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after generation produced warriors and statesmen who were the terror of Christendom and the object of the envious admiration of the Eastern world. Hence he did not hesitate, when the call came, to fairly shoulder his burden and to undertake the task of saving the empire with qualifications almost as scanty as those of Tommy Atkins for commanding an army corps. MIDHAT AND HIS CONSTITUTION. When he became Sultan, Midhat had conceived the idea of throwing dust in the eyes of Europe by proclaiming a constitution. The Sultan assented to it as he would prob- ably have assented to any other expedient which the Grand Vizier proposed at that time. But he never liked it, and took the first opportunity of dissolving the Parliament and put- tng the constitution on the shelf. Parliaments indeed were not in his line. The House of Othman has many virtues, but those of constitutional kingship were not of them. The founder of the dynasty and all his most famous descendants had been men of personal initiative. They not only reigned, but ruled. They first carved out their realms for themselves with their own scimiters, and then governed it by their own autocratic, theocratic will. To Abdul Hamid, who believed only in two things--in God and in his house--the very idea of a parliament or of any limitation on the sovereign power of the Sultan partook of the nature of a blasphemy. Not by such means would Allah deliver the faithful. Abdul Hamid would stand in the ancient ways, walk by the ancient light, and trust in the God of his fathers to deliver him from