The Ottoman Ruling Institution, at once the government, the army, and the nobility of a great nation, was at the same time a genuine slave-family. Almost all its members were recruited as slaves and remained slaves throughout their days; their lives and their property were at the disposal of the sultan; they must obey without hesitation, as all slaves must obey. Yet their condition was far from being miserable. Their slavery conveyed no taint: one of them might be married to a protégée or even a daughter of the great master; their children would never be reproached because of the father’s status. It was an honor to be the sultan’s _kul_. Vast wealth and almost royal power and rule might be theirs; yet each member of the Ruling Institution was actually a slave. The most characteristic feature of this institution lay in the fact that its recruits were almost all drawn from children (born within or without the empire) of Christian parents, and that before they were advanced they were expected to become Mohammedans. A twofold motive lay beneath this policy,—a desire to obtain single-hearted servants and to increase the number of believers in the Mohammedan faith. Sons of these converts were sometimes admitted to the Ruling Institution, but their grandsons practically never. Thus a constant stream of the ablest and fittest Christian children who were born in or near the Ottoman dominions were brought into the Ruling Institution, the Ottoman nation, and the Mohammedan fold. The next most characteristic and the most abiding feature of the Ottoman Ruling Institution was its educational quality. The Christian slaves were all acquired while young, and were trained with the greatest care to become useful members of the institution, each in the capacity for which nature had best fitted him. They were provided with an education which, if not so general or so advanced as the usual training of modern times, was more nearly complete. Body and mind, social, moral, and religious nature, all received attention. The immediate object of this education was to fit the boys for the sultan’s service in war and government; but they were also trained to adorn his ceremonies and his court, and to live by the principles and in the faith of Mohammed. When they were first admitted, their training was more or less like that in schools of an industrial, military, and cultural character; but it did not stop with the attainment of majority. Army, household, bureaus, local government, and Divan, all were conducted much like schools. Strict discipline was constantly maintained, slackness was severely punished, and industry and ability were richly rewarded. The results were well-nigh incredible; they constitute a wonderful demonstration of how little the human spirit is limited by the ignorance or the restricted and humble life of ancestors. With hardly an exception, the men who guided Suleiman’s empire to a height of unexampled glory were sons of peasants and herdsmen, of