Wane of the Turkish Empire.
Seventy-five years ago Dr. Trumbull, of Connecticut, reviewed the century, just then closed, in reference to Turkey. He stated some of the remarkable calamities which had befallen it during that period. Constantinople had been eighteen times on fire, and in these fires 120,000 houses had been burned, and 8,000 people had perished. By the plague in 1750, 7,000 people died. The next year 3,000 more perished in an earthquake. In 1752 Adrianople, the second city in wealth and population, was almost destroyed by an earthquake. In 1754 Grand Cairo had two-thirds of its houses shaken down and 10,000 people swallowed up. In 1755 Fez in Morocco was half destroyed by an earthquake, and 12,000 Arabs were buried in its ruins. The plague at various times has swept away vast numbers of people. We may add that the present century has seen pestilence, conflagrations, earthquakes, revolts, dismemberments, and wars scattered through its history, culminating in the greatest of all its multiplied disasters,—its present semidestruction by Russia. Prophecy, seventy-five years ago, had plenty of materials for a dark picture; and prophecy now, of the wane of Mohammedanism, has them multiplied an hundred-fold.—Congregationalist.