y of Asia, but of the world.

These conquests were achieved during the reigns of ten great Sultans,
the average length of whose reigns is as much as twenty-six years, an
unusual period for military sovereigns, and both an evidence of the
stability, and a means of the extension, of their power. Then came the
period of their decline, and we are led on through the space of another
270 years, up to our own day, when they seem on the verge of some great
reverse or overthrow. In this second period they have had as many as
twenty-one Sultans, whose average reigns are only half the length of
those who preceded them, and afford as cogent an argument of their
national disorder and demoralization. Of these twenty-one, five have
been strangled, three have been deposed, and three have died of excess;
of the remaining ten, four only have attained the age of man, and these
come together in the course of the last century; two others have died
about the age of thirty, and three about the age of fifty. The last, the
thirty-first from Othman, is the present Sultan, who came to the throne
as a boy, and is described at that time by an English traveller, as one
of the most "sickly, pale, inanimate, and unmanly youths he ever
saw,"[57] and who has this very year just reached the average length of
the reign of his twenty predecessors.

The names of the Ottoman Sultans are more familiar to us and more easy
to recollect than other Oriental sovereigns, partly from their greater
euphony as Europeans read them, partly from their recurrence again and
again in the catalogue. There are four Mahomets, four Mustaphas, four
Amuraths or Murads, three Selims, three Achmets, three Othmans, two
Mahmoods, two Solimans, and two Bajazets.[58]

I have already described Othman, the founder of the line, as a soldier
of fortune in the Seljukian service; and, in spite of the civilizing
influences of the country, the people, and the religion, to which he had
attached himself, he had not as yet laid aside the habits of his
ancestors, but was half shepherd, half freebooter. Nor is it likely that
any of his countrymen would be anything else, as long as they were still
in war and in subordinate posts. Peace must precede the enjoyment, and
power the arts of government; and the very readiness with which his
followers left their nomad life, as soon as they had the opportunity,
shows that the means of civilization which they had enjoyed, had not
been thrown away on them. T