[47] I am pleased to see that Mr. Sharon Turner takes the same view strongly.--_England in Middle Ages_, i. 9. Also Mr. Francis Newman; "The See of Rome," he says, "had not forgotten, if Europe had, how deadly and dangerous a war Charles Martel and the Franks had had to wage against the Moors from Spain. A new and redoubtable nation, the Seljuk Turks, had now appeared on the confines of Europe, as a fresh champion of the Mohammedan Creed; and it is not attributing too much foresight or too sagacious policy to the Court of Rome, to believe, that they wished to stop and put down the Turkish power before it should come too near. Be this as it may, such was the result. The might of the Seljukians was crippled on the plains of Palestine, and did not ultimately reach Europe.... A large portion of Christendom, which disowned the religious pretensions of Rome, was afterwards subdued by another Turkish tribe, the Ottomans or Osmanlis; but Romish Christendom remained untouched: Poland, Germany, and Hungary, saved her from the later Turks, even during the schism of the Reformation, as the Franks had saved her from the Moors. On the whole, it would seem that to the Romish Church we have been largely indebted for that union between European nations, without which Mohammedanism might perhaps not have been repelled. I state this as probable, not at all as certain."--_Lectures at Manchester, 1846._ III. THE CONQUESTS OF THE TURKS LECTURE V. _The Turk and the Christian._ I Said in my last Lecture, that we are bound to judge of persons and events in history, not by their outward appearance, but by their inward significancy. In speaking of the Turks, we may for a moment yield to the romance which attends on their name and their actions, as we may admire the beauty of some beast of prey; but, as it would be idle and puerile to praise its shape or skin, and form no further judgment upon it, so in like manner it is unreal and unphilosophical to interest ourselves in the mere adventures and successes of the Turks, without going on to view them in their moral aspect also. No race casts so broad and dark a shadow on the page of ecclesiastical history, and leaves so painful an impression on the minds of the reader, as the Turkish. The fierce Goths and Vandals, and then again the Lombards, were converted to Catholicism. The Franks yielded to the voice of St. Remigius, and Clovis, their leader, became the eldest son of the Church. The Anglo-Saxons gave up their idols at the preaching of St. Augustine and his companions. The German tribes acknowledged Christ amid their forests, though they martyred St. Boniface and other English and Irish missionaries who came to them. The Magyars in Hungary were led to faith through loyalty to their temporal monarch, their royal missioner St. Stephen. The heathen Danes reappear as the chivalrous Normans, the haughty but true sons and vassals of St. Peter. The Saracens even, who gave birth to an imposture,