powers the Byzantine Cæsars had to face in every phasis of their energy, as it revolved from perfect barbarism, through semi-barbarism, to that crude form of civilization which Mahometans can support. And through all these transmigrations of their power we must remember that they were under a martial training and discipline, never suffered to become effeminate. One set of warriors after another _did_, it is true, become effeminate in Persia: but upon that advantage opening, always another set stepped in from Torkistan or from the Imaus. The nation, the individuals melted away; the Moslem armies were immortal. Here, therefore, it is, and standing at this point of our review, that we complain of Mr. Finlay's too facile compliance with historians far beneath himself. He has a fine understanding: oftentimes his commentaries on the past are ebullient with subtlety; and his fault strikes us as lying even in the excess of his sagacity applying itself too often to a basis of facts, quite insufficient for supporting the superincumbent weight of his speculations. But in this instance he surrenders himself too readily to the ordinary current of history. How would _he_ like it, if he happened to be a Turk himself, finding his nation thus implicitly undervalued? For clearly, in undervaluing the Byzantine resistance, he _does_ undervalue the Mahometan assault. Advantages of local situation cannot _eternally_ make good the deficiencies of man. If the Byzantines (being as weak as historians would represent them) yet for ages resisted the whole impetus of Mahometan Asia, then it follows, either that the Crescent was correspondingly weak, or that, not being weak, she must have found the Cross pretty strong. The _facit_ of history does not here correspond with the numerical items.