l had arrested the progress of the fanatical Moslem
almost in a single battle; certainly a single generation saw the whole
danger dispersed, inasmuch as within that space the Saracens were
effectually forced back into their original Spanish lair. This
demonstrates pretty forcibly the difference of the Mahometan resources
as applied to the western and the eastern struggle. To throw the whole
weight of that difference, a difference in the result as between eight
centuries and thirty years, upon the mere difference of energy in German
and Byzantine forces, as though the first did, by a rapturous fervour,
in a few revolutions of summer what the other had protracted through
nearly a millennium, is a representation which defeats itself by its own
extravagance. To prove too much is more dangerous than to prove too
little. The fact is, that vast armies and mighty nations were
continually disposable for the war upon the city of Constantine; nations
had time to arise in juvenile vigour, to grow old and superannuated, to
melt away, and totally to disappear, in that long struggle on the
Hellespont and Propontis. It was a struggle which might often intermit
and slumber; armistices there might be, truces, or unproclaimed
suspensions of war out of mutual exhaustion, but peace there could _not_
be, because any resting from the duty of hatred towards those who
reciprocally seemed to lay the foundations of their creed in a
dishonouring of God, was impossible to aspiring human nature. Malice and
mutual hatred, we repeat, became a duty in those circumstances. Why had
they _begun_ to fight? Personal feuds there had been none between the
parties. For the early caliphs did not conquer Syria and other vast
provinces of the Roman empire, because they had a quarrel with the
Caesars who represented Christendom; but, on the contrary, they had a
quarrel with the Caesars because they had conquered Syria, or, at the
most, the conquest and the feud (if not always lying in that exact
succession as cause and effect) were joint effects from a common cause,
which cause was imperishable as death, or the ocean, and as deep as are
the fountains of animal life. Could the ocean be altered by a sea fight?
or the atmosphere be tainted for ever by an earthquake? As little could
any single reign or its events affect the feud of the Moslem and the
Christian; a feud which could not cease unless God could change, or
unless man (becoming careless of spiritual things) sh