!"

It was the wish of Irene to supplant the eldest of her surviving sons,
in favor of her daughter the princess Anne whose philosophy would not
have refused the weight of a diadem. But the order of male succession
was asserted by the friends of their country; the lawful heir drew the
royal signet from the finger of his insensible or conscious father and
the empire obeyed the master of the palace. Anna Comnena was stimulated
by ambition and revenge to conspire against the life of her brother, and
when the design was prevented by the fears or scruples of her husband,
she passionately exclaimed that nature had mistaken the two sexes, and
had endowed Bryennius with the soul of a woman. The two sons of Alexius,
John and Isaac, maintained the fraternal concord, the hereditary virtue
of their race, and the younger brother was content with the title of
Sebastocrator, which approached the dignity, without sharing the power,
of the emperor. In the same person the claims of primogeniture and merit
were fortunately united; his swarthy complexion, harsh features, and
diminutive stature, had suggested the ironical surname of Calo-Johannes,
or John the Handsome, which his grateful subjects more seriously applied
to the beauties of his mind. After the discovery of her treason, the
life and fortune of Anne were justly forfeited to the laws. Her life
was spared by the clemency of the emperor; but he visited the pomp and
treasures of her palace, and bestowed the rich confiscation on the most
deserving of his friends. That respectable friend Axuch, a slave of
Turkish extraction, presumed to decline the gift, and to intercede for
the criminal: his generous master applauded and imitated the virtue of
his favorite, and the reproach or complaint of an injured brother was
the only chastisement of the guilty princess. After this example of
clemency, the remainder of his reign was never disturbed by conspiracy
or rebellion: feared by his nobles, beloved by his people, John
was never reduced to the painful necessity of punishing, or even of
pardoning, his personal enemies. During his government of twenty-five
years, the penalty of death was abolished in the Roman empire, a law of
mercy most delightful to the humane theorist, but of which the practice,
in a large and vicious community, is seldom consistent with the
public safety. Severe to himself, indulgent to others, chaste, frugal,
abstemious, the philosophic Marcus would not have disdained the