ould sink to the
level of a brute.

These are considerations of great importance in weighing the value of
the Eastern Empire. If the cause and interest of Islamism, as against
Christianity, were undying--then we may be assured that the Moorish
infidels of Spain did not reiterate their trans-Pyrenean expeditions
after one generation--simply because they _could_ not. But we know that
on the south-eastern horn of Europe they _could_, upon the plain
argument that for many centuries they _did_. Over and above this, we are
of opinion that the Saracens were unequal to the sort of hardships bred
by cold climates; and there lay another repulsion for Saracens from
France, &c., and not merely the Carlovingian sword. We children of
Christendom show our innate superiority to the children of the Orient
upon this scale or tariff of acclimatizing powers. We travel as wheat
travels through all reasonable ranges of temperature; they, like rice,
can migrate only to warm latitudes. They cannot support our cold, but we
_can_ support the countervailing hardships of their heat. This cause
alone would have weatherbound the Mussulmans for ever within the
Pyrenean cloisters. Mussulmans in cold latitudes look as blue and as
absurd as sailors on horseback. Apart from which cause, we see that the
fine old Visigothic races in Spain found them full employment up to the
reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, which reign first created a kingdom of
Spain; in that reign the whole fabric of their power thawed away, and
was confounded with forgotten things. Columbus, according to a local
tradition, was personally present at some of the latter campaigns in
Grenada: he saw the last of them. So that the discovery of America may
be used as a convertible date with that of extinction for the Saracen
power in western Europe. True that the overthrow of Constantinople had
forerun this event by nearly half a century. But then we insist upon the
different proportions of the struggle. Whilst in Spain a province had
fought against a province, all Asia militant had fought against the
eastern Roman empire. Amongst the many races whom dimly we descry in
those shadowy hosts, tilting for ages in the vast plains of Angora, are
seen, latterly pressing on to the van, two mighty powers, the children
of Persia and the Ottoman family of the Turks. Upon these nations, both
now rapidly decaying, the faith of Mahomet has ever leaned as upon her
eldest sons; and these powers the Byzantine