greatest promise of strength and endurance
were sent to places prepared for them in Asia Minor. Here they were
subjected to a severe training, to abstinence, to privations of every
kind, and to the strict discipline which should fit them for the
profession of a soldier. From this body was formed the famous corps of
the janizaries.

Another portion were placed in schools in the capital, or the
neighboring cities, where, under the eye of the sultan, as it were, they
were taught various manly accomplishments, with such a smattering of
science as Turkish, or rather Arabian, scholarship could supply. When
their education was finished, some went into the sultan's body-guard,
where a splendid provision was made for their maintenance. Others,
intended for civil life, entered on a career which might lead to the
highest offices in the state.

[Sidenote: CONDITION OF TURKEY.]

As all these classes of Christian youths were taken from their parents
at that tender age when the doctrines of their own faith could hardly
have taken root in their minds, they were, without difficulty, won over
to the faith of the Koran; which was further commended to their choice
as the religion of the state, the only one which opened to them the path
of preferment. Thus set apart from the rest of the community, and
cherished by royal favor, the new converts, as they rallied round the
throne of their sovereign, became more stanch in their devotion to his
interests, as well as to the interests of the religion they had adopted,
than even the Turks themselves.

This singular institution bore hard on the Christian population, who
paid this heavy tax of their own offspring. But it worked well for the
monarchy, which, acquiring fresh vigor from the constant infusion of new
blood into its veins, was slow in exhibiting any signs of decrepitude or
decay.

The most important of these various classes was that of the janizaries,
whose discipline was far from terminating with the school. Indeed, their
whole life may be said to have been passed in war, or in preparation for
it. Forbidden to marry, they had no families to engage their affections,
which, as with the monks and friars in Christian countries, were
concentrated on their own order, whose prosperity was inseparably
connected with that of the state. Proud of the privileges which
distinguished them from the rest of the army, they seemed desirous to
prove their title to them by their thorough discipline, a