to the countries, and overflowed and passed over. But the whirlwind was stayed, and its fury was broken for a season on the plains and mountains of Judea. The king of the north entered that country, but not to overflow it; for before the close of the same century in which the Turks first boasted of a conquest or of a king, the crusades began. The overthrow of many was the note of that time; and when that long-continued and peculiar era of slaughter passed, the Turks were again loosed on ravaged countries and on exhausted Europe. Headed by a race of warriors, their kingdom in Asia was renewed; Europe yielded up the richest and fairest of its countries, and Asia deeply resented and amply retaliated its wrongs. The throne of the Cæsars was subverted for ever, and the cross was supplanted by the crescent in the capital of the eastern empire, which derived the name which it still retains, from the first of Christian kings. Constantinople was taken in 1453; but it was only in the succeeding century that Egypt owned fealty to the Porte. The Egyptians, in Palestine, had over-mastered both Christians and Turks, and in the great medley of nations, and overthrow of many, a descendant of Seljuk had held the stirrup of Saladin: but though triumphant once, the last to yield, and resisting long, the land of Egypt, unlike to Edom, and Moab and the chief of the children of Ammon, did not escape. Its day was delayed, but its fate was sure; and the sentence was not executed till the order of its visitation was come, its work accomplished, and its time fulfilled.

In the preceding and subsequent pages of this volume, Gibbon's testimony, as the most accessible and unsuspicious, is in general referred to in preference to every other. From the debt to the gospel which he fatally contracted, we may without scruple demand large restitution, and hold him ready at a call to yield up the fruits of his labours. But the history of th

decline and fall of the Roman empire was all told, when the Turkish Sultan, the king of the north, stretched his sceptre from the throne of the Cæsars, on the countries over which he had before stretched his victorious hand. Other evidence must therefore be here appealed to than Gibbon's; but we now close his volumes, only to open them again; for, more than any other, he is the man, who, in exploring so fully, and smoothing so completely, many a rugged field of history, has opened up a plain and easy path through the mazes of the Revelation.

In the year 1517, Selim I. marched against Egypt, at the head of an army of one hundred and fifty thousand men.* After repeated battles, and the most determined resistance on the part of the Mamelukes, Selim became master of Egypt, but not until after the streets of Cairo, in the desperate fury of the defenders, had been a scene of slaughter for three days and nights, when "the arrows fell thick as rain," and "streams of blood ran down the streets."+" After this slaughter, Selim marched towards Alexandria, which opened its gates before even the Grand Seignior had caused them to be summoned. All Egypt followed the example. Nothing was seen throughout but a people who submitted to the conqueror. ended the empire of the Mamelukes, respected in Africa and Asia for near three hundred years."+ The land of Egypt did not escape. And, as in the beginning of the vision it fell into the hands of the Ptolemies, we find it, towards the close, in the possession of the Ottomans.

Thus

Under the government of the Mamelukes, as appears by the Arabic document, previously referred to, a system of taxation was regularly organized over

* Mignot's Hist. of the Turkish Empire, vol. i. p. 267. + Ibid. p. 278. Modern Universal History, vol. xii. p. 256. Mignot's Hist. vol. i.

P.

280.

Egypt and all its tributary provinces; and the revenue was of vast amount. But all the treasures of the Soldan of Egypt became the property of the Seignior. Not satisfied even with these, he extended the power which conquest gave him, over the wealth of individuals as well as of the State. "Above five hundred families of the noblest and richest of the Egyptians were commanded to remove from Cairo to Constantinople, and a great number of the women and children of the race of the Mamelukes were also transported thither in ships hired for that purpose. Into this fleet, besides the king's treasure and riches, he conveyed ALL the public and private ornaments of that most rich and famous city, with such a covetous and greedy desire of spoil, that the very marble stones, commended either for the excellency of the workmanship or beauty of the stone, were violently rent out of the main walls, to his great reproach and infamy." He had power over the treasures of gold and of silver, and over ALL the precious things of Egypt.

The kings of Africa bordering upon Cyrenaica, tributaries or confederates of the Egyptian Sultans, sent their ambassadors with presents to Selim.-The remote nations towards Ethiopia, as they had in former times rather acknowledged the friendship than the command of the Egyptian Sultans, so now, induced with the fame of the victory, easily joined in like amity with the Turk.-All the princes which were before tributaries or confederates to the late Sultans of Egypt, even to the confines of David, the most mighty king of Ethiopia, without delay entered into the like subjection or confederation with the Turks." The Grand Seignior did not himself enter into these countries, as he had entered into others,

• Turkish History, by Sir Paul Rycaut, vol. i. p. 375. † Ibid.

but, after the subjugation of Egypt, they sent their ambassadors with presents, acknowledging their submission, or assenting to his dominion as the new lord of Egypt, and rendered the same tribute, or entered into the same confederacy with him, as they had done before to a government which had been established for centuries. The Lybians and Ethiopians, it may be said literally, were at his steps.

The fall of the Turkish empire is told as plainly as its rise. But the consideration of the things which are here farther noted respecting it, may properly be reserved till all its intermediate prophetic history, which yet remains to be unfolded, pass first in review, when additional illustrations may be adduced to show that the last end of the indignation is approaching, when Mahometanism shall meet its doom.

The visions of Daniel, lightened by their interpretation, symbolically represent the successive kingdoms that should arise, or forms of domination that should prevail upon the earth. But the things that are noted in the scripture of truth, are, without a figure, a prophetic narrative of facts. The eleventh chapter, in which they are recorded, bears, we apprehend, express reference to all the previous visions and prophecies of Daniel. Both were alike descriptive of the things that were to be; and there is a manifest analogy and coincidence between the visions that were seen and the things that were noted. The mode of annunciation is different; but the matter is substantially the same. In the first and second visions, the Persian empire, after having succeeded to the Babylonian, is represented as overthrown in its order, by the third kingdom, or the Grecian; while in the vision of the Ram and the He-goat, the empires of Persia and Greece are mentioned by name. In precise accordance with all these antecedent predictions, and showing still more clearly the very

things, that which is first peculiarly noted in the Scripture of truth, written after the fall of Babylon, is the stirring up of all against the realm of Grecia by the fourth, after Cyrus, of the Persian kings, without the notice of a single fact, and undistinguished beyond the mention of their numbers, respecting the three intermediate occupants of the throne of Persia. The invasion of Greece by Xerxes, which, according to the common chronology, happened in the year 481 before the Christian era, stands forth as the most marked and conspicuous object that first rises to view among the things noted in the Scripture of truth. And the collision between these empires being thus noted, the manner is revealed in which Alexander the Great afterwards subverted the Persian empire. His history and that of his successors is detailed, till the Romans enforced their sway over Macedon, and extended their influence over Syria and Egypt. The fate of the Jews was involved in that of the successive conquerors of the East. But after the fourth kingdom, previously prefigured in two visions, maintained its ascendency over the land of Judea, as of them it is written in this prophetic record of the things they were to do, the sanctuary of strength was polluted, the daily sacrifice was taken away, and they placed the abomination that maketh desolate. But the everlasting covenant was revealed, when the first was disannulled, and amidst the desolations of Zion, the church of Christ was founded on a rock. Already had it been revealed and expounded to Daniel, that in the days of these earthly kingdoms, the Most High would set up his kingdom,—and it is here again still more plainly told that, at that appointed time, when fully come, and when the days that were determined on Jerusalem were closing and ended, the men of understanding who knew their God did exploits and instructed many. Another revelation (chap ix.)