Their government was most singularly constituted, and of a character totally dissimilar to any of the governments of Christendom. The institutions too from which they derived their solid and lasting power were for the most part peculiar to themselves. On these institutions the stability of the Ottoman greatness mainly rested. With their first appearance it arose; with their gradual development it had grown; as they were neglected and fell into disuse, the ancient glory of the Crescent was dimmed, obscured, and finally extinguished. Even in the legendary history of the founder of their nation is shadowed forth the faint outline of their peculiar, policy. By patient waiting till he attained his purpose, Othman won his wife from an alien tribe. His expeditions were sanctioned by the blessing of the Holy Scheik Edebali. From the fruit of these expeditions, from the Christian captives who were condemned to slavery, was selected the wife of his son Orchan. A Christian apostate, ‘Michael of the Pointed Beard’ was the chief of Othman’s captains. It was from the example of their founder, they would have us believe, that they adopted customs of receiving renegades, of foreign intermarriage, a warlike zeal sanctioned by religion, a system of slavery-institutions which in later times were the distinguishing characteristics of their race[5]. It matters not if these accounts of Othman’s early history be the invention of later times; this rather shows (since fiction is more philosophical than truth), that the Ottomans themselves were convinced that it was mainly on the preservation of these usages that their greatness rested. It was, however, reserved for the sons of Othman to set the system on a permanent basis, and to the legislative genius of Alaeddin in the succeeding reign, was chiefly due the stability of the Ottoman race. In general the Asiatic dynasties culminate to their height of power with a marvellous rapidity, and then, dependent solely on the merits of their rulers, with no institutions calculated to ensure any lasting greatness, fall by a decline no less rapid and less marvellous than their rise. The career of Ottoman conquest lacked the dazzling grandeur which invests the exploits of Genghis Khan, or Timour, but it was not destined to be as ephemeral as they. In its slow and cautious advance, in the gradual organization of conquered provinces, in the unswerving patience which waited always for the fittest opportunity, it bore no faint resemblance to the stately march of Roman sovereignty.