Anastasius a hundred and forty years before—which St. Martin exercised at the cost of his life in the time of the third chalif—was the pledge and guarantee to Christendom of authority, supreme but temperate, of spiritual rule protecting civil liberty. A long succession of Popes—at the mercy of eastern despots as to civil matters—maintain their spiritual independence and their guidance of that new assemblage of nations in a common Christendom through the terrible seventh century. At the same moment Northern Africa, and Egypt, and Syria fall passively into the hands of the chalifate, and Byzantium loses the half of its power and trembles for its own existence. How vast in its importance for future ages the establishment of the chalifate upon the death of Mohammed was, may be seen from the following considerations.(109) It cannot be denied that the absolutely despotic form of government in lands under the sway of Mohammed has been created by the influence of the religion. It has indeed often been maintained that the genius of Asiatic peoples specially produces this form of rule. But states which are not Mohammedan rest on quite a different basis: and their rulers are or were subject to great and essential limitations. A Hindu king who reigned under the laws of Manu could not break through the immunities of the Brahmins, or the separation of the castes. An emperor of China, though he be called the son of heaven, and his throne be approached only with forms of the deepest submission, can name no officer except according to the list of candidates provided by the learned order. Not so the Princes of the Faithful. Two elements here concur to produce the most complete form of despotism: the mixing together or more properly unification of the spiritual and the temporal power; and the military power resting on conquest. According as the theocratic or the military principle prevailed, the sovereignty would take a distinct colouring: the despotism assume a milder or a sterner aspect. When, as in the case of the Arabian chalifs, and in a certain degree of the Turkish sultans since Selim, the religious character prevailed, and the political power, in accordance with the original spirit of Islam, appeared only as an issue and endowment of the spiritual, the unconditional submission would take more of a religious and conscientious devotedness. Then the dynasty, clothed in the divinity which hedges a king, could enjoy greater stability and security: the ruler himself, reminded ever of his consecrated character, of the duties and the higher responsibility which lay upon him, would make through regard for the prescriptions of religion a more moderate use of an authority in itself unlimited. Where, on the contrary, the spirit of an arbitrary military lordship prevailed, as in most of the kingdoms formed after the overthrow of the chalifate in Central Asia, the blind obedience of the subject would rather be the result of fear and custom. An attempt to