children.
The Russians I shall dismiss; the Turks, who form my proper subject, I
shall postpone. First of all, I will take a brief survey of the three
empires of the Tartars proper; of Attila and his Huns; of Zingis and his
Moguls; and of Timour and his Mahometan Tartars.

I have already waived the intricate question of race, as regards the
various tribes who have roamed from time immemorial, or used to roam, in
the Asiatic and European wilderness, because it was not necessary to the
discussion in which I am engaged. Their geographical position
assimilated them to each other in their wildness, their love of
wandering, their pastoral occupations, their predatory habits, their
security from attack, and the suddenness and the transitoriness of their
conquests, even though they descend from our first parent by different
lines. However, there is no need of any reserve or hesitation in
speaking of the three first empires into which the shepherds of the
North developed, the Huns, the Moguls, and the Mahometan Tartars: they
were the creation of Tribes, whose identity of race is as certain as
their community of country.

2.

Of these the first in order is the Hunnish Empire of Attila, and if I
speak of it and of him with more of historical consecutiveness than of
Zingis or of Timour, it is because I think in him we see the pure
undiluted Tartar, better than in the other two, and in his empire the
best specimen of a Tartar rule. Nothing brings before us more vividly
the terrible character of Attila than this, that he terrified the Goths
themselves. These celebrated barbarians at the time of Attila inhabited
the countries to the north of the Black Sea, between the Danube and the
Don, the very district in which Darius so many centuries before found
the Scythians. They were impending over the Roman Empire, and
threatening it with destruction; their king was the great Hermanric,
who, after many victories, was closing his days in the fulness of power
and renown. That they themselves, the formidable Goths, should have to
fear and flee, seemed the most improbable of prospects; yet it was their
lot. Suddenly they heard, or rather they felt before they heard,--so
rapid is the torrent of Scythian warfare,--they felt upon them and among
them the resistless, crushing force of a remorseless foe. They beheld
their fields and villages in flames about them, and their hearthstones
deluged in the blood of their dearest and their bravest. Sho