officials.  The only practical action taken by Ottoman ministers in the line indicated were the twin crusades proclaimed against the Wahhabis of Hasa and the heretical Imams of Sana.  But the Hanefite Ulema were not thus to be satisfied.  They had determined on carrying out the idea they had adopted, and on forcing the Sultan to put himself openly at the head of a religious and reactionary movement; and when they found that Abd el Aziz could not be made to act consistently as Caliph, they deposed him, and thus opened a way for the true hero of their idea, the present Sultan, Abd el Hamid.

The advent of this latest scion of the house of Othman to the spiritual succession of the Prophet, though a godsend in appearance to religious Moslems, cannot but be regarded by all who wish Islam well as a very great misfortune.  It is almost certain that if Abd el Mejid and Abd el Aziz had been succeeded by another of those senseless monarchs who have so often filled the Imperial throne, the Ottoman Caliphate would already have been a thing of the past, at least as regards the larger and more intelligent part of Islam.  In the collapse of its physical power in 1879, the official camarilla of Constantinople would have been unable to control the movement of revolt against the spiritual and temporal sovereignty of the Sultan, and something would have taken its place offering a more possible foundation for true religious reform.  Arabia would in all probability have by this time asserted its independence, and under a new Caliphate of the Koreysh would have been attracting the sympathies and the adhesion of the Eastern world.  There might have been schisms and religious convulsions, but at least there would have been life; and what Islam requires is to live.  But unfortunately Abd el Hamid was neither a mere voluptuary nor an imbecile, and catching, by an instinct which one cannot but admire, the one rope of safety which remained for him and his house, he placed himself at the head of the extreme reactionary party of Islam, and thus put back for a while the hour of fate.

It is difficult to gain accurate information as to Abd el Hamid’s character and religious opinions, but I believe it may be safely asserted that he represents in these latter the extremest Hanefite views.  In youth he was, for a prince, a serious man, showing a taste for learning, especially for geography and history; and though not an alem he has some knowledge of his religion.  It may therefore be taken for granted that he is sincere in his belief of his own spiritual position—­it is easy to be sincere where one’s interest lies in believing; and I have it from one who saw him at the time that on the day soon after his accession, when, according to the custom already mentioned, he received the sword at the mosque of Ayub, he astonished his courtiers with the sudden change in his demeanour.  All the afternoon of that day he talked to them of his spiritual rank in language which for centuries had not been