"The spider has woven his net in the imperial palace; and the owl hath sung her watch-song on the towers of Afrasiab." The fifth day after the conquest he consecrated by a formal act the liberty of conscience accorded by the Koran to the vanquished. He claimed for the Mussulmans only half the churches leaving the rest to the Christians. The patriarch Gennadius led in pomp to the palace clothed in his pontifical robes and in the midst of a cortége of priests, received from him the investiture of the patriarchate. "It is my wish," said the Sultan, "to give the Christians and their pontiffs the same rights and the same protection that they enjoyed under your emperors." He even attended in person the pomps and ceremonies of the Christians, as an impartial of the two religions which henceforth were to divide his people. Before the death of Mohammed in 1459, by his many conquests of the neighboring states and peoples he had consolidated his empire: and it stood forth a fearless conqueror until in 1571 the battle of Lepanto marked the turning point in the history of the Ottoman power. We here turn aside for a brief hour from the stream of historical narrative to consider some of the results of Ottoman misrule which has for more than four centuries controlled an empire in Eastern Europe almost as large as France, in one of the most delightful and beautifully varied regions on the continent and which yet holds its peoples in the relentless grip of the Dark Ages. Weighed in the balances of the humanity, the culture, the Christianity and the civilization of the dawning century, Turkey is in every way found wanting and soon may appear the hand of fire to write on the black pages of her awful atrocities, "Thy days are numbered. Thy kingdom shall be destroyed and given to another." How long shall the blood of her slain cry aloud in the ears of Christendom, yet in vain still cry aloud? The consciences of England and America must give answer to that cry of blood or be themselves weighed in the balances in the day of the Lord at hand. CHAPTER VI. THE BULGARIAN MASSACRE. We must pass over in silence a period of four hundred years in the history of the Ottoman Empire to open its blood-stained pages in our own era at the narrative of the Bulgarian massacres. The centuries and the peoples have been under the rule of the barbarian; the story is one of continued persecution, outrage, and massacre. The Turk never changes. What he has always done he always will do. And as long as any Christian lands or people remain under his power and at his mercy, so long will there be discontents, disturbances, revolts and massacres. The only way to end these is to end the rule of the Turk. Reform--not to say regeneration, is an impossibility. He is an alien in race and religion. His spirit is fierce and fanatical: his rule that of the dark ages, the rule of a tyrant without conscience or remorse.