It is the inconvenience of any mere sketch of historical transactions, that a multiplicity of objects successively passes over the field of view, not less independent in themselves, though not less connected in the succession of events, than the pictures of a magic lantern. I am aware of the weariness and the perplexity which are in consequence inflicted on the attention and the memory of the hearer; but what can I do but ask your indulgence, Gentlemen, for a circumstance which is inherent in any undertaking like the present? I have in the course of an hour to deal with a series of exploits and fortunes, which begin in the wilds of Turkistan, and conclude upon the Bosphorus; in which, as I may say, time is no measure of events, one while from the obscurity in which they lie, at another from their multitude and consequent confusion. For four centuries the Turks are little or hardly heard of; then suddenly in the course of as many tens of years, and under three Sultans, they make the whole world resound with their deeds; and, while they have pushed to the East through Hindostan, in the West they have hurried down to the coasts of the Mediterranean and the Archipelago, have taken Jerusalem, and threatened Constantinople. In their long period of silence they had been sowing the seeds of future conquests; in their short period of action they were gathering the fruit of past labours and sufferings. The Saracenic empire stood apparently as before; but, as soon as a Turk showed himself at the head of a military force within its territory, he found himself surrounded by the armies of his kindred which had been so long in its pay; he was joined by the tribes of Turcomans, to whom the Romans in a former age had shown the passes of the Caucasus; and he could rely on the reserve of innumerable swarms, ever issuing out of his native desert, and following in his track. Such was the state of Western Asia in the middle of the eleventh century. 7. I have said there were three great Sultans of the race of Seljuk, by whom the conquest of the West of Asia was begun and completed; their names are Togrul Beg, Alp Arslan, and Malek Shah. I have not to write their histories, but I may say a few words of their characters and their actions.