great city, as at its long survival; a survival, only brought to its term by the appearance on the stage of foes far more formidable than those, before whom Italy and its proud capital had licked the dust.
But, all this time, numerosa parabat excelsæ turris tabulata. When still the exclusive mistress of the most refined learning of the world, she was called to bear, in common with other not yet patrician races, the fearful weight of the Ottoman yoke. By the far-sighted cruelty of Mohammed II., the aristocracy of the Greek lands was completely swept away. They exhibited, indeed, no case like that of the general apostasy of the landholders in Bosnia: the repetition of this infamy on a smaller scale in Crete took place at a much later period. Greeks were not only deprived of their natural leaders; they were assailed at every point, and in the very citadel of the family life, by the terrible exaction of the children-tribute. Not only was the system indicated by that phrase a most cruel and wicked one on the part of the conquerors who invented it, but it carried with it an amount of degradation to the sufferers who bore it, such, perhaps, as never was inflicted even on African slaves. Endured at first in the stupidity of terror, it laid wide and deep, during the two centuries for which it lasted, the foundations of baseness, and it is probably not too much to say that two centuries since its cessation[1] have not yet everywhere effaced its effects. Nor is effeminacy, especially where thus engendered, a guarantee for humanity. The fathers who gave over the bodies and souls of their children to the tyrant were, thus far, sunk into the region of the brutes, and acquired of necessity something of that habit of mind which is as ready upon occasion to enforce the law of violence, as to cringe before it.
While such was the condition of the Greek race, considered on the side of their Ottoman masters, their horizon was not a whit less black in every other quarter. There is no chapter of history more disgraceful to western Christendom, than that which exhibits the conduct of its various governments with respect to the entrance of Turkish rule into Europe, and its continuance there. It made, indeed, vigorous and even noble efforts to repel the invaders; but this was when the Turks, having overrun that portion of the south of Europe which adhered to the Oriental Church, began at length to menace, and to some extent to occupy, European ground within the precinct of the Latin communion. These efforts were ultimately successful; but it was only towards the close of the seventeenth century, that the danger could be said to have passed away from western Europe. And it was during the same period, which witnessed the great overthrows of the Turks at Vienna (1685) and Peterwaradin (1717), that they were allowed to add to their empire by wresting Crete from the Venetians, and by finally recovering the Morea. The efforts made by Venice were remarkable as proceeding from so small a state, confident only in maritime resources; but they were neither liberating nor crusading efforts, so far as the Christian populations were concerned. They were commercial and territorial; and if the civil yoke which they imposed were lighter than that which they removed, it was sometimes found that they carried with them a new stumbling-block in the shape of religious rivalry,[2] whereas the Turks were, as a rule, in regard to questions between one form of Christianity and another, supremely impartial. At all events we find that, when the long war waged in Crete ended in 1669 with its surrender to the Porte, the Greek population of the island, who might have given the victory to Venice, did not think it worth their while[3] to bestir themselves for the purpose. In general, either Europe was indifferent to the subjugation of eastern Christendom, or at any rate, governed by their selfish jealousies, the powers could not agree on the division of so rich a spoil,[4] and therefore they suffered a very unnatural oppression to endure.
But even political jealousy was not so keen and sharp-eyed an enemy as eccle-
