"To Olympias
"It is not a light effort," he says (Ep. 2), "but
it demands an energetic soul and a great mind to
bear separation from one whom we love in the
charity of Christ. Every one knows this who
knows what it is to love sincerely, who knows
the power of supernatural love. Take the blessed
Paul: here was a man who had stripped himself[{5}]
of the flesh, and who went about the world
almost with a disembodied soul, who had
exterminated from his heart every wild impulse, and
who imitated the passionless sereneness of the
immaterial intelligences, and who stood on high[{10}]
with the Cherubim, and shared with them in their
mystical music, and bore prisons, chains,
transportations, scourges, stoning, shipwreck, and every
form of suffering; yet he, when separated from
one soul loved by him in Christian charity, was[{15}]
so confounded and distracted as all at once to
rush out of that city, in which he did not find the
beloved one whom he expected. 'When I was
come to Troas,' he says, 'for the gospel of Christ,
and a door was opened to me in the Lord, I had[{20}]
no rest in my spirit, because I found not Titus
my brother; but bidding them farewell, I went
into Macedonia.'
"Is it Paul who says this?" he continues;
"Paul who, even when fastened in the stocks,[{25}]
when confined in a dungeon, when torn with
the bloody scourge, did nevertheless convert and
baptize and offer sacrifice, and was chary even
of one soul which was seeking salvation? and
now, when he has arrived at Troas, and sees the[{30}]
field cleansed of weeds, and ready for the sowing,
and the floor full, and ready to his hand,
suddenly he flings away the profit, though he came
thither expressly for it. 'So it was,' he answers
me, 'just so; I was possessed by a predominating
tyranny of sorrow, for Titus was away; and this[{5}]
so wrought upon me as to compel me to this
course.' Those who have the grace of charity
are not content to be united in soul only, they
seek for the personal presence of him they love.
"Turn once more to this scholar of charity, and[{10}]
you will find that so it is. 'We, brethren,' he
says, 'being bereaved of you for the time of an
hour, in sight, not in heart, have hastened the
more abundantly to see your face with great
desire. For we would have come unto you, I,[{15}]
Paul, indeed, once and again, but Satan hath
hindered us. For which cause, forbearing no
longer, we thought it good to remain at Athens
alone, and we sent Timothy.' What force is
there in each expression! That flame of charity[{20}]
living in his soul is manifested with singular
luminousness. He does not say so much as
'separated from you,' nor 'torn,' nor 'divided,'
nor 'abandoned,' but only 'bereaved'; moreover
not 'for a certain period,' but merely 'for the[{25}]
time of an hour'; and separated, 'not in heart,
but in presence only'; again, 'have hastened
the more abundantly to see your face.' What!
it seems charity so captivated you that you
desiderated their sight, you longed to gaze upon[{30}]
their earthly, fleshly countenance? 'Indeed I
did,' he answers: 'I am not ashamed to say so;
for in that seeing all the channels of the senses
meet together. I desire to see your presence;
for there is the tongue which utters sounds and
announces the secret feelings; there is the[{5}]
hearing which receives words, and there the eyes
which image the movements of the soul.' But
this is not all: not content with writing to them
letters, he actually sends to them Timothy, who
was with him, and who was more than any letters.[{10}]
And, 'We thought it good to remain alone;'
that is, when he is divided from one brother,
he says, he is left alone, though he had so many
others with him."
II THE TURK
The Tartar and the Turk
You may think, Gentlemen, I have been very
long in coming to the Turks, and indeed I have
been longer than I could have wished; but I
have thought it necessary, in order to your taking
a just view of them, that you should survey them[{5}]
first of all in their original condition. When they
first appear in history they are Huns or Tartars,
and nothing else; they are indeed in no
unimportant respects Tartars even now; but, had they
never been made something more than Tartars,[{10}]
they never would have had much to do with the
history of the world. In that case, they would
have had only the fortunes of Attila and Zingis;
they might have swept over the face of the earth,
and scourged the human race, powerful to destroy,[{15}]
helpless to construct, and in consequence
ephemeral; but this would have been all. But this has
not been all, as regards the Turks; for, in spite
of their intimate resemblance or relationship to
the Tartar tribes, in spite of their essential[{20}]
barbarism to this day, still they, or at least great
portions of the race, have been put under
education; they have been submitted to a slow
course of change, with a long history and a profitable
discipline and fortunes of a peculiar kind;
and thus they have gained those qualities of
mind, which alone enable a nation to wield and
to consolidate imperial power.
I have said that, when first they distinctly[{5}]
appear on the scene of history, they are
indistinguishable from Tartars. Mount Altai, the
high metropolis of Tartary, is surrounded by a
hilly district, rich not only in the useful, but in
the precious metals. Gold is said to abound[{10}]
there; but it is still more fertile in veins of iron,
which indeed is said to be the most plentiful in
the world. There have been iron works there
from time immemorial, and at the time that the
Huns descended on the Roman Empire (in the[{15}]
fifth century of the Christian era), we find
the Turks nothing more than a family of slaves,
employed as workers of the ore and as blacksmiths
by the dominant tribe. Suddenly in the course
of fifty years, soon after the fall of the Hunnish[{20}]
power in Europe, with the sudden development
peculiar to Tartars, we find these Turks spread
from East to West, and lords of a territory so
extensive, that they were connected, by relations
of peace or war, at once with the Chinese, the[{25}]
Persians, and the Romans. They had reached
Kamtchatka on the North, the Caspian on the
West, and perhaps even the mouth of the Indus
on the South. Here then we have an
intermediate empire of Tartars, placed between the[{30}]
eras of Attila and Zingis; but in this sketch it has
no place, except as belonging to Turkish history,
because it was contained within the limits of
Asia, and, though it lasted for 200 years, it only
faintly affected the political transactions of
Europe. However, it was not without some sort[{5}]
of influence on Christendom, for the Romans
interchanged embassies with its sovereign in the
reign of the then Greek Emperor Justin the
younger (A.D. 570), with the view of engaging
him in a warlike alliance against Persia. The[{10}]
account of one of these embassies remains, and
the picture it presents of the Turks is important,
because it seems clearly to identify them with
the Tartar race.
For instance, in the mission to the Tartars[{15}]
from the Pope, which I have already spoken of,
the friars were led between two fires, when they
approached the Khan, and they at first refused
to follow, thinking they might be countenancing
some magical rite. Now we find it recorded of[{20}]
this Roman embassy, that, on its arrival, it was
purified by the Turks with fire and incense. As
to incense, which seems out of place among such
barbarians, it is remarkable that it is used in
the ceremonial of the Turkish court to this day.[{25}]
At least Sir Charles Fellows, in his work on the
Antiquities of Asia Minor, in 1838, speaks of the
Sultan as going to the festival of Bairam with
incense-bearers before him. Again, when the
Romans were presented to the great Khan, they[{30}]
found him in his tent, seated on a throne, to which
wheels were attached and horses attachable, in
other words, a Tartar wagon. Moreover, they
were entertained at a banquet which lasted the
greater part of the day; and an intoxicating
liquor, not wine, which was sweet and pleasant,[{5}]
was freely presented to them; evidently the
Tartar koumiss.[32] The next day they had a
second entertainment in a still more splendid
tent; the hangings were of embroidered silk, and
the throne, the cups, and the vases were of gold.[{10}]
On the third day, the pavilion, in which they were
received, was supported on gilt columns; a couch
of massive gold was raised on four gold peacocks;
and before the entrance to the tent was what
might be called a sideboard, only that it was a[{15}]
sort of barricade of wagons, laden with dishes,
basins, and statues of solid silver. All these
points in the description—the silk hangings, the
gold vessels, the successively increasing splendor
of the entertainments—remind us of the courts[{20}]
of Zingis and Timour, 700 and 900 years
afterwards.