Amid these commotions, no nations have more attracted the attention of all classes, than Turkey and Greece. The politician has watched with no little anxiety the rapid dismemberment of that power, which has so long stood the great barrier between the East and West. The scholar has felt a new hope that the mother-land of mental light may be herself again. While the Christian is assured that the Almighty is thus shaking the nations for the accomplishment of his own high ends. He is but making straight the path of his servants.
The history of the Turks is remarkable and instructive—in the sudden rise of their empire—in its long continuance—and precipitate fall. The wild region of Mount Taurus and Imaus was their cradle. At once the most barbarous, the rudest, and the most enterprising of all the Saracen tribes, they penetrated to the banks of the Caspian Sea, and serving as mercenaries under the Caliphs, acquired great reputation for military prowess, and soon subjugated the contending Caliphats to their own sway. Palestine, with its capital Jerusalem, fell into their hands. Near the middle of the fourteenth century, they crossed into Europe, and possessed themselves of Adrianople. In a few years subsequent to this event, the city of Constantine, to adorn which he had lavished the treasures of his realm, was doomed to see their triumphant banner floating above her walls. Epirus soon suffered the fate of Constantinople; and the land of the orator and philosopher, which built a bulwark against Xerxes, received their chains. They marched victorious even to the walls of Vienna; but were finally driven back as far as Greece. European arms could avail no farther. In other directions this remarkable people were uniformly successful; until, in the sixteenth century, the Sultan was lord of thirty kingdoms, containing not less than eight thousand leagues of sea coast, and some of the fairest portions of the world. Not only those regions which have been rendered famous as the homes of the great masters of sculpture, song and philosophy, but the land of the Patriarchs, where were exhibited the thrilling scenes of the accomplishment of the covenant of God with man—Baghdad, the court of the science-loving Caliphs—Egypt—and the countries of Asia Minor, whose luxuriance not even Turkish thraldom and indolence has sufficed to destroy.
But this great empire was in itself radically defective. The government depended on extortion for its revenue—on physical force or a degrading imposture for obedience; neither of which, whatever may have been the case in other days, could be safely trusted, in the light which is breaking over the human family, and over the Turks as a part of it. The present Sultan found himself in the dilemma between reform on the one hand, in accomplishing which his throne, and perhaps his life would be jeopardized, and certain destruction on the other. In choosing the least of these evils, Greece, Egypt, and Palestine, were severed from his empire. Mahomet Ali would have attacked him in his capital, but for the interposition of the Tzar, who was fearful of losing a prize which has ever been the object of Muscovite ambition, the throne of Constantine. But while the black Eagle of Russia spread his wings as a shelter for the Turk, he coolly seized in his talons the keys of the Dardanelles; thus rendering any further interposition on the part of England, who has so often balked the Tzar in his darling project, entirely futile. Since which event, the fall of Turkey has been pronounced as certain by all. What is to be its precise effect on the politics of Europe, is a question which only a Talleyrand or a Metternich could answer with any probability of truth. Yet the foregoing remarks exhibit facts from which consequences of high importance must follow.
They exhibit the empire of the Ottomans as once occupying a proud station among the greater powers—as forming a boundary and preserving a balance between the East and West—as a firm check on Muscovite ambition—and as, from her consequence, possessing great weight in the councils of nations; and it is apparent that she cannot fall without important political consequences.
They exhibit her with a religion, which has ever been a bane to all nobler sentiments or aspirations of the soul, brooding like night over some of the fairest portions of the earth, blasting by the baleful influence of her institutions the legitimate effect, both on mind and body, of her naturally fair plains, rich vallies, and brilliant skies, which, in other times, produced models for an Apollo Belvidere and a Venus de Medici, and nourished men who were masters of the earth and of mind; and it is evident that she cannot fall without important consequences to the beaux Arts and Literature.
They exhibit her, as the main support and promoter of the debasing, sensual tenets of Mahomet, in countries where the Apostles, and even Christ, toiled and suffered. They exhibit her, as the systematic opposer of the message of the Prince of Peace, to her distracted provinces—the only balm for their wounds—the only physician for their souls; and the effect of her fall on the highest of interests cannot be unimportant.
What then is to be the influence of the prostration of the Ottoman sway in these cradles of early knowledge, upon literature, science, and the beaux arts?
Winklemann, in his history of sculpture, assigns as a principal reason of the superiority of the Greeks in that sublime art over other nations, the circumstance of their inhabiting a land so surpassingly endowed by nature; and with much truth. Their bodies, neither chilled nor contracted by the long winters of the north, nor softened into lassitude and effeminacy by the tropical sun, but continually moving and breathing in the purest air, under the mildest and most brilliant of skies, whose loveliness was constantly exciting in the mind the most agreeable trains of thought, attained, in their fair proportions, to a harmonious keeping with the beauty around.
Close observation must convince every candid mind, that there is some truth in the grand outlines of Phrenology. Forms such as aided in the conception of those master pieces of ancient statuary, were never, and never will be, inhabited by inferior or grovelling spirits. Vitiated they may be by extraneous circumstances. Their noble faculties may be turned to unworthy purposes. Corrupted by long intercourse with the morally debased, they may, like the modern Greek, suffer the imputation of being worse than their examples. But this is the proof of the position. They are bad, but like Lucifer they are greatly so.
How long is this to be the case with Greece? Emphatically no longer. Already by the aid of the missionary and foreign science, she is realizing the fable of the renascent phenix; already are those whose beauty of person long years of servitude have been unable to destroy, renewing the moral beauty of the spirit within; already are they turning those powers which made them remarkable in depravity to their proper channels. And he, whose love for the human family, or reverence for the classic scenes of Greece, has led him to peruse the late accounts from thence: if he has observed the avidity with which they seek instruction, when they once taste of its sweets: if he has noticed their teachable spirit, rapid improvement, exhibitions of ingenuity and taste: his bosom has exulted in the sober certainty that Greece will be herself again. But why has this fair morn at last dawned over this singularly illustrious land? The answer is plain. Mahometan despotism and ignorance no longer hold sway within her borders. If this be so, what is to be the effect of the removal of Turkish intolerance and misrule, and the establishment of an enlightened and responsible government over the shores of the Levant, in the same parallels of latitude? Are the fields of Anatolia less rich than those of Greece, or her harbors less promising for commerce? or are the Greeks, scattered through those regions, who at least double the number of those in their father-land, less capable of moral improvement? Is the conclusion drawn from unfair premises, that the day of the deliverance of this country is near—that the angel of knowledge will again spread his wings over Anatolia, Palestine, Arabia, Egypt, her ancient home? The conclusion is not, can not be false. The same physical influences operate now as in days of old, though the misrule of man may have marred their effects. The same high cast of mind is there which won immortality for their fathers: and why may not spring up in those regions, under a wiser government, and a purer religion, a people, in arts and science even superior to the ancients? Why may there not arise, under the auspices of virtue and wisdom, new models for a Venus or an Apollo? Why may not the Parian marble there rise into temples of as fair proportions as that of Olympus or of Minerva, reared for nobler purposes, dedicated to a far higher and holier worship?