and progressive nation. But without attempting to determine the truth between these singularly conflicting hypotheses, it is obvious that, either under the consolidation or the extinction of the Mahometan sway, the political condition of the Christian Principalities, at least, will, by the general policy of Europe, be more or less essentially free; and that this dependent population will, therefore, under either event, be more than ever amenable to the civilising influence of intercommunication with the Western Powers. The intercourse of the leading nations of Europe with the territories lying beyond the Thracian Bosphorus, has been strangely restricted, first by natural, and then by political, causes: the despotism and the hostility of the eastern governments imposed successful restrictions on the commerce of the west, even when the triumphs of navigation had dissipated the terrors of ancient tradition. In the subversion of that maritime ascendancy by which Russia has hitherto maintained the most restrictive policy along the Euxine shore-in the liberation of the Danube from the shackles with which she sought to choke the great artery of the Sclavonian race-in the final triumph of those principles of civil and religious liberty which have been conceded in the recent struggle of the Osmanli rule-in the inevitable diffusion of commerce among the margin states of Europe and of Asia-the Western Powers have laid the basis of relations with the Christian races closer, and more civilising, than any that had been conceived by the enterprise of the Greek, by the boldness of the Roman, or by the commercial energy of the Venetian and the Genoese.

The moral revolution which has at length inverted the traditionary relations of the Turkish empire with the West, has been at once so complete in its character, and so imper

ceptible in its gradations, that the Christian world has not unnaturally been perplexed in appreciating the force of the events which have rendered the existence of a state that once threatened the subjugation of Europe, an essential condition, at this day at least, of the religious and political freedom of the East. During this interval, in the first place, the Ottoman government has rejected its policy of fanaticism, and has ignored its traditions of military conquest. Secondly, it has defined the rights of its subject states, on whom it has been content to effect but an imperfect subjugation. Thirdly, by its capitulations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it entered into the international relations of the European commonwealth. Fourthly, it passed from a policy of religious persecution to the principles of a tolerating power. Fifthly, it introduced a liberal commercial system, which diverted to its shores the energies of Christian trade. Sixthly, it presented its own existence to the Western Powers, as the only practicable alternative of a Russian dominion in the east of Europe. Seventhly, in virtue of a titular, or a real sovereignty, it became an essential element in the defence of the liberties of those Christian commonwealths which its Christian enemy had endeavoured to destroy.

In these circumstances, it is obvious that nothing but the anomaly of the religious institutions of the Ottoman empire remained to mark its essential distinction from the rest of the European confederacy; and that its claims to international support-more cogent, perhaps, than those of any other dominion in Europe-were dictated by a combination of political necessities, which even that anomaly was unequal to countervail. It may be interesting, therefore, to enter upon a discussion of those political institutions, and of those national characteristics, which involve the condition at once of the dominant and of the subject population. We shall, accordingly, take a brief review of the question of the political civilisation implied in the system of the Turkish government; of the social civilisation implied in the condition of the Turkish people; of the intellectual civilisation implied in their laws, their literature, and their learning; of the moral civilisation implied in the character of their religious institutions; of the historical relation of the Christian populations to the Central Power; of the existing social condition, and political prospects, which those populations display; of the progress of commercial relations with the Western Powers; and of the existing position of the Eastern church. But before we embark on this political sea, we are com

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pelled, in professing to treat of an historical subject, to glance a review of the earlier phases of the Turkish history, which alone can satisfactorily evolve the establishment and maintenance of a Mahometan empire in the east of Europe.

Early in the thirteenth century, while the Eastern Crusaders were contending for the dominion of the Holy Land, and while the soil of Western Asia was yet overrun by the irruptions of a thousand barbarous hordes, the name of the Osmanli had never been heard through the length and breadth of either continent.

It was scarcely six hundred years ago (as Professor Creasy reminds us) that an insignificant tribe of four hundred families were migrating from the waters of the Euphrates to the westward, as though with some dim and instinctive presentiment of a grander destiny for their race than any that could arise from a barbaric and nomad dominion in Asia. They were then protected by a band of four hundred horsemen, not simply, it may be surmised, for the mere purposes of defence against the inevitable depredations of wandering races, where possession was irreducible to laws of property, but in obedience to their innately warlike character; for we learn and this is stated by the Professor himself-that on their passing a battle-field, where the merits and the very nationality of the belligerents were unknown to them, they immediately took part in the encounter with the worsted party, and retrieved the fortune of the day. We may, therefore, receive with some reservation, if this legend be really authentic, the purely pastoral character which Mr. Creasy has ascribed to the first recorded migration of the Ottoman Turks This incident, however—which is related by Neschri, the Eastern historian, with that customary degree of oriental evidence in which the imagination must needs be brought to the aid of the reason-is directly connected with the future history of the race. The force whom this little band aided in the battle consisted of the Seljukian Turks, under the command of Alaeddin, Sultan of Iconium. Ertoqhrul, or Ortogrul, the leader of the band, was, for this service, promoted to a government analagous to an official pashalic, on the frontier of the Constantinopolitan dominion in Minor Asia, and nominally within the territory of the sultans of Iconium.

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The son of this Ertoqhrul, was the illustrious Osman or Othman, from whom the name of " Ottoman” or Osmanli❞ is deduced. He succeeded his father in the viceroyalty during the year 1288; and with the commencement of the