built gorgeous palaces, and by his
magnificence dazzled the people, who were blind to his real designs;
they even permitted him to set up printing presses in the large cities,
on receiving assurance that the Koran would not be submitted to the
unholy process of squeezing!

Mahmoud thought, or pretended to think, that he could reform the empire
by imitating only the vices of Christianity, and manifesting a contempt
for Moslem virtues. While he drank wine--and in many other breaches of
the teachings of the sacred book provoked the faithful--his
proclamations breathed a most orthodox and fanatical spirit. He was a
sceptic; neither Mussulman nor Christian, but surprisingly inconsistent
and capricious. His, we fear, were 'hangman's hands,' and 'not ordained
to build a temple unto peace.'

Under Solyman the Magnificent, at once the most warlike monarch and
munificent patron of literature and art, the constitution of the
Janissaries was wise and effective. The children of Christians, taken by
the Turks in war or in their predatory incursions, were exposed in the
public markets of Constantinople, whence any person was at liberty to
take them into his service, on making a contract with the government to
return them at the demand of the sultan. These children were instructed
in Islamism, and were trained by manly exercise and labor, calculated to
strengthen the body and give elasticity to the spirits. From these hardy
orphans the ranks of the Janissaries were recruited. They came eagerly
to the camp; for they had been taught to regard it as the theatre of
their future glory. From earliest infancy they looked forward with joy
to the time when they should be numbered among those brave soldiers,
whose arms had maintained for a long series of years the supremacy of
the crescent. There was no rank, no dignity in the Turkish army to which
a Janissary could not aspire--a strong incentive to the display of
bravery. Such was the constitution of the army when it was the most
powerful in Europe: then it gained its victories, not by force of
numbers, but by superior military discipline and valor. In the middle of
the nineteenth century the capture of Christian children was abandoned.
The land forces degenerated into a wretchedly organized army of less
than three hundred thousand men, drafted from the lowest classes.
Mothers put their children to death that they might be spared the pangs
of seeing them torn away to pass their days in scenes