The third outbreak was under Timour or Tamerlane, a century and more before the rise of Protestantism, when the Mahometan Tartars, starting from the basin of the Aral and the fertile region of the present Bukhari a, swept over nearly the whole of Asia round about, and at length seated themselves in Delhi in Hindostan, where they remained in imperial power, till they succumbed to the English in the last century.

Then come the Turks, a multiform and reproductive race, varied in its fortunes, complicated in its history, falling to rise again, receding here to expand there, and harrassing and oppressing the world for at least a long 800 years. And lastly comes the Russian Empire, in which the Tartar element is prominent, whether in its pure blood or in the Slavonian approximation, and which, comprises a population of many millions, gradually moulded into one in the course of centuries, ever growing, never wavering, looking eagerly to the South and to an unfulfilled destiny, and possessing both the energy of barbarism in its subjects and the subtlety of civilization in its rulers.

Last Christian

The two former of these five empires, were Pagan, the two next Mahometan, the last Christian, but schismatic; all have been persecutors of the Church, or at least, instruments of evil against her 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 made them alike in their wildness, their love of wandering, their pastoral occupations, their predatory habits, their security from attack, and the suddenness and the transi-toriness 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.

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