This was their history for a hundred and fifty years, and what do we suppose would be the 10 result of this importation of barbarians into the heart of a nourishing empire? Would they be absorbed as slaves or settlers in the mass of the population, or would they, like mercenaries elsewhere, be fatal to the power that introduced 15 them? The answer is not difficult, considering that their very introduction argued a want of energy and resource in the rulers whom they served. To employ them was a confession of weakness; the Saracenic power indeed was not 20 very aged, but the Turkish was much younger, and more vigorous; then too must be considered the difference of national character between the Turks and the Saracens. A writer of the beginning of the present century[35] compares 25 the Turks to the Romans; such parallels are generally fanciful and fallacious; but, if we must accept it in the present instance, we may complete the picture by likening the Saracens and Persians to the Greeks, and we know what was 30 the result of the collision between Greece and Rome. The Persians were poets, the Saracens were philosophers. The mathematics, astronomy, and botany were especial subjects of the studies of the latter. Their observatories were celebrated, 5 and they may be considered to have originated the science of chemistry. The Turks, on the other hand, though they are said to have a literature, and though certain of their princes have been patrons of letters, have never distinguished 10 themselves in exercises of pure intellect; but they have had an energy of character, a pertinacity, a perseverance, and a political talent, in a word, they then had the qualities of mind necessary for ruling, in far greater measure, than 15 the people they were serving. The Saracens, like the Greeks, carried their arms over the surface of the earth with an unrivaled brilliancy and an uncheckered success; but their dominion, like that of Greece, did not last for more than 20 200 or 300 years. Rome grew slowly through many centuries, and its influence lasts to this day; the Turkish race battled with difficulties and reverses, and made its way on amid tumult and complication, for a good 1000 years from 25 first to last, till at length it found itself in possession of Constantinople, and a terror to the whole of Europe. It has ended its career upon the throne of Constantine; it began it as the slave and hireling of the rulers of a great empire, 30 of Persia and Sogdiana. [35] Thornton.