o Poland and Greece: the sultans were overthrown: the
caliphs fell, and the Caesars trembled on their throne. The victories
of Timour suspended above fifty years the final ruin of the Byzantine
empire. X. I have already noticed the first appearance of the Turks;
and the names of the fathers, of Seljuk and Othman, discriminate the
two successive dynasties of the nation, which emerged in the eleventh
century from the Scythian wilderness. The former established a splendid
and potent kingdom from the banks of the Oxus to Antioch and Nice; and
the first crusade was provoked by the violation of Jerusalem and the
danger of Constantinople. From an humble origin, the Ottomans arose, the
scourge and terror of Christendom. Constantinople was besieged and taken
by Mahomet II., and his triumph annihilates the remnant, the image, the
title, of the Roman empire in the East. The schism of the Greeks will be
connected with their last calamities, and the restoration of learning in
the Western world.

I shall return from the captivity of the new, to the ruins of ancient
Rome; and the venerable name, the interesting theme, will shed a ray of
glory on the conclusion of my labors.

The emperor Heraclius had punished a tyrant and ascended his throne; and
the memory of his reign is perpetuated by the transient conquest, and
irreparable loss, of the Eastern provinces. After the death of Eudocia,
his first wife, he disobeyed the patriarch, and violated the laws, by
his second marriage with his niece Martina; and the superstition of the
Greeks beheld the judgment of Heaven in the diseases of the father and
the deformity of his offspring. But the opinion of an illegitimate birth
is sufficient to distract the choice, and loosen the obedience, of the
people: the ambition of Martina was quickened by maternal love, and
perhaps by the envy of a step-mother; and the aged husband was too
feeble to withstand the arts of conjugal allurements. Constantine,
his eldest son, enjoyed in a mature age the title of Augustus; but the
weakness of his constitution required a colleague and a guardian, and
he yielded with secret reluctance to the partition of the empire. The
senate was summoned to the palace to ratify or attest the association
of Heracleonas, the son of Martina: the imposition of the diadem was
consecrated by the prayer and blessing of the patriarch; the senators
and patricians adored the majesty of the great emperor and the partners
of his reign; and