Page:Story of Turkey and Armenia.djvu/26

 8 Crimean war reaction, quickly followed by the Lebanon affair, the independence of Rumania, the successive revolts of the Herzegovina, of Bulgaria, Servia and Montenegro, resulting in the Russo-Turkish war, and the further dismemberment of Turkey in both Europe and Asia—are not these summed up in Lord Beaconsfield's phrase, "Peace with honor?"—a phrase which has meant so much peace to some of the European States, little and big, so little honor to Great Britain and Turkey. The latter's hold in Europe, both in area and population, is now reduced to less than one-fourth of what it once was. It still has much of its vast area and population in Asia; but in Africa the loss of Algiers, Tunis and Egypt takes away two-thirds of its area and twelve times the present population in Tripoli.

Fifty years ago the Emperor Nicholas said to Sir Hamilton Seymour: "We have on our hands a sick man, a very sick man." The present invalid is the Sultan Abdul-Hamid II. He succeeded to the throne in 1876, on the deposition of his older brother, Murad V, who was declared to be suffering from idiocy, and has since been kept in strict seclusion. Abdul-Hamid is the thirty-fifth sovereign in uninterrupted male descent of the House of Othman, the founder of the empire. No family in European history can show such an example of continuous authority. The crown is inherited by the eldest male descendant in the imperial line, no matter whether he be the Sultan's son, uncle, cousin, or nephew.

The government of Turkey is often called the "Sublime Porte." This name is taken from the only gate in general use along the quay which runs outside the whole length of the