Probably no building in all Europe has so many associations with tragical events as that of the palace of the Sultan of Turkey--the autocrat whose rule is absolute over more than thirty million subjects. From this palace go forth the edicts which involve the death of thousands and which control the governments of distant provinces. Fifty years ago the Sultans governed a huge territory in Europe, but one province after another has been freed from their yoke, until Turkey in Europe has dwindled in size to less than half its former area. But the Asiatic possession of the Sultan have not diminished, and the events in Armenia which have recently horrified the whole world, show what that possession means. Nor are these massacres a new or unparalleled feature of Turkish rule. Similar horrors have been perpetrated before under the cognizance of the Sultans and the only reason why the indignation now aroused on the subject is deeper and more intense, is that it is now impossible to conceal them, and in the days of the telegraph and cheap newspapers they are set in the light of publicity. The Turk is no worse now than he has always been, and is only trying to govern at the end of the nineteenth century as he governed in the sixteenth. As an eminent writer has said: "The Turk is still the aboriginal savage encamped on the ruins of a civilization which he destroyed." In some respects Abdul Hamid is better than his predecessors, and until the reports of the Armenian horrors were published, he was believed to be a great deal better; but they have proved that he has the same nature, and is at heart as fierce and relentless as they. The character of the man is of so much greater moment to his subjects than in other lands, because of the utter absence of even the semblance of constitutional government. The government of Turkey is a despotism pure and simple. It is tempered only by the dread of assassination or deposition, and even those calamities may come rather from a wise and merciful policy than from massacre. The Pashas who surround the Sultan, the successors of those who deposed his uncle and his brother, applaud the atrocities, and are willing instruments in the perpetration of them. The danger to the Sultan's person is far more likely to come through weakness and lack of vigor in persecution than from indignation at wholesale slaughter. The Sultan fully appreciates this fact, and lives in constant dread of treachery.