e equitable balance
of property and payment, of receipt and expenditure; a peculiar fund was
appropriated to each service; and a public method secured the interest
of the prince and the property of the people. After reforming the
luxury, he assigned two patrimonial estates to supply the decent plenty,
of the Imperial table: the contributions of the subject were reserved
for his defence; and the residue was employed in the embellishment of
the capital and provinces. A taste for building, however costly, may
deserve some praise and much excuse: from thence industry is fed, art is
encouraged, and some object is attained of public emolument or pleasure:
the use of a road, an aqueduct, or a hospital, is obvious and solid; and
the hundred churches that arose by the command of Basil were consecrated
to the devotion of the age. In the character of a judge he was
assiduous and impartial; desirous to save, but not afraid to strike: the
oppressors of the people were severely chastised; but his personal foes,
whom it might be unsafe to pardon, were condemned, after the loss of
their eyes, to a life of solitude and repentance. The change of language
and manners demanded a revision of the obsolete jurisprudence of
Justinian: the voluminous body of his Institutes, Pandects, Code, and
Novels, was digested under forty titles, in the Greek idiom; and the
Basilics, which were improved and completed by his son and grandson,
must be referred to the original genius of the founder of their race.
This glorious reign was terminated by an accident in the chase. A
furious stag entangled his horns in the belt of Basil, and raised him
from his horse: he was rescued by an attendant, who cut the belt and
slew the animal; but the fall, or the fever, exhausted the strength of
the aged monarch, and he expired in the palace amidst the tears of his
family and people. If he struck off the head of the faithful servant
for presuming to draw his sword against his sovereign, the pride of
despotism, which had lain dormant in his life, revived in the last
moments of despair, when he no longer wanted or valued the opinion of
mankind.

Of the four sons of the emperor, Constantine died before his father,
whose grief and credulity were amused by a flattering impostor and a
vain apparition. Stephen, the youngest, was content with the honors of
a patriarch and a saint; both Leo and Alexander were alike invested with
the purple, but the powers of government were solely