Note (5), [page 24].

The reader may recollect the old Byzantine pictures, painted on a gold ground; there is a large collection of these pictures at Schleisheim, near Munich.

Note (6), [page 25].

I feel regret for poor Vahram, who here shows himself a heretic; for notwithstanding that it was forbidden to add any article to the creed of Nice, or rather Constantinople, the Latins added the celebrated filioque, that is to say, that the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father and the Son, and condemned all others as heretics who upheld the old church, and would not acknowledge these innovations. Vahram, the Raboun, or doctor, shows himself to be such a heretic. He even wrote some dissertations on the trinity and the incarnation, at the command of his master king Leon III, but they were never printed. The Roman Catholic author of the “Quadro della letteratura di Armenia” (p. 115), says, that even in these works Vahram “si prova scrittore di poco sana dottrina intorno al dogma della processione dello Spirito-Santo.”

Note (7), [page 25].

This is the language of all divines, and of those philosophers who think whatever is, is right. If the sins of mankind have produced Mahomed, why has Spain alone out of the nations of Europe been depressed? Were these Visigoths greater sinners than their brethren in the south of France or the Franks themselves? It is not a speculative opinion, but the truth of history, that man is the architect of his own fortune, and that the world belongs to the mighty.

Note (8), [page 25].

The Turks were known in Europe as early as the beginning of the sixth century of our era, but the western writers tell us nothing satisfactory, either as to the name or the origin of this large division of the human race. The Chinese, who were earlier acquainted with their Thoo kiouei, are also contradictory in their statements. They say, the Thoo kiouei are a particular tribe or class of the Hioung noo, called by different names, and that they are called Thoo kiouei because their town near the Altai, or gold mountain, had the form of a helmet, and a helmet is called Thoo kiouei, yn y wei haou. Matuanlin, in his great work, B. 343, initio, says this is the cause why this people is so called. It is fortunate for historical literature, that this accomplished Chinese scholar had no system in view in compiling his work: he quotes on the same page other accounts on the origin of the name Thoo kiouei and different traditions of the original history of this nation. It has been remarked by Klaproth (Asia Polyglotta, 212) that Thoo kiouei (or a very similar word) means, indeed, in the Turkish language a helmet. If the Hiong noo are Turks they cannot certainly be either the Huns of Attila or Fins. Concerning the tribes of the Turks nothing is known with any certainty; tribes rise and decay in Tartary like the sand-hills in the desert: who can count them? The reader may find a lively and true picture of this rising and falling of the different Turkoman tribes in a novel, by Frazer, called Memoirs of a Kusilbash, printed 1828, in three volumes. The different denomination of the same people, Turks and Turkomans, is already used by William of Tyre, the celebrated historian of the Crusades; it may be said that they differ one from another, like, in former times, the Highlanders and Lowlanders in Scotland. While describing the difference between Turks and Turkomans, we may use the words of Dr. Robertson, mentioning the attempt of King James II. to civilize the Highlands and Isles. That great historian has the following words:—“The inhabitants of the low country began gradually to forget the use of arms, and to become attentive to the arts of peace. But the Highlanders, or the Turkomans, retaining their natural fierceness, averse from labour and inured to rapine, infested their more industrious neighbours by their continual incursions.” (History of Scotland, ad a. 1602.) Some modern authors think it worth their while to take notice of a fault of a copyist (τοῦρκοι for ἰυρκαὶ), and find therefore the Turks as early as in Herodotus, Pomponius Mela, and Plinius; but this is not so unfair as to make Laura, the beautiful and chaste Laura, responsible for eleven children, upon the faith of a misinterpreted abbreviation, and the decision of a librarian. (Lord Byron’s Notes on Childe Harold, Canto iv. stanza 30, lines 8 and 9.)

Note (9), [page 26].

The kings are the different Arabian chiefs who ruled independently of the Caliph of Bagdad; the emperor is the Emperor of Constantinople, or the Roman emperor, as Vahram says, with the other authors of these times. (See Gibbon, ch. 57.)