"Look on our flourishing empire, if the splendour, The majesty, and glory of it dim not Your feeble sight; and then turn back and see The narrow bounds of yours, yet that poor remnant, Rent in as many factions and opinions As you have petty kingdoms."[1] United Islam, which had preceded her western rival Spain in greatness, seemed also destined to long outlive that power's decay. When Spain, in the sixteenth century, had been at the zenith of her power under Charles V., the Turks, under their great Emperor Solyman, had been not unworthy rivals to her. Even then Solyman had penetrated to the walls of Vienna, in 1529, and probably the lateness of the season, October, and the absence of his heavy artillery, stuck deep in the soil of Hungarian roads, saved the capital of the Austrian dominions more effectually than the valour of the garrison or the relieving forces of Charles could have done. Then the tide of Turkish power touched its farthest limit, but the fear of its return was not destroyed till after the lapse of one hundred and fifty years. Till after the siege of 1683, it is said that a crescent disgraced the spire of St. Stephen's, the cathedral of Vienna--a sign to avert the fire of Turkish gunners. In the seventeenth century, when the great empire of Spain was fast approaching dissolution, when France was the great power of Western Europe, the Turks were still the great power of the East, with territories even more widely extended than in the previous age. It is true that, after the death of Solyman, a series of incapable rulers and the natural decay of an eastern despotism had paralyzed the great powers of Turkey; but the stern reforming vigour of Amurath IV. (1623-40), and, still more, the wise administration of the first two Grand Viziers of the house of Kiuprili, had done much to restore good government, vigour and efficiency to the Ottomans.[2] Their empire, the speedy downfall of which had been predicted by the English Ambassador, Sir Thomas Roe, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, had since fully recovered its former reputation. A clever Frenchman, M. de la Guillatière, who visited the camp of Kiuprili in Candia in 1669, formed the highest estimate of the military genius of the Turks, and of their political insight into the power and designs of the Christians. He judged of the greatness of the Sultan by considering the number and quality of the persons who feared his displeasure. "When he makes any great preparation, Malta trembles, Spain is fearful for his kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, the Venetian anxious for what he holds in Greece--Dalmatia and Friuli, the Germans apprehensive for what remains to them in Hungary, Poland is alarmed, and the consternation passes on as far as Muscovy, and, not resting there, expands itself to the Christian princes in Gourgistan and Mingrelia; Persia, Arabia, the Abyssinians are all in confusion, whilst