THE CIRCASSIAN SLAVE IN TURKISH HAREMS. 485 



life which entirely divorces the public interests of women and 

 men is strikingly illustrated in the vicissitudes of Mohammedan- 

 ism. In the Koran itself there originally existed conditions 

 which, taken as a whole, were far more favorable to women than 

 the common law of England. Originally, women of the Moham- 

 medan faith were as highly educated and moved abroad as freely 

 as men, mingling unveiled in their company, and actively par- 

 ticipating in public affairs. Those were the centuries when the 

 liberal and enlightened rule of Mohammedans made the name of 

 Spain glorious, and when all Europe sought education in Moham- 

 medan universities. It was during those centuries that the Turk 

 passed from victory to victory, proceeding from western Asia 

 into Europe, until his conquering army stood on the eve of a con- 

 quest of Austria. 



But, as had so often happened before in warlike nations 

 grown rich with enormous booty, women of the higher class sur- 

 rendered themselves more and more to an indoor life of extrava- 

 gant luxury and idleness, only too truthfully mirrored in the 

 tales of "A Thousand and One Nights." The veil was doubt- 

 less at first worn as a sort of portable tent, into which one could 

 withdraw to escape the bold stare of unwelcome admirers ; partly 

 as a result of a growing refinement, which led them to shun the 

 gaze of a rude soldiery; partly to enhance their own attractive- 

 ness by affected concealment of their beauty. Thus in England 

 also, during the warlike period of the Crusades, English women 

 of rank habitually wore, even within doors, a veil which could 

 be used for such purposes. And the somewhat like circum- 

 stances resulting from like causes conspired to make the English 

 woman, likewise, at one period of her history, a creature whose 

 dense ignorance and silliness equaled that found in the Turkish 

 harem. The Asiatic woman, however, having once become an 

 objet de luxe, plunged deeper into the gulf of helplessness, and 

 has much more slowly begun to grow out of that condition. She 

 is as one fallen into a pit, who can only escape by her own 

 co-operation, but whose enervated arms are so weakened that 

 every movement has become a burden. As woman is the life- 

 stream of each race the source which must be lifted high as the 

 fountain is to rise the enslavement of womanhood in Turkish 

 harems has inevitably wrought its own revenge of terrible evil 

 upon the nominal enslavers. Most miserable to-day is the lot of 

 that people born of a race of slave mothers ; most significantly 

 is that debilitated empire known as " the Sick Man of Europe." 

 Nothing but a patient upbuilding from the very foundation can 

 restore that invalid whose disease is so deep-seated and long- 

 abiding. This upbuilding has already begun. The elixir of 

 modern ideas has not stopped with placing novels and teaching 



