CHAPTER I.
THE DAWN OF A NEW ERA.
1275 1296 (1859 1879).
We have now to tell the story of a great awakening. We have traced the course of poetic literature amongst the Ottoman Turks during five centuries and a half. We have learned how, throughout this long period, no voice has ever reached it from outside the narrow school where it was reared; how, Persian in its inception, Persian in substance it has remained down to the very end, driven back after a blind struggle to win free, baffled and helpless into the stagnant swamp of a dead culture. But now all is on the verge of change; Asia is on the point of giving place to Europe, and the tradition of ages is about to become a memory of the past. A voice from the Western world rings through the Orient skies like the trumpet-blast of Israfil; and lo, the muse of Turkey wakes from her death-like trance, and all the land is jubilant with life and song, for a new heaven and a new earth are made visible before the eyes of men. Now for the first time the ears of the people are opened to hear the speech of hill and valley, and their eyes unsealed to read the message of cloud and wave. The heavy fetters of secular tradition and convention are broken
