And so the last Constantine falls, and Mahmoud sweeps from earth the traces of his reign. In the old Church of St. Sophia, now the Mosque of Omar, men show to-day, far up on one of the columns, the impress of the conqueror's bloody hand, which could only strike so high because the floor beneath was piled fathom-deep with Christian corpses.
Another period follows. The Turk establishes himself in his new domain, and employs the Greek to subjugate the Greek. Upon each Greek family the tribute of a male child is levied; and this child is bred up in Turkish ways, and taught to turn his weapon against the bosom of his mother country. From these babes of Christian descent was formed the corps of the Janissaries, a force so dangerous and deadly that the representative of Turkish rule was forced at a later day to plan and accomplish its destruction.
The name "Greek" in this time no longer suggested a nation. I myself, in my childhood, knew a young Greek, escaped from the massacres of Scio, who told me that when, having learned English, he heard himself spoken of as "the Greek," his first thought was that those who so spoke of him were waiting to cut his throat.
Now follows another epoch. Western Europe is busied in getting a little civilization. Baptized mostly by force, _vi et armis_, she has still to be Christianized: she has America to discover and to settle. She has to go to school to the ghosts of Greece and Arabia, in order to have a grammar and to learn arithmetic. There are some wars of religion, endless wars for territorial aggrandizement. Europe is still a congress of the beasts,--lion, tiger, boar, rhinoceros, all snared together by the tortuous serpent of diplomacy.
I pause, for out of this dark time came your existence and mine. A small barque crosses the sea; a canoe steals toward the issue of a mighty river. Such civilization as Europe has plants itself out in a new country, in a virgin soil; and in the new domain are laid the foundations of an empire whose greatness is destined to reside in her peaceful and beneficent offices. Her task it shall be to feed the starving emigrant, to give land and free citizenship to those dispossessed of both by the greed of the old feudal systems.