al or commercial, that we desired to visit Gindarics. Nor was it
out of such curiosity as animates travellers. For we are not travellers,
but men who have a purpose which we wish to execute. The world, that,
since its creation, has owned the spiritual supremacy of Asia, which
is but natural, since Asia is the only portion of the world which the
Creator of that world has deigned to visit, and in which he has ever
conferred with man, is unhappily losing its faith in those ideas and
convictions that hitherto have governed the human race. We think,
therefore, the time has arrived when Asia should make one of its
periodical and appointed efforts to reassert that supremacy. But though
we are acting, as we believe, under a divine impulse, it is our duty to
select the most fitting human agents to accomplish a celestial mission.
We have thought, therefore, that it should devolve on Syria and Arabia,
countries in which our God has even dwelt, and with which he has been
from the earliest days in direct and regular communication, to undertake
the solemn task. Two races of men, alike free, one inhabiting the
desert, the other the mountains, untainted by any of the vices of the
plains, and the virgin vigour of their intelligence not dwarfed by the
conventional superstitions of towns and cities, one prepared at once
to supply an unrivalled cavalry, the other an army ready equipped of
intrepid foot-soldiers, appear to us to be indicated as the natural
and united conquerors of the world. We wish to conquer that world, with
angels at our head, in order that we may establish the happiness of man
by a divine dominion, and crushing the political atheism that is now
desolating existence, utterly extinguish the grovelling tyranny of
self-government.'

The Queen of the Ansarey listened with deep and agitated attention to
Tancred. When he had concluded, she said, after a moment's pause, 'I
believe also in the necessity of the spiritual supremacy of our Asia.
And since it has ceased, it seems not to me that man and man's life have
been either as great or as beautiful as heretofore. What you have said
assures me that it is well that you have come hither. But when you speak
of Arabia, of what God is it you speak?'

'I speak of the only God, the Creator of all things, the God who spoke
on the Arabian Mount Sinai, and expiated our sins upon the Syrian Mount
Calvary.'

'There is also Mount Olympus,' said the Queen, 'which is in Anatolia.
Once the